Though much work has been done on the subject in recent years, it is not easy to trace the origin of the medical school at Salerno. The difficulty is emphasized by the fact that even the earliest chroniclers whose accounts we have were not sure as to its origin, and even had some doubt about the age of the school. Alphanus, usually designated Alphanus I because there are several of the name, who is one of the earliest professors whose name and fame have come down to us, gives us the only definite detail as to the age of the school. He was a Benedictine monk, distinguished as a literary man, known both as poet and physician, who was afterwards raised to the Bishopric of Salerno. As a bishop he was one of the beneficent patrons, to whom the school owed much. He lived in the tenth century, and states that medicine flourished in the town before the time of Guimarus II, who reigned in the ninth century. In the ancient chronicle of Salerno, re-discovered by De Renzi and published in his "Collectio Salernitana," it is definitely recorded that the medical school was founded by four doctors,--a Jewish Rabbi Elinus, a Greek Pontus, a Saracen Adala, an Arab, and a native of Salerno, each of whom lectured in his native language. There are many elements in this tradition, however, that would seem to indicate its mythical origin and that it was probably invented after the event to account for the presence of teachers in all these languages and the coming of students from all over the world. The names, for instance, are apparently corruptions of real names, as can be readily recognized. Elinus, the Jew, is probably Elias or Eliseus, Adala is a corruption of Abdallah, and Pontus, as pointed out by Puschmann in his "History of Medical Education," should probably be Gario-Pontus. While we do not know exactly when the medical school at Salerno was founded, we know that a hospital was established there as early as 820. It was founded by the Archdeacon Adelmus, and was placed under the control of the Benedictines after it was realized that a religious order, by its organization, was best fitted for carrying on such charitable work continuously. Other infirmaries and charitable institutions, mainly under control of the religious, sprang up in Salerno. It was the presence of these hospitals in a salubrious climate that seems first to have attracted the attention of patients and then of physicians from all over Europe and even adjacent Africa and Asia. Puschmann says that it is uncertain whether clinical instruction was imparted in these institutions or not, but the whole tenor of what we know about the practical character of the teaching at Salerno and of the fine development of professional medicine there, would seem to argue that probably those who came to study medicine here were brought directly in contact with patients.