have lost half of his consulting
practice;--all because they were advancing ideas that their
contemporaries were not ready to accept. We are rather likely to think
that this intolerant attitude of mind belongs to the older times, but it
is rather easy to trace it in our own.

In Constantine's day men had ready to hand a very serious weapon that
might be used against innovators. By craftily circulated rumors the
populace was brought to accuse him of magical practices, that is, of
producing his cures by association with the devil. We are rather prone
to think little of a generation that could take such nonsense seriously,
but it would not be hard to find analogous false notions prevalent at
the present time, which sometimes make life difficult, if not dangerous,
for well-meaning individuals.[10] Life seems to have been made very
uncomfortable for Constantine in Carthage. Just the extent to which
persecution went, however, we do not know. About this time Constantine's
work attracted the attention of Duke Robert of Salerno. He invited him
to become his physician. After he had filled the position for a time a
personal friendship developed, and, as has often happened to the
physicians of kings, he became a royal counsellor and private secretary.
When the post of professor of medicine at Salerno fell vacant, it is not
surprising, then, that Constantine should have been made professor, and
from here his teaching soon attracted the attention of all the men of
his time.

Constantine seems to have greatly enhanced the reputation of the medical
school, and added to the medical prestige of Salerno. After teaching for
some ten years there, however, he gave up his professorship--the highest
position in the medical world of the time--apparently with certain plans
in mind. He wanted leisure for writing the many things in medicine that
he had learned in his travels in the East, so as to pass his precious
treasure of knowledge on to succeeding generations; and then, too, he
seems to have longed for that peace that would enable him not only to do
his writing undisturbed, but to live his life quietly far away from the
strife of men and the strenuous existence of a court and of a great
school.

There was probably another and more intimate personal reason for his
retirement. Abbot Desiderius of the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino,
not far away, had become a close and valued friend. Before having been
made abbot, Desiderius and Constanti