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 early as the middle of the ninth century, and from this date until the rise of the universities it was not only a great medical school, but a popular resort for the sick and wounded.

As the scholar says in Longfellow's "Golden Legend": Then at every season of the year There are crowds of guests and travellers here; Pilgrims and mendicant friars and traders From the Levant, with figs and wine, And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders, Coming back from Palestine.
There were medical and surgical clinics, foundling hospitals, Sisters of Charity, men and women professors--among the latter the famous Trotula--and apothecaries.