flamed the terror of darkness and the
Judgment Day."

Galen died about 200 A.D.; the high-water mark of the Renaissance, so
far as medicine is concerned, was reached in the year 1542. In order to
traverse this long interval intelligently, I will sketch certain great
movements, tracing the currents of Greek thought, setting forth in their
works the lives of certain great leaders, until we greet the dawn of our
own day.

After flowing for more than a thousand years through the broad plain of
Greek civilization, the stream of scientific medicine which we have
been following is apparently lost in the morass of the Middle Ages; but,
checked and blocked like the White Nile in the Soudan, three channels
may be followed through the weeds of theological and philosophical
speculation.

SOUTH ITALIAN SCHOOL

A WIDE stream is in Italy, where the "antique education never stopped,
antique reminiscence and tradition never passed away, and the literary
matter of the pagan past never faded from the consciousness of the more
educated among the laity and clergy."(3) Greek was the language of South
Italy and was spoken in some of its eastern towns until the thirteenth
century. The cathedral and monastic schools served to keep alive the
ancient learning. Monte Casino stands pre-eminent as a great hive of
students, and to the famous Regula of St. Benedict(4) we are indebted
for the preservation of many precious manuscripts.

(3) H. O. Taylor: The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. I, p. 251.

(4) De Renzi: Storia Documentata della Scuola Medica di Salerno,
2d ed., Napoli, 1867, Chap. V.

The Norman Kingdom of South Italy and Sicily was a meeting ground of
Saracens, Greeks and Lombards. Greek, Arabic and Latin were in constant
use among the people of the capital, and Sicilian scholars of the
twelfth century translated directly from the Greek.

The famous "Almagest" of Ptolemy, the most important work of ancient
astronomy, was translated from a Greek manuscript, as early as 1160, by
a medical student of Salerno.(5)

(5) Haskins and Lockwood: Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology, 1910, XXI, pp. 75-102.

About thirty miles southeast of Naples lay Salernum, which for centuries
kept alight the lamp of the old learning, and became the centre of
medical studies in the Middle Ages; well deserving its name of "Civitas
Hippocratica." The date of foundation is uncertain, but Salernitan
physicians are mentioned as