150 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



as indeed they continued to do for several ages 

 more. Only crowned heads, the wealthiest of the 

 nobility, or the rich merchants of the cities, begar 

 to require and employ the services of regulai 

 physicians. These were generally Jews, sometimes 

 Moors ; 1 and thus fashion and experience alike begar 

 to make popular among our ancestors the superioi 

 claims of science in medicine. Such science had un- 

 doubtedly survived from the days and in the worki 

 of Hippocrates, Galen, and Celsns, and was no\N 

 preserved in the theory and practice of the Arabiar 

 schools. 



This point once reached, a further advance soor 

 became inevitable. Attention had been called tc 

 a deeper source of medical knowledge than thai 

 generally possessed in the West. Learned men 

 whose tastes led them this way, naturally soughl 

 to inform their minds by procuring translations o 

 the Arabic works on medicine. The just fame o: 

 Salerno, a medical school which had been founded 

 in the closing years of the eleventh century bj 

 Robert Guiscard, depended on the intelligent zea 

 with which this plan of research was then pursued. 

 The kingdom of Sicily indeed occupies as importan 

 a place in the progress of the healing art as Spain 

 itself does with regard to the history of philosophy 

 and of science in general. 



Frederick n., as might have been expected, did 

 much to encourage and regulate these useful studio. 



1 The University Library of Genoa has an interesting MS. (F. vii. 10\ 

 written in Arabic by an African hand. It belonged, A. H. 483, 1 

 Judah ben Jaygh ben Israel, servant of Abu Abdallah Algani Bilhh, 

 a Moor of Malaga. It contains medical works by Johannes ben Medl 

 Rases, Alkindi, Geber, and others. 



2 For an account of the school of Salerno, see Sprengel, Versuch einer 

 pragmatischen Greschichte der Artzneykunde ; Carmoly, Histoire d& 

 Medecins Juifs, Bruxelles, 1844 ; and De Renai, Collectio Sahniitana, 

 Naples, 1852. 



