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Arnold of Villanova was one of the most prolific writers of the Middle Ages. He had travelled much, was deeply read in Arabic medicine and was also a student of law and of philosophy. He was an early editor of the Regimen Sanitatis, and a strong advocate of diet and hygiene.

Whatever busies the mind without corrupting it, has at least this use, that it rescues the day from idleness, and he that is never idle will not often be vicious. No. 178. Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit. To yield to remedies is half the cure. PYTHAGORAS is reported to have required from those whom he instructed in philosophy a probationary silence of five years.

He was familiar with the works both of the Greeks and of the Arabs, and it was largely through his translations that the works of Rhazes and Avicenna became known in the West. One work above all others spread the fame of the school the Regimen Sanitatis, or Flos Medicinae as it is sometimes called, a poem on popular medicine.

'Tis a misfortune to be at such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise: "Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare." "Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba." St. Augustine, De Civit.

The most important medical writing that comes to us from Salerno, in the sense at least of the work that has had most effect on succeeding generations, has been most frequently transcribed, most often translated and committed to memory by many generations of physicians, is the celebrated Salernitan medical poem on hygiene. The title of the original Latin was "Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum."

And as the Earth is colde and dry: so Melancholy is colde and dry." Thomas Phaer: Regiment of Life, London, 1546. As the famous Regimen Sanitatis of Salernum, the popular family hand-book of the Middle Ages, says: Foure Humours raigne within our bodies wholly, And these compared to foure elements.