anatomy. Another Greek writer, Galen [21](131-201 A.D.), wrote extensively
on medicine and left an anatomical account of the human body which was
unsurpassed for more than a thousand years. His work was known and used by
the Saracens. Avicenna (980-1037), an eastern Mohammedan, wrote a _Canon
of Medicine_ in which he summarized the work of all earlier writers, and
gave a more minute description of symptoms than any preceding writer had
done. These works, together with a few minor writings by teachers in Spain
and Salerno, formed the basis of all medical knowledge until Vesalius
published his _System of Human Anatomy_, in 1543.

The Roman knowledge of medicine was based almost entirely on that of the
Greeks, and after the rise of the Christians, with their new attitude
toward earthly life and contempt for the human body, the science fell into
disrepute and decay. Saint Augustine (354-430), in his great work on _The
City of God_, speaks with some bitterness of "medical men who are called
anatomists," and who "with a cruel zeal for science have dissected the
bodies of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under
their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body
to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be
cured." [22] During the early Middle Ages the Greek medical knowledge
practically disappeared, and in its place came the Christian theories of
satanic influence, diabolic action, and divine punishment for sin.
Correspondingly the cures were prayers at shrines and repositories of
sacred relics and images, which were found all over Europe, and to which
the injured or fever-stricken peasants hied themselves to make offerings
and to pray, and then hope for a miracle.

Toward the middle of the eleventh century Salerno, a small city
delightfully situated on the Italian coast (see Map, p. 194), thirty-four
miles south of Naples, began to attain some reputation as a health resort.