Salmouïh ben Bayan, a Christian, was the last one of the pupils of the Djondisabour school who attained considerable celebrity as a physician. When the Caliph Motassem came to the throne in 833 A. D., he appointed Salmouïh his personal physician and soon became very much attached to him; leaning upon him more and more for advice in all sorts of troubles. Salmouïh was the author of several medical treatises, but they have all been lost, not even their titles are now known to us. When dying (early in 840 A. D.), he sent word to the Caliph not to put his entire trust in the medical judgment of Mesué if he should find it necessary to call upon the latter for advice in the event of a serious attack of illness. This celebrated physician was universally admitted to be most learned in everything relating to medicine, but there were many of his professional brethren--and Salmouïh was among the number--who did not esteem him so highly as a practitioner. “The most important thing in medicine,” said the latter, “is to appreciate correctly the intensity of the disease, and that is something which Mesué, with all his learning, is not able to do.” However, despite the death-bed warning given by Salmouïh to Motassem, this ruler died less than two years later from the effects of the treatment which Mesué the Elder, who had been called in to prescribe for his Highness, had ordered. In addition to the pupils already mentioned there are a few others who, according to the testimony of Le Clerc, reflected some credit upon the institution in which they acquired their medical training. But enough has already been said, I believe, to establish the fact that, in this remote Persian province of Khorassan (to the west of the country known to-day as Afghanistan), there existed during the eighth and ninth centuries of the present era a most efficient medical school, which was entirely managed by Nestorian Christians, and which sent out into the world trained physicians of the very highest type. CHAPTER XIX FURTHER ADVANCE OF THE ARAB RENAISSANCE DURING THE NINTH AND SUCCEEDING CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA