e earliest chroniclers
whose accounts we have were not sure as to its origin, and even had
some doubt about the age of the school. Alphanus, usually designated
Alphanus I because there are several of the name, who is one of the
earliest professors whose name and fame have come down to us, gives us
the only definite detail as to the age of the school. He was a
Benedictine monk, distinguished as a literary man, known both as poet
and physician, who was afterwards raised to the Bishopric of Salerno. As
a bishop he was one of the beneficent patrons, to whom the school owed
much. He lived in the tenth century, and states that medicine flourished
in the town before the time of Guimarus II, who reigned in the ninth
century. In the ancient chronicle of Salerno, re-discovered by De Renzi
and published in his "Collectio Salernitana," it is definitely recorded
that the medical school was founded by four doctors,--a Jewish Rabbi
Elinus, a Greek Pontus, a Saracen Adala, an Arab, and a native of
Salerno, each of whom lectured in his native language. There are many
elements in this tradition, however, that would seem to indicate its
mythical origin and that it was probably invented after the event to
account for the presence of teachers in all these languages and the
coming of students from all over the world. The names, for instance, are
apparently corruptions of real names, as can be readily recognized.
Elinus, the Jew, is probably Elias or Eliseus, Adala is a corruption of
Abdallah, and Pontus, as pointed out by Puschmann in his "History of
Medical Education," should probably be Gario-Pontus.

While we do not know exactly when the medical school at Salerno was
founded, we know that a hospital was established there as early as 820.
It was founded by the Archdeacon Adelmus, and was placed under the
control of the Benedictines after it was realized that a religious
order, by its organization, was best fitted for carrying on such
charitable work continuously. Other infirmaries and charitable
institutions, mainly under control of the religious, sprang up in
Salerno. It was the presence of these hospitals in a salubrious climate
that seems first to have attracted the attention of patients and then of
physicians from all over Europe and even adjacent Africa and Asia.
Puschmann says that it is uncertain whether clinical instruction was
imparted in these institutions or not, but the whole tenor of what we
know about the practical character