Thomas F. Glick - Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia

Salerno is a city in southern Italy along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, south of Naples. Founded as a Roman colony in antiquity, it was essentially refounded by the Lombards in the eighth century, later serving as the capital of the Norman Principality of Salerno until Count Roger II, in creating himself King of Sicily, moved the capital to Palermo in 1130. Salerno, still known today as the Civitas Hippocratica (Hippocratic State), is famous in the history of science primarily for its medical school, the reputation of which extended throughout Europe, despite the fact that in the twelfth century it was no more than an informal gathering of masters and pupils. Its importance declined in the thirteenth century with the rise of rival medical centers in Bologna, Montpellier, and Paris. Nevertheless, its contribution to medical learning in western Europe was profound, for it was here that the highly philosophical Galenic medicine of the Arabic world first made its entrance into medieval western Europe.

Salernos medical history is often divided into three periods: early Salerno, when it was distinguished primarily by the empirical skills of its practitioners; high Salerno, essentially the twelfth century, when the most important Salernitan medical texts were compiled; and late Salerno, the thirteenth century and on, when Salerno continued to be a medical center of local importance but had faded from international prominence.

Most of the tales of early Salerno concern skilled individual practitioners. For example, the Norman historian Orderic Vitalis (1075c. 1142) tells of a monk who traveled in the mid-eleventh century to France and Italy in order to educate himself. Already erudite by the time he reached Salerno, he nevertheless found himself bested in medical knowledge by a learned woman ( sapiens matrona ). The citys doctors were always seeking ways to improve clinical medicine. In the mid-eleventh-century a Salernitan named Gariopontus revised and restructured a body of medical writings that had been circulating in Europe since late antiquity. His Passionarius was then commented on by students using textual exegesis similar to that which would characterize *Scholasticism. The same technique would later be used to analyze a body of introductory texts that came to be known as the * Articella and served as the foundation for medical teaching throughout western Europe.

In the twelfth century, dozens of other medical works were composed in Salerno, only some of which have identifiable authors. They included writings on medical theory (including three tracts on pigs, whose *anatomy was studied in lieu of human dissections); diagnosis and therapeutics (including general medicine, fevers, uroscopy, and *gynecology); and major *pharmaceutic handbooks (including the two most influential in all medieval Europe, the Circa instans and the Antidotarium Nicolai ). There was also work on medical ethics. Only *surgery seems to have remained underdeveloped among the medical subdisciplines at Salerno.

While empirical concerns with effective therapy never diminished, Salernitan practitioners increasingly tied their practices to an understanding of how medical theory explained the causes of disease and the effects of drugs. Practitioners moved from calling themselves simply medici (healers) to medici et phisici (healers and persons learned in natural science), hence the origin of the term still used in English today for medical doctor, physician. Perhaps influenced by the Muslims who still populated Sicily at the time, in 1140 King Roger II instituted a regulation that obliged prospective physicians to present themselves to his officials and judges for an examination of their skill and basic knowledge.

Salernos fortunes declined after the city was sacked by in 1194 by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. Although some of the most accomplished theoretical work came from scholars active around 1200including *Urso of Calabria, *Maurus, and *Gilles of Corbeilthe absence of any major figures in the thirteenth century suggests a marked disruption in intellectual life. Outside Salerno, Salernitan texts, or works influenced by the perspectives of the Salernitan school (such as a series of natural science interrogations known simply as the *Salernitan Questions) were widely circulated, becoming particularly popular in England.