214 Aster History; MAcrer 
many MS. is described by Macer chiefly from Pliny, with none of 
the aster characters ascribed to it by Sammonicus. 
32. Papaver.—Macer describes three kinds, which we might 
have expected to represent Pliny’s three kinds of Argemonia ; but 
Macer gives them different properties, and is chiefly occupied with 
the opiates produced from Papaver somniferum L. 
2(spurious). Agrimonia, corruption of Argemonia (like Strabus, 
supra, p. 194); a description apparently worked up from the Arge- 
monia of Pliny, and retaining the properties shared or confused with 
Aster and Argemon, of use of the juice for the eyes, for serpent 
bites, poison of the mad-dog, for “ ventris dolor,” wounds, and 
adding for spleen, pain and paralytics. — 
XXXIX. THE ScHOOL OF SALERNO 
Through the earlier middle ages the light of plant-knowledge 
burned only in the torch of medicine. For the region which had 
once been the Roman empire of the West, the center of that cul- 
ture was Salerno, developing into a botanical garden which was 
pronounced to have been at the end of the thirteenth century, 
“superb.” * Salerno as a city united many attractions. Antonio 
Summonte, historian of Naples, is quoted by Sylvius in 1649 a5 
saying “In tutta Italia non essere pia delitiosa citta di Salerno.” 
Seated on the far-famed blue Salernian bay, thirty-four miles 
southeast of Naples, and once the royal city of the Two Sicilies, 
it was for 500 years a Lombard city, being part of the Lombard 
duchy of Benevento as established by Zotto in 571, and becoming 
independent under its Lombard prince Siconolph in 839, nine yea 
after the entrance of Saracens into its vicinity, itself resisting their 
siege in 872. It flourished so that Pope Boniface VII. in 974 
decreed it ‘‘a metropolis.”’ It became Robert Guiscard’s capital 
in 1077, and was for some time the home of the Sicilian court till 
its removal to Palermo in 1194. Hospitable in early days ' 
Norman, Lombard, Roman, Greek, Jew or Saracen, to the lay- 
physician as well as to the monk, to the woman-physician as wel 
as the man, it was seat of a noted University, 1150 to 1817; and 
for centuries before, it had been famed as a medical center. 
cine is said to have been preserved only there at the time 0 
* Lacroix. 
Medi- 
: 
: 
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