For many centuries portions at least of this Latin medical poem were as common in the mouths of physicians all over Europe as the aphorisms of Hippocrates or the sayings of Galen. Probably this enables us to understand the great reputation that the Salernitan school enjoyed and the influence that it wielded better than anything else. The poem is divided into ten principal parts, containing altogether about 3,500 lines. The first part on hygiene has 855 lines in eight chapters. The second part on _materia medica_, though containing only four chapters, has also about 800 lines. Anatomy and physiology are crowded into about 200 lines, etiology has something over 200, semiotics has about 250, pathology has but thirty lines more or less, and therapeutics about 400; nosology has about 600 more, and finally there is something about the physician himself, and an epilogue. As Latin verses go, when written for such purposes, these are not so bad, though some of them would grate on a literary ear. The whole work makes a rather interesting compendium of medicine, with therapeutic indications and contra-indications, and whatever the physician of the medieval period needed to have ready to memory. Some of its prescriptions, both in the sense of formulae and of directions to the patient, have quite a modern air. One very interesting contribution to medical literature that comes to us from Salerno bears the title, "The Coming of a Physician to His Patient, or An Instruction for the Physician Himself." We have had a number of such works published in recent years, but it is a little surprising to have the subject taken up thus early in the history of modern professional life. It is an extremely valuable document, as demonstrating how practical was the teaching at Salerno. The work is usually ascribed to Archimattheas, and it certainly gives a vivid picture of the medical customs of the time. The instruction for the immediate coming of the physician to his patient runs as follows: "When the doctor enters the dwelling of his patient, he should not appear haughty, nor covetous, but should greet with kindly, modest demeanor those who are present, and then seating himself near the sick man accept the drink which is offered him (_sic_) and praise in a few words the beauty of the neighborhood, the situation of the house, and the well-known generosity of the family,--if it should seem to him suitable to do so. The patient should be put at his ease before the examination begins and the pulse should be felt deliberately and carefully. The fingers should be kept on the pulse at least until the hundredth beat in order to judge its kind and character; the friends standing round will be all the more impressed because of the delay and the physician's words will be received with just that much more attention."