Excerpt from Code of Health of the School of Salernum: Translated Into English Verse, With an Introduction, Notes and Appendix

Regimen Sanz'tatz's Sulernz' as a work of transcendent merit. Though written in the early twilight of the Middle Ages and in inferior Latin, it at once took its place alongside of such classic productions as the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. NO secular work, indeed, ever met with more popular favor, nor infused its canons so radically into the dogmas of any science. It was for ages the medical Bible of all Western Europe, and held undisputed sway over the teachings of its schools, next to the writings Of Hippocrates and Galen. For centuries, the educated world, laymen, as well as phy sicians, pondered over its broad truths, its quaint sugges tions, its astute interpretations of physical phenomena and its aphoristic sayings, as the hoarded wisdom of all pre ceding time. And though its merit is not enhanced by the framework of Leonine verses in which the subject was set, it would be unjust to suppose that even this masculine, un varnished measure, without any quality to recommend it save its sonorous cadences, had no part in introducing it to popular favor. Little wonder is it, therefore, that it became a Book of Proverbs among physicians, a sort of Vade Mecunz in fact, which, down even to modern days, each one'felt bound to commit to memory, as Cicero tells us Roman boys did the Twelve Tables, ut carnzen necessarz'um. To such a celebrity had this Poem attained even to the present century, that it has passed through, as one critic asserts, two hundred and forty editions, while others say only one hundred and sixty-three. Be this as it may, either figure expresses a popularity not commonly acquired by any secular work.

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