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The legend of the foundation, the candidacy as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the fundamental role of women in the first institution for teaching medicine in the West.

We will often talk about the Salerno Medical School and the city of Salerno, the reasons are essentially three:

  1. the city gave birth to the Hentourage project and the people who make it up.

  2. The Salerno Medical School was an institution aimed at teaching that saw medicinal plants as an essential resource: exactly what Hentourage aims to do with Cannabis and the story of Hemp in particular.

  3. Third reason, the most important: Salerno has always been a city of care and we are here to take care of your psychophysical balance.

 

The legend of the foundation

The origins of the Salerno Medical School are unknown and mysterious. In the 17th century, in one of his writings, the prior Antonio Mazza theorized that the foundation date was around the year 802. This is not the only precious information we learn in the Historiarum epitome de rebus Salernitanis: the prior reported a legend (which Salvatore De Renzi has broken down six points in the book Documented History of the Ancient Medical School of Salerno) which perfectly describes the secular and international features of the institution.

Here is an even more fictionalized version. "On a stormy night, near the Devil's Bridge, the Salerno man Salernus, the Jew Elino, the Arab Adela and the Greek Ponto crossed paths while giving aid to a seriously injured man. The four discovered each other as doctors and began to discuss of the best method to heal the dying person only thanks to everyone's knowledge and comparison that the patient was miraculously healed. The meeting was propitious: the four were convinced that the body of knowledge should be preserved and handed down in the following centuries".

 
 
part of an ancient text
Four founders of the Salernitana Medical School from the Historiarum epitome de rebus Salernitanis by Antonio Mazza
 

The history of the School

The foundation of the school therefore does not find confirmation in certain sources, it almost seems that the medical institution is much older than we believe. The hypothesis is that the Salerno Medical School is nothing more than one of the many forms that medical culture has taken in the city. From the Eleatic school in nearby Velia of the doctor-philosopher Parmenides, passing through the College of Doctors founded by the Roman emperors: Salerno has always been a city of care and well-being.

The history of the Medical School is often divided into three periods:

  • 9th-10th century: Salerno doctors were already recognized as among the best in the Mediterranean basin. In 988, Bishop Adarancione II of Verdun arrived in the city to receive the best care. From Carthage in this period the monk Constantine the African arrived who brought with him the knowledge of Greek and Latin works, it was a decisive turning point;

  • 11th-13th century: the city was taken by the Normans who brought further value to the school; the sovereign "Stupor Mundi" Frederick II sanctioned (in the Constitution of Melfi of 1231) that the doctors of the Kingdom of Sicily had to qualify at the Schola Salerni. Charles II of Anjou in 1281 confirmed the statute in which the school was recognized as Studium Generale in medicine, twenty-eight years after the title of Studium granted under Conrad II of Swabia. It is the period of maximum splendor of the Salerno Medical School, a medical reference center in Europe and in the entire Mediterranean basin.

  • XIV-XIX: period of decline. In the 16th century the Collegium Doctorum (college of doctors headed by a Prior capable of awarding degrees also in philosophy) was annexed to the School. The precepts of the Schola Salerni persist over time to the detriment of the strength of the institution itself which stopped in 1811, the year in which Gioacchino Murat conferred the burden and honor of awarding medical certificates (now real degrees) to the University of Naples. Francesco De Sanctis, minister of the newly instilled De Sanctis Kingdom, definitively closed the School in 1861.

It was therefore the birth of modern universities that slowly put an end to the first of the Western medical teaching institutions.

 

Mulieres Salernitanae

Trotula De Ruggiero

Of the extraordinary events that honor the Salerno institution and which we will tell you about, it is a must to tell you how women were an active part in a discontinuous manner according to the standards of the time. The Salerno Medical School in fact allowed women to follow courses, teach and write theses which were discussed for several centuries at the most authoritative cultural centers in Europe.

Abella Salernitana, Rebecca Guarna, Costanza Calenda, Francesca Romana, Mercuriade are just among the most famous protagonists of the medical activity of the time.

Of all of them, the name of Trotula (or Trota) has entered into legend, so much so that, like Homer, it is doubtful whether the same figure really existed. She was the progenitor of the medical theorization of gynecology, obstetrics and female cosmetics.

Bibliography and sources

📕 "Documented history of the medical school of Salerno" , Salvatore De Renzi | 1857

📕 "Historiarum epitome de rebus Salernitanis" , Antonio Mazza | 1681

📕 "Salerno History and Legend" , Luigi Carella | 1973

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