De conservanda bona valetudine, opusculum scholae salernitanae. Antwerp, Apud Ioannem Vithagium, 1557 - School of Salerno
Arnoldo de Villanova, (1240-1311)
One of the famous commentaries of this critical book was Arnoldo de Villanova, a Catalan alchemist who compiled a rare edition of the famous and often published personal hygiene text from the school of Salerno. It was an extremely influential book published over five centuries. The current 38th edition (1557) covers herbal plants, eating feasts, animals, food, drinks, and numerous medicinal herbs. Oral protocols include keeping one's teeth healthy and treating bad breath. The book refers to methods suggested by Celsus and Galen, Roman physicians of the 1st and 2d centuries, respectively. The Regimen contains all the fundamental precepts and sanitation rules that are the basis of medieval medicine.
The first certain historical information regarding the Salerno medical school dates back to the beginning of the 9th century. The study of medicine in Salerno was eminently practiced: the art of health was practiced by monks who handed down the teaching orally. The school was undoubtedly the most ancient institution in Western Europe for teaching medicine and other disciplines, and for many centuries it remained the most famous.
The fame of the Salerno Medical School during the early Middle Ages (Ninth century) is attested from the legend of the visit of Robert II, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, who went to Salerno apparently around 1099, after the first Crusade, to heal a wound in his right arm from an arrow poisoned. As a result, the introduction was dedicated to Henry VIII of England.
The work offers the proper remedies for every suffering, dictating good standards for living healthy and removing the fanatical medieval mysticism that imposed the deprivation of the flesh.
In the 1871 edition, the preface states the following. "Regimen Sanitatis Salerni as a work of transcendent merit. Though written in the early twilight of the Middle Ages and in inferior Latin, it at once took its place alongside such classic productions as the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. No secular work ever met with more popular favor nor infused its canons so radically into the dogmas of any science. It was for ages the medical Bible of all Western Europe and held undisputed sway over the teachings of its schools, next to the writings of Hippocrates and Galen. .... Little wonder is it, therefore, that it became a Book of Proverbs among physicians, a sort of Vade Mecum in fact, which, down even to modern days, each one felt bound to commit to memory." There was a total of 163 editions to this volume. The first edition, with commentary of Arnaldus de Villa Nova, was printed at Montpelier 1480 in quarto; Other editions were in German, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Bohemian, Polish, and 107 in Latin.
Editorial notes by Andrew I Spielman.
Digital Versions
