MEDI/EVAL SCIENCE AMONG ARABIANS 



this time, branches of monasteries under supervision of 

 tlu- monks, and did not compare favorably with the 

 Arabian hospitals. 



But while the medical science of the Mohammedans 

 greatly overshadowed that of the Christians during 

 this period, it did not completely obliterate it. About 

 the year 1000 A.D. came into prominence the Christian 

 medical school at Salerno, situated on the Italian coast, 

 some thirty miles southeast of Naples. Just how 

 long this school had been in existence, or by whom 

 it was founded, cannot be determined, but its period 

 of greatest influence was the eleventh, twelfth, and 

 thirteenth centuries. The members of this school 

 gradually adopted Arabic medicine, making use of 

 many drugs from the Arabic pharmacopoeia, and this 

 formed one of the stepping - stones to the intro- 

 duction of Arabian medicine all through western 

 Europe. 



It was not the adoption of Arabian medicines, 

 however, that has made the school at Salerno famous 

 both in rhyme and prose, but rather the fact that 

 women there practised the healing art. Greatest 

 among them was Trotula, who lived in the eleventh 

 century, and whose learning is reputed to have equalled 

 that of the greatest physicians of the day. She is 

 accredited with a work on Diseases of Women, still 

 extant, and many of her writings on general medical 

 subjects were quoted through two succeeding centuries. 

 If we may judge from these writings, she seemed to 

 have had many excellent ideas as to the proper 

 methods of treating diseases, but it is difficult to 

 determine just which of the writings credited to her 



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