cripsit schola
tota Salerni . . . " It is a hand-book of diet and household medicine,
with many shrewd and taking sayings which have passed into popular use,
such as "Joy, temperance and repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose."
A full account of the work and the various editions of it is given
by Sir Alexander Croke,(8) and the Finlayson lecture (Glasgow Medical
Journal, 1908) by Dr. Norman Moore gives an account of its introduction
into the British Isles.

(8) Regimen Sanitutis Salernitanum; a Poem on the Preservation of
Health in Rhyming Latin Verse, Oxford, D.A. Talboys, 1830.

BYZANTINE MEDICINE

THE second great stream which carried Greek medicine to modern days runs
through the Eastern Empire. Between the third century and the fall of
Constantinople there was a continuous series of Byzantine physicians
whose inspiration was largely derived from the old Greek sources. The
most distinguished of these was Oribasius, a voluminous compiler, a
native of Pergamon and so close a follower of his great townsman that he
has been called "Galen's ape." He left many works, an edition of which
was edited by Bussemaker and Daremberg. Many facts relating to the older
writers are recorded in his writings. He was a contemporary, friend as
well as the physician, of the Emperor Julian, for whom he prepared an
encyclopaedia of the medical sciences.

Other important Byzantine writers were Aetius and Alexander of Tralles,
both of whom were strongly under the influence of Galen and Hippocrates.
Their materia medica was based largely upon Dioscorides.

From Byzantium we have the earliest known complete medical manuscript,
dating from the fifth century--a work of Dioscorides--one of the most
beautiful in existence. It was prepared for Anicia Juliana, daughter of
the Emperor of the East, and is now one of the great treasures of the
Imperial Library at Vienna.(9) From those early centuries till the fall
of Constantinople there is very little of interest medically. A few
names stand out prominently, but it is mainly a blank period in our
records. Perhaps one man may be mentioned, as he had a great influence
on later ages--Actuarius, who lived about 1300, and whose book on
the urine laid the foundation of much of the popular uroscopy and
water-casting that had such a vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. His work on the subject passed through a dozen Latin
editions, but is best studied in Ideler's "Physici et