Origin
The Regimen is believed to have been written in the 12th or 13th century, although some sources estimate this to have been as early as 1050. [1] Belief of its origin in the 13th century is due to the popularity it gained around this time, some authorities believe the 1100 mark is accurate as well. The Regimen written in hexameter verse is a form of Greek poetry and often found in old Greek and Latin poems. Similar to iambic pentameter, the style of writing consists of Six Feet dactyls to create an epic. Even though the book bears the name of the famous medieval medical school, it is not certain if it originated there, since there is no reference to Salerno, but the school utilized it as their Code of Health. The Salerno Book of Health is credited as the linear ancestor to surviving medical texts in several aspects of medicine. Some legends claim the poem was written for the benefit of Duke of Normandy Robert Curthose, while others claim it was a gift from the Saliternitan writers to the king of England. [2] The true author is unknown, but it is commonly attributed to John of Milan. There are also large influence from Arab writers that helped dissipate into the foundations of knowledge that the Schola Medica Salernitana used as application to health education. There is not much known about the beginnings and creation of this poem, but there are many references of all aspects of medieval society that shifted the movement of education into public health. In the School of Salerno, the poem is often referred to as the “Schola Salernitana.” This poem evolved to a norm in the world of medical education that it continued its celebrity status until the 18th century.
While medical schools were not known to be as prestigious as current day hospitals, considering the majority of rules and education previous to the 12th century was based on monasteries and their Christian teachings, this poem opened up a new form of education that physicians of all practice and backgrounds could utilize. Prior to this poem, only certain practitioners received formal training in their respected fields, and delved more into individual health and hospice, and focused primarily on superstition and folklore "magic". This does not take away from the founding of the most prestigious medical schools at this time, and with Schola Medica Salernitana recently being founded, this opened more discussion and practice on public health and education on the proper hygiene for childbirths, surgeries, and wounds. This medical school was also the first to have female students, which opens another door to realm of medicine and practitioners that would utilize the Regimen to properly perfect their practice.
Content
This poem concerns domestic medical practice such as daily hygienic procedures and diet (e.g. it illustrates the therapeutic uses of wine). [3] The Regimen contains multiple outlets of guidance and instruction for preservation of public and individual health. There is also mention of therapeutics. This poem is written with the focus of the public, specifically in the wordage that can be understood by lay people, rather than a focus towards medical professionals. The poem discusses dietetics, which is a branch of medicine that include environmental factors of health. The early Regimen was organized by the six non-naturals. According to Galen, they are: air, food and drink, sleeping and waking, motion and rest, excretions and retentions, and dreams and the passions of the soul. The original content addressed the Humors, the Complexions (Temperaments), and some diseases. This poem concerns domestic medical practice such as daily hygienic procedures and diet (e.g. it illustrates the therapeutic uses of wine). In medieval medicine at this time, there was also the four "humours" that were related to both the body and the four elements, those being; phelgm (water), blood (air), yellow bile (fire) and black bile (earth). The original content addressed the Humors, the Complexions (Temperaments), and some diseases. It also contained a phlebotomy, which provided information on bloodletting. The Regimen focuses on the non-natural things as measures for diseases, some of which include migraines, strokes, dizziness, and with the segment of therapeutics provides treatment based on natural remedies. The index of subjects of the Code of Health for the School of Salerno, which is derived of the poem, begins with the individual health based on sleep, portioning of foods, wine, diets, and seasoning of food to pertain to certain health benefits. The Health Code then goes into individual foods, such as fruits and fish and dairy products, and then introduces topics such as bones, teeth and veins of the body, medications, hygiene and the Regimen of months. Translations of the Code Book show that the Regimen shows unparallel value at its time of existence to the school of medicine because of its general knowledge to all aspects of individual and public health that other books or instructors did not include in their works.
Preservation in History
The original Latin version was annotated and edited by Arnold of Villanova. The Regimen was contemporary with Secretum Secretorum, a health manual written by pseudo-Aristotle. However, the Regimen was more popular because the rhyming verses were easier to remember. The Regimen was translated into vernacular languages, including Irish, Bohemian, Occitan, Hebrew, German, Anglo-Norman, and Italian. [4] Following its first appearance in print, the Regimen was translated into almost every European language, and the book achieved tremendous popularity and nearly forty different editions were produced before 1501. An English translation by Thomas Paynell was printed by Thomas Berthelet in 1528. [5]
The work itself came to be highly revered as a scholarly medical text and was seriously discussed until the 19th century. Various editions and versions of the Regimen circulated throughout Europe, many with commentaries that added or removed material from the original poem. During this interval, the Regimen was expanded from the original 364 lines to 3,526 hexameter verses. [4] The first English translation was made by Sir John Harington in 1608. An attempt to make a medically accurate translation was made in 1871 by the American doctor John Ordronaux. [6]
Based on the hundreds of copies made about the poem, it was medical schools that kept the poem intact and preserved for hundreds of years, and the rise of digitization of past sources and books managed to keep a few of the copies intact and well as increasing the audience another time with the internet being the main source of research for this reproduction of books. Current historians believe the preservation of this poem is crucial not only to the medical community, but the cultural preservation of printed work and the overall preservation process, especially with the importance this poem gave to the medical community centuries before.
By 1224, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II made it required that any student wishing to practice and learn Medicine in the Naples Kingdom had to gain approval from the Salerno medical masters, which also help preserve the printed of the poem's verses, as they became a requirement to Southern Italian students and subjects.
Salerno is an ancient city and comune (municipality) in Campania, southwestern Italy, and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after Naples. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. In recent history the city hosted Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, who moved from Rome in 1943 after Italy negotiated a peace with the Allies in World War II, making Salerno the capital of the "Government of the South" and therefore provisional government seat for six months. Some of the Allied landings during Operation Avalanche occurred near Salerno.
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, also known as Bartholomew the Englishman and Berthelet, was an early 13th-century Scholastic of Paris, a member of the Franciscan order. He was the author of the compendium De proprietatibus rerum, dated c.1240, an early forerunner of the encyclopedia and a widely cited book in the Middle Ages. Bartholomew also held senior positions within the church and was appointed Bishop of Łuków in what is now Poland, although he was not consecrated to that position.
Trotula is a name referring to a group of three texts on women's medicine that were composed in the southern Italian port town of Salerno in the 12th century. The name derives from a historic female figure, Trota of Salerno, a physician and medical writer who was associated with one of the three texts. However, "Trotula" came to be understood as a real person in the Middle Ages and because the so-called Trotula texts circulated widely throughout medieval Europe, from Spain to Poland, and Sicily to Ireland, "Trotula" has historic importance in "her" own right.
The Schola Medica Salernitana was a medieval medical school, the first and most important of its kind. Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the south Italian city of Salerno, it was founded in the 9th century and rose to prominence in the 10th century, becoming the most important source of medical knowledge in Western Europe at the time.
Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann was a German doctor.
'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi, also known as Masoudi, or Latinized as Haly Abbas, was a Persian physician and psychologist from the Islamic Golden Age, most famous for the Kitab al-Maliki or Complete Book of the Medical Art, his textbook on medicine and psychology.
The University of Salerno is a university located in Fisciano and in Baronissi, Italy. Its main campus is located in Fisciano while the Faculty of Medicine is located in Baronissi. It is organized in ten faculties.
Saint Alfanus I or Alfano I was the archbishop of Salerno from 1058 until his death. He was famed as a translator, writer, theologian, and medical doctor.
The Principality of Salerno was a medieval Southern Italian state, formed in 851 out of the Principality of Benevento after a decade-long civil war. It was centred on the port city of Salerno. Although it owed allegiance at its foundation to the Carolingian emperor, it was de facto independent throughout its history and alternated its allegiance between the Carolingians and their successors in the West and the Byzantine emperors in the east.
Gilbertus Anglicus was a medieval English physician. He is known chiefly for his encyclopedic work, the Compendium of Medicine, most probably written between 1230 and 1250. This medical treatise was an attempt at a comprehensive overview of the best practice in pharmacology, medicine, and surgery at the time. His medical works, alongside those of John of Gaddesden, "formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years".
John Ordronaux was an American Civil War army surgeon, a professor of medical jurisprudence, a pioneering mental health commissioner and a generous patron of university endowments. Between 1859 and 1901 Ordronaux published at least fifteen books and articles about subjects as diverse as heroes of the American Revolution of 1776, military medicine, medical jurisprudence, mental health, United States constitutional law and historical treatises. He left an estate worth $2,757,000 much of which he gave in endowments to several US universities and other institutions.
August Wilhelm Eduard Theodor Henschel was a German physician and botanist, best known through his works on history of medicine and about Schola Medica Salernitana.
Gilles de Corbeil was a French royal physician, teacher, and poet. He was born in approximately 1140 in Corbeil and died in the first quarter of the 13th century. He is the author of four medical poems and a scathing anti-clerical satire, all in Latin dactylic hexameters.
Matthaeus Silvaticus or Mattheus Sylvaticus was a medieval Latin medical writer and botanist.
John of Gaddesden (1280–1361) was a medieval English physician. He wrote a treatise on medicine titled Rosa Medicinae, also called Rosa Anglica, between 1304 and 1317, considered to be the first English textbook of medicine. John of Gaddesden was also a Roman Catholic theologian, a fellow at Merton College, Oxford, a physician for members of the British royal family, and one of the most celebrated medical authorities of his time. His medical works, alongside those of Gilbertus Anglicus, "formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years".
Trota of Salerno was a medical practitioner and writer in the southern Italian coastal town of Salerno who lived in the early or middle decades of the 12th century. Her fame spread as far as France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. A Latin text that gathered some of her therapies was incorporated into an ensemble of treatises on women's medicine that came to be known as the Trotula, "the little book [called] 'Trotula'". Gradually, readers became unaware that this was the work of three different authors. They were also unaware of name of the historical writer, which was "Trota" and not "Trotula". The latter was thenceforth misunderstood as the author of the whole compendium. These misconceptions about the author of Trotula contributed to the erasure or modification of her name, gender, level of education, medical knowledge, or the time period in which the texts were written; this trend often resulted from the biases of later scholars. Trota's authentic work was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the late 20th century.
Adelle of the Saracens was an Italian physician. She belonged to the Saracinensa family and was a lay teacher at the medical faculty of Salerno. Her medical practice stemmed from roots in the Salerno Medical School and she practiced Medieval and Early Italian Renaissance Ideals in her medicine including Humanism.
The Antidotarium Nicolai, also known as the Antidotarium parvum or small antidotarium, was a late 11th or early 12th-century Latin book with about 150 recipes for the creation of medicines from plants and minerals. It was written in the circles of the Schola Medica Salernitana, the center of European medical knowledge in the High Middle Ages. It was based in part on the Antidotarium of Constantine the African, an 11th-century work also written in Salerno which was itself partially a translation of older Arabic works. It has been called "without doubt one of the most influential medical texts in medieval literature", "the essential pharmacopeia of the Middle Ages" and "the bible of medieval practical pharmacy". It was often coupled with the Circa instans, another 12th-century compendium of less complex medicines.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Salerno in the Campania region of Italy.
The women of Salerno, also referred to as the ladies of Salerno and the Salernitan women, are a group of women physicians who studied in medieval Italy, at the Schola Medica Salernitana, one of the first medical schools to allow women.
