reputation, as Marie de France’s story, The Two Lovers , reveals. A king who could not bear to part with his daughter decided that only the man who could carry her to the top of a nearby mountain would be allowed to marry her. Many tried, but none got more than half-way up. As it happened, she fell in love with a young man and he with her but, not wanting to cause her father additional distress, she refused to elope. Fortunately she had a cunning plan.
I have an aunt in Salerno, a rich woman who has been there for more than thirty years and who has practised the physician’s art so much that she is well-versed in medicines, and knows all about herbs and roots. Go to her, taking a letter from me, and tell her your story. She will give you such electuaries and potions as will increase your strength.
He took her advice and when he returned from Salerno, he was much strengthened. (The rich aunt was probably based on Trotula, a woman who wrote a book on the medical care of women; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath referred to her as ‘Dame Trot’). He brought back with him a phial of a precious potion that would allow him to complete the Herculean task. She, meanwhile, trying to lose some weight for his sake, had had some success. When the time came for the test, she decided to wear nothing but her shift. He felt so invigorated by happiness that he carried her all the way without stopping once to take the potion, but at the top he collapsed and died. Burnellus the Ass was equally unfortunate. He went to Salerno in the hope of finding a specialist who could make his tail grow until it was as long as his ears. But on the way home, carrying ten jars of Salerno’s finest tail-growing mixture, he was set upon by dogs and lost all the jars as well as half of his tail.
Salerno owed its reputation to a Tunisian Muslim, known in the West, after his conversion to Christianity, as Constantine the African, and his Latin translations of the Arabic medical treatises based on the writings of the great Greek doctor Galen. John of Salisbury was not impressed:
Often failed students of science/philosophy go to Salerno or Montpellier, where they study medicine, and then their careers suddenly take off. They ostentatiously quote Hippocrates and Galen, pronounce mysterious words, and have aphorisms ready to cover all cases. They use arcane words as thunderbolts with which to stun the minds of their clients. They follow two precepts above all. First, don’t waste time by practising medicine where people are poor. Second, make sure you collect your fee while the patient is still in pain.
His jaundiced words did little to impede the success of the new medicine. Kings of England employed the best doctors. At the beginning of the twelfth century Henry I’s came from the Mediterranean – men such as the converted Spanish Jew Peter Alphonsi or Italians such as Grimbald and Faricius – who became abbot of Abingdon. But by the end of the century Richard I had doctors who were Englishmen such as Warin, abbot of St Albans (1183–1195), and his brother Matthew who been trained at Salerno.
By 1200 the medical ideas of the school of Salerno were well known throughout the West. Its adherents saw the human body as having four principal members, each served by the appropriate network – the brain was served by nerves, the heart by arteries, the liver by veins and the genitals by the spermatic ducts. On this theory both men and women produced sperm. Without the first three members, the Salernitans said, the body would no longer function; without the fourth, the human race would cease to exist. They noted that although human beings looked more like monkeys than pigs, their internal organs were closer to those of pigs – an opinion not irrelevant to modern transplant surgery. There were also the four ‘humours’ – or, as we might say, principal components, corresponding to four elements: blood, which was hot and moist like air; phlegm, which was cold and moist
I have an aunt in Salerno, a rich woman who has been there for more than thirty years and who has practised the physician’s art so much that she is well-versed in medicines, and knows all about herbs and roots. Go to her, taking a letter from me, and tell her your story. She will give you such electuaries and potions as will increase your strength.
He took her advice and when he returned from Salerno, he was much strengthened. (The rich aunt was probably based on Trotula, a woman who wrote a book on the medical care of women; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath referred to her as ‘Dame Trot’). He brought back with him a phial of a precious potion that would allow him to complete the Herculean task. She, meanwhile, trying to lose some weight for his sake, had had some success. When the time came for the test, she decided to wear nothing but her shift. He felt so invigorated by happiness that he carried her all the way without stopping once to take the potion, but at the top he collapsed and died. Burnellus the Ass was equally unfortunate. He went to Salerno in the hope of finding a specialist who could make his tail grow until it was as long as his ears. But on the way home, carrying ten jars of Salerno’s finest tail-growing mixture, he was set upon by dogs and lost all the jars as well as half of his tail.
Salerno owed its reputation to a Tunisian Muslim, known in the West, after his conversion to Christianity, as Constantine the African, and his Latin translations of the Arabic medical treatises based on the writings of the great Greek doctor Galen. John of Salisbury was not impressed:
Often failed students of science/philosophy go to Salerno or Montpellier, where they study medicine, and then their careers suddenly take off. They ostentatiously quote Hippocrates and Galen, pronounce mysterious words, and have aphorisms ready to cover all cases. They use arcane words as thunderbolts with which to stun the minds of their clients. They follow two precepts above all. First, don’t waste time by practising medicine where people are poor. Second, make sure you collect your fee while the patient is still in pain.
His jaundiced words did little to impede the success of the new medicine. Kings of England employed the best doctors. At the beginning of the twelfth century Henry I’s came from the Mediterranean – men such as the converted Spanish Jew Peter Alphonsi or Italians such as Grimbald and Faricius – who became abbot of Abingdon. But by the end of the century Richard I had doctors who were Englishmen such as Warin, abbot of St Albans (1183–1195), and his brother Matthew who been trained at Salerno.
By 1200 the medical ideas of the school of Salerno were well known throughout the West. Its adherents saw the human body as having four principal members, each served by the appropriate network – the brain was served by nerves, the heart by arteries, the liver by veins and the genitals by the spermatic ducts. On this theory both men and women produced sperm. Without the first three members, the Salernitans said, the body would no longer function; without the fourth, the human race would cease to exist. They noted that although human beings looked more like monkeys than pigs, their internal organs were closer to those of pigs – an opinion not irrelevant to modern transplant surgery. There were also the four ‘humours’ – or, as we might say, principal components, corresponding to four elements: blood, which was hot and moist like air; phlegm, which was cold and moist
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