The _Regimen_ conveyed a deal of information in compact form. It gives the
number of bones in the body as 219 with 32 teeth, and the number of veins
as 365, this number being chosen doubtless because of some supposed
relation to the number of days in the year. It contains also a good brief
account of the four humours in the human body--black bile, blood, phlegm,
and yellow bile; and of the four temperaments--the sanguine, the bilious,
the phlegmatic, and the melancholy. These four temperaments were
discussed at considerable length by all the psychologists and most of the
writers on religious life for centuries afterwards, largely on the basis
of the information conveyed by the Salernitan handbook. There are
descriptions of the symptoms of plethora or excess of blood, of excess of
bile, of excess of phlegm, and excess of black bile. The little volume
finally contains discussions as to bleeding, its indications,
contraindications, as in youth--"Ere seventeen years we scarce need
drawing blood"--and in old age; and then of the mode of practising it, and
the place whence the blood should be drawn to relieve different
symptoms.[5]
Salerno impressed itself much more deeply on surgery than on medicine, for
the magnificent development of medieval surgery, the knowledge of which
has proved so surprising in our day, began down at Salerno. Some of the
details of this phase of Salernitan accomplishment are given in the
chapter on Medieval Surgeons of Italy. Roger and Roland and the Four
Masters were great original founders in a phase of medical science that
proved extremely important for the next three or four centuries.
Undoubtedly the presence of a hospital at Salerno, where there were
gathered a number of the chronic cases from all over Europe, most of them
of the better-to-do classes looking for ease from their ills, gave the
incentive to this development. When the natural means of cure, tried for a
considerable time, failed, recourse was had to surgery for relief, and
often with excellent results. This chapter on Salerno's history shows how
thoroughgoing was the effort of the members of the faculty of the medical
school to develop every possible means of aid for their patients, even
when that required pioneer work.
Pagel's appreciation of Salerno's place in the history of medicine, in his
chapter on Medicine in the Middle Ages in Puschmann's "Handbuch Der
Geschichte der Medicin," Berlin, 1902, gives in very brief space a summary
of what was accomplished at Salerno that emphasizes what has been said
here, and his authority will confirm those who might possibly continue to
doubt of any institution of the Middle Ages having achieved so much. He
said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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