itle of the original
Latin was "Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum." It was probably written
about the beginning of the twelfth century. A century or so later it
came to be the custom to call medical books after flowers, and so we had
the "Lilium Medicinae" and the "Flos Medicinae" down at Montpellier, and
this became the "Flos Medicinae" of Salerno. Pagel calls it the
quintessence of Salernitan therapeutics.

For many centuries portions at least of this Latin medical poem were as
common in the mouths of physicians all over Europe as the aphorisms of
Hippocrates or the sayings of Galen. Probably this enables us to
understand the great reputation that the Salernitan school enjoyed and
the influence that it wielded better than anything else. The poem is
divided into ten principal parts, containing altogether about 3,500
lines. The first part on hygiene has 855 lines in eight chapters. The
second part on _materia medica_, though containing only four chapters,
has also about 800 lines. Anatomy and physiology are crowded into about
200 lines, etiology has something over 200, semiotics has about 250,
pathology has but thirty lines more or less, and therapeutics about 400;
nosology has about 600 more, and finally there is something about the
physician himself, and an epilogue. As Latin verses go, when written for
such purposes, these are not so bad, though some of them would grate on
a literary ear. The whole work makes a rather interesting compendium of
medicine, with therapeutic indications and contra-indications, and
whatever the physician of the medieval period needed to have ready to
memory. Some of its prescriptions, both in the sense of formulae and of
directions to the patient, have quite a modern air.

One very interesting contribution to medical literature that comes to us
from Salerno bears the title, "The Coming of a Physician to His Patient,
or An Instruction for the Physician Himself." We have had a number of
such works published in recent years, but it is a little surprising to
have the subject taken up thus early in the history of modern
professional life. It is an extremely valuable document, as
demonstrating how practical was the teaching at Salerno. The work is
usually ascribed to Archimattheas, and it certainly gives a vivid
picture of the medical customs of the time. The instruction for the
immediate coming of the physician to his patient runs as follows: "When
the doctor enters the dwelling of his patient, h