lity. Especially were they faulty in their
observations; besides, they had a definite tendency to replace
observation by theory, a fatal defect in medicine. The fine development
of surgery that came at the end of the Arabian period of medicine in
Europe could never have come from the Arabs themselves. Gurlt has
brought this out particularly, but it will not be difficult to cite many
other good authorities in support of this opinion.

Hyrtl, in his "Thesis on the Rarer Old Anatomists,"[7] says that "the
Arabs paid very little attention to anatomy, and, of course, because of
the prohibition in the Koran, added nothing to it. Whatever they knew
they took from the Greeks, and especially Galen. Not only did they not
add anything new to this, but they even lost sight of much that was
important in the older authors. The Arabs were much more interested in
physiology; they could study this by giving thought to it without
soiling their hands. They delighted in theory, rather than in
observation."

While we thus discuss the lack of originality and the tendency to
over-refinement among the Arabian medical writers, it must not be
thought that we would make little of what they accomplished. They not
only preserved the old medical writers for us, but they kept alive
practical medicine with the principles of the great Greek thinkers as
its basis. There are a large number of writers of Arabian medicine whose
names have secured deservedly a high place in medical history. If this
were a formal history of Arabian medicine, their careers and works would
require discussion. For our purpose, however, it seems better to confine
attention to a few of the most prominent Arabian writers on medicine,
because they will serve to illustrate how thoroughly practical were the
Arabian physicians and how many medical problems that we are prone to
think of as modern they occupied themselves with, solving them not
infrequently nearly as we do in the modern time.

VI

THE MEDICAL SCHOOL AT SALERNO

The Medical School at Salerno, probably organized early in the tenth
century, often spoken of as the darkest of the centuries, and reaching
its highest point of influence at the end of the twelfth century, is of
great interest in modern times for a number of reasons. First it brought
about in the course of its development an organization of medical
education, and an establishment of standards that were to be maintained
whenever and wherever there wa