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Was there a Medical School at Salerno in Roman Times?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2012

Heikki Solin
Heikki Solin
Affiliation:
Institutum Classicum Universitatis Helsingiensis, PO Box 24, 00014 Helsingin yliopisto, Finland; Tel. 00358919122591; Priv.: Temppelikatu 6 B 28 00100 Helsinki, Finland. Email: heikki.solin@helsinki.fi
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Abstract

It is sometimes assumed in the Italian historiography that the medieval school of medicine at Salerno continued the medical tradition of ancient Salerno; the ancient Salernitan school, in its turn, would represent a continuation of that of Velia. The existence of such a school has been assumed on the grounds of rather sparse evidence consisting of a passage in the first book of Horace's Epistles and a Latin inscription from the first century AD mentioning a medicus clinicus.

Type
Focus: Classical Medicine in the Middle Ages
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , 04 September 2012 , pp. 526 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

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References

References and Notes

1. In CIL (= Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum) X 3442 from Baiae, is attested a M(arcus) Satrius Longin(us), medic(us) dupl(icarius) ex triere Cupidine), ‘Marcus Satrius Longinus, doctor duplicarius in the trireme Cupido’. But although the inscription was found at Baiae, the man was a sailor of the fleet stationed at Misenum near Baiae.Google Scholar
2. Published by V. Bracco, Inscriptiones Italiae I 1, 23.Google Scholar
3. The term is rare also in Greek. It is used once by Galen of a physician who visits his patients in their beds, and as the name of a work Damocrates. Perhaps such a term was too generalizing. Also in modern languages, we do not speak of ‘bed-doctors’.Google Scholar
4.Année épigraphique 1941, 64.Google Scholar
5.Solin, H. (1989) Urnen und Inschriften. Erwägungen zu einem neuen Corpus römischer Urnen. Tyche, 4, 160–162.Google Scholar
6. V. Bracco, Inscriptiones Italiae I 1, 2.Google Scholar
7.Nutton, V. (1970) The medical school of Velia. Parola del Passato, 25, 211–225; V. Nutton (1971) Velia and the school of Salerno. Medical History, 15, 1–11.Google Scholar
8.Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum XXXVIII 1020. See now the discussion by L. Vecchio (2003) Le iscrizioni greche di Velia, pp. 86–96.Google Scholar
9. For a medical school at Velia and/or at Salerno (I quote only more recent studies): Cantalupo, P. (2002) Tradizioni mediche nei territori di Velia, Paestum e Salerno. Annali Cilentani quaderno 5, 71 pp.; S. Ferraro (2002) Nuovi studi su Velia e sulla medicina eleatica. Rassegna storica salernitana, 37, pp. 259–266; I. Gallo (2004) L'età antica. Storia della Università di Salerno, I, Salerno, 3–22.Google Scholar
10. Unpublished; Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples.Google Scholar
11. I saw the inscription in 1991 accompanied by the mayor of San Prisco, the late Agostino Stelluto.Google Scholar
12. Virtually unpublished; now in the Museo Archeologico di Avellino.Google Scholar
13. Published by Solin, H. and Kajava, M. (1997) Le iscrizioni aliene del Museo Irpino. Epigraphica, 69, 346.Google Scholar
14.H. Solin (1995) Die sogenannten Berufsnamen antiker Ärzte, Ancient Medicine in its Socio-cultural Context. Papers Read at the Congress held at Leiden University 13–15 April 1992, edited by Ph.J. Eijk and H.F.J. Horstmanshoff and P.H. Schrijvers (Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi), pp. 119–142.Google Scholar
15. CIL X 388=I2 1684: L(ucius) Manneius Q(uinti libertus), medic(us) veivos fecit; , , , ; ‘Lucius Mammeius, freedman of Quintus, doctor, made (this tomb-stone) in his lifetime; by birth Menecrates, son of Demetrius, from Tralleis, physikos, prescriber of wine, made in his lifetime’. This problematic text has been dealt with by H. Solin (1981) Zu lukanischen Inschriften (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica), 35 f.; and by A. Cristofori (2008) Menecrate di Tralles, un medico Greco nella Lucania romana, L'arte di Asclepio. Medici e malattia in età antica. Atti della giornata di studio sulla medicina antica, Università della Calabria 26 ottobre 2005, a cura di G. De Sensi Sestito (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino), pp. 71–104.Google Scholar
16.See, for example, M. Torelli (2002) Benevento romana (Roma: L'Erma di Bretschneider), p. 241. On medieval medicine at Beneventum see, for example, G. Penco (1995) Storia del monachesimo in Italia: dalle origini alla fine del medioevo (Milano:), p. 417.Google Scholar
17. A similar inscription in Notizie degli scavi 1913, 311 (= AE 1914, 164). Cfr. A. Zumbo, Osservazioni su CIL IX, 1655 e AE 1914, 164. L. Staius L. fil. Stel. Scrateius Manilianus, supremo magistrato quinquennale e figlio di un archiater della città di Beneventum, L'arte di Asclepio (see note 15), pp. 105–128.Google Scholar