rabs
was in this city permitted to temper the crass ignorance of medieval
Italy, and at Salerno alone were the works of the infidel Avicenna and of
the pagans Galen and Hippocrates openly studied. The result was that the
fame of the doctors of this _Fons Medicinae_ spread over all Western
Europe, so that distinguished patients either came hither to be treated in
person or else sent emissaries to explain their symptoms and to obtain
advice. Nor were the professors of the healing art at Salerno tied down by
a strict adherence to drugs and boluses, for they fully realised that the
height of all human ambition, the _mens sana in corpore sano_, is in any
case more easily to be obtained by self-control than by all the
ingredients of the pharmacopoeia. They were warm believers apparently in
the doctrine of moderation in all things, which after all is one of the
most valuable prescriptions of modern hygiene:

"Curas tolle graves, irasci crede profanum,
Parce mero, coenato parum, non sit tibi vanum,
Surgere post epulas, somnum fuge meridianum."

("Throw off dull care; thine angry moods restrain;
Eschew the wine-cup; lightly eat, nor vain
Deem our advice to make Enough thy feast.
Take exercise, and shun the noon-day rest.")

Such was the oracular reply of the Salernitan sages to Robert, Duke of
Normandy, and no one can dispute the sound common sense of the
prescription given, nor doubt that it is applicable to half the patients
who to-day throng the consulting rooms of fashionable London physicians.

But to return to Robert Guiscard, who shares the historical honours of the
place, together with the great Pope Gregory VII., of whom we shall speak
presently. After subduing the southern half of Italy and the island of
Sicily, the great Duke next turned his victorious arms against the Eastern
Empire, with the secret intention, it was suspected, of ascending the
throne of Constantine. With the pseudo-Emperor Michael in his train, the
Great Adventurer in 1081 assembled a vast army at Otranto, consisting of
30,000 Italian subjects and of 1300 Norman knights, with the object of
crossing over to Epirus. Durazzo on the opposite Albanian coast, the
Dyrrachium of the ancients, a city that was henceforth destined to be
closely associated with succeeding dynasties of South Italy, was the
objective of this gigantic expedition, for it was commonly reported to be
the key of the Eastern Empire. Thither the flotilla set sail, but