Digital Highlights: Regimen Sanitatis Salerni

In 1871, John Ordronaux, professor of medical jurisprudence at the Law School of Columbia College, published a bilingual (Latin and English) edition of The Code of Health of the School of Salernum. The volume was found valuable enough even to run to a special edition of only 210 copies, printed on “extra large superfine tinted paper” for $5 a copy.

Ordronaux prefaced his translation with a brief discourse on his reasons for creating it:

To cherish the memory of our professional masters with becoming reverence, and to fan the dying embers of classical scholarship on the hearthstone of modern Medicine, have been the impelling motives to the preparation of this volume.

He also includes a brief sketch of the history of the text and of the Salernum school.

Among other delightful pieces of advice, the lengthy poem includes the following exhortation:

Post-prandial sleep, ye mortals, put afar / In any month whose name includes an R / Post-prandial sleep’s alone salubrious, / In months, whose name their ending have in US.

You can page through the full volume in the embedded version below:

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