During and after the final break-up of the Roman Empire came times or confusion and of social reconstruction, which left little opportunity for scientific thought and research. The Byzantine Empire, from the 4th century onwards, was the scene of much internal turmoil, in which the militant activities of the now State-established Christian church played a not inconsiderable part. The Byzantine medical scholars were at best compilers, and a typical compiler was Oribasius, body-physician to the Emperor Julian (4th century, A.D.); his excellent _Synopsis_ was written in order to make the huge mass of the Galenic writings available for the ordinary practitioner. [Sidenote: Arabian Medicine.] Greek medicine spread, with general Greek culture, throughout Syria, and from thence was carried by the Nestorians, a persecuted heretical sect, into Persia; here it became implanted, and hence eventually spread to the Mohammedan world. Several of the Prophet's successors (such as the Caliphs Harun-al-Rashid and Abdul-Rahman III) were great patrons of Greek learning, and especially of medicine. The Arabian scholars imbibed Aristotle and Galen with avidity. A partial assimilation, however, was the farthest stage to which they could attain; with the exception of pharmacology, the Arabians made practically no independent additions to medicine. They were essentially systematizers and commentators. "_Averrois che il gran comento feo_"[2] may stand as the type _par excellence_ of the Moslem sage. Avicenna (Ebn Sina), (10th to 11th century) is the foremost name in Arabian medicine: his "Book of the Canon in Medicine," when translated into Latin, even overshadowed the authority of Galen himself for some four centuries. Of this work the medical historian Max Neuburger says: "Avicenna, according to his lights, imparted to contemporary medical science the appearance of almost mathematical accuracy, whilst the art of therapeutics, although empiricism did not wholly lack recognition, was deduced as a logical sequence from theoretical (Galenic and Aristotelian) premises." [Sidenote: Introduction of Arabian Medicine to the West. Arabo-Scholastic Period.] Having arrived at such a condition in the hands of the Mohammedans, Galenism was now destined to pass once more to the West. From the 11th century onwards Latin translations of this "Arabian" Medicine (being Greek medicine in oriental trappings) began to make their way into Europe; here they helped to undermine the authority of the one medical school of native growth which the West produced during the Middle Ages--namely the School of Salerno. Blending with the Scholastic philosophy at the universities of Naples and Montpellier, the teachings of Aristotle and Galen now assumed a position of supreme authority: from their word, in matters scientific and medical, there was no appeal. In reference to this period the Pergamene was referred to in later times as the "Medical Pope of the Middle Ages."