[A History of Science Volume 2(of 5) by Henry Smith Williams]@TWC D-Link bookA History of Science Volume 2(of 5) BOOK II 37/368
Nevertheless, there can be little question that they were enormous institutions, far surpassing any similar institutions in western Europe.
The so-called hospitals in the West were, at this time, branches of monasteries under supervision of the monks, and did not compare favorably with the Arabian hospitals. But while the medical science of the Mohammedans greatly overshadowed that of the Christians during this period, it did not completely obliterate it.
About the year 1000 A.D.came into prominence the Christian medical school at Salerno, situated on the Italian coast, some thirty miles southeast of Naples.
Just how long this school had been in existence, or by whom it was founded, cannot be determined, but its period of greatest influence was the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries.
The members of this school gradually adopted Arabic medicine, making use of many drugs from the Arabic pharmacopoeia, and this formed one of the stepping-stones to the introduction of Arabian medicine all through western Europe. It was not the adoption of Arabian medicines, however, that has made the school at Salerno famous both in rhyme and prose, but rather the fact that women there practised the healing art.
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