conducted continuously by a staff of some fifty chaplains. Each
patient on leaving the hospital received some gold pieces, that
he need not be obliged to attempt hard labor at once.

In considering the astonishing tales of these sumptuous Arabian
institutions, it should be borne in mind that our accounts of
them are, for the most part, from Mohammedan sources.
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.
Greatest among them was Trotula, who lived in the eleventh