Note 551 — Chapter II

In the previous edition I accepted the still current statement that Salerno drew its first medical lore from the Saracens. But Dr. Rashdall has, I think, sufficiently shown that there is no basis for the theory (The Universities in the Middle Ages, 1895, i, 77-86). Salerno seems rather to have preserved some of the classic lore on which the Saracens also founded. Arabic influence in the Italian schools began in the twelfth century, and was in full force early in the fourteenth, when Salerno was in complete decline (Id. p. 85).