Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 75

REGIMEN SANITATIS SALERNITANUM Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum. Georg Husner 1491 80 ll. 20.5 cm.

Authorities disagree even as to the approximate date of the original composition of this poem, but a date near 1100 would probably not be far wide of the mark, although it seems not to have been widely known until the middle of the thirteenth century. It is believed to have emanated from the school of Salerno; at least, that school's chief claim to popular fame rests with this long didactic poem which sums up most of the practical medical literature up to its time. The work itself is actually a catch-all of advice and instruction on how to preserve health, rules of hygiene and diet, simple therapeutics, and other instruction intended more for the laity than for the medical profession. It was committed to memory by thousands of physicians and, after the invention of printing, was published in nearly three hundred editions, in Latin as well as in several vernacular languages. Numerous variations and additional verses which accrued through the years have doubtless obscured the original state of the Regimen, but this collective effort remains one of the most revealing medical works of the Middle Ages.

Cited references: Goff R 73; Hain-Copinger 13758; Klebs 830.10; Wellcome 5369

Gift of John Martin, M.D.