eciate all
that he did for the medicine of his time. Undoubtedly his extensive
travels, his wide knowledge, and then his years of effort to make
Oriental medicine available for the Western civilization that was
springing up again among the peoples who had come to replace the Romans,
set him among the great intellectual forces of the Middle Ages. Salerno
owed much to him, and it must not be forgotten that Salerno was the
first university of modern times, and, above all, the first medical
school that raised the dignity of the medical profession, established
standards of medical education, educated the public mind and the rulers
of the time to the realization of the necessity for the regulation of
the practice of medicine, and in many ways anticipated our modern
professional life. That the better part of his life work should have
been done as a Benedictine only serves to emphasize the place that the
religious had in the preservation and the development of culture and of
education during the Middle Ages.

VIII

MEDIEVAL WOMEN PHYSICIANS

Very probably the most interesting chapter for us of the modern time in
the history of the medical school at Salerno is to be found in the
opportunities provided for the medical education of women and the
surrender to them of a whole department in the medical school, that of
Women's Diseases. While it is probable that Salerno did not owe its
origin to the Benedictines, and it is even possible that there was some
medical teaching there for all the centuries of the Middle Ages from the
Greek times, for it must not be forgotten that this part of Italy was
settled by Greeks, and was often called Magna Graecia, there is no doubt
at all that the Benedictines exercised great influence in the counsels
of the school, and that many of the teachers were Benedictines, as were
also the Archbishops, who were its best patrons, and the great Pope
Victor III, who did much for it. For several centuries the Benedictines
represented the most potent influence at Salerno.

For most people who are not intimately familiar with monastic life, and,
above all, with the story of the Benedictines, their prestige at Salerno
might seem to be enough of itself to preclude all possibility of the
education of women in medicine at Salerno. For those who know the
Benedictines well, however, such a departure as the accordance of
opportunities for women to study medicine would seem eminently in
keeping with the prac