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Discover more about the exchanges between Myddfai and the medical school in Salerno.



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One of the most remarkable facts in the history of the physicians was the establishment of exchanges between Myddfai and the medical school in Salerno. In the Gothic era Salerno had gained a pre-eminent reputation as a centre of medical excellence. They wrote medical advice in the form of a document called the ‘Regimens Sanitas’ a document which was circulated throughout the abbeys and monasteries of medieval Europe. Such was the reputation of the Myddfai physicians that personnel and medicine were freely exchange with those of Salerno. Through this link the physicians would have had direct access to the medical writings of Hippocrates and Galen, along with Arabic texts such as those by Avicenna.

Evidence of this exchange, is found in the many exotic herbs and spices were brought to Wales. For example aloes, nutmeg, cloves, myrrh, cumin, star anise, mastic, frankincense and saffron are all mentioned in their recipes of the Physicians of Myddfai.

It is significant that the Physicians of Myddfai traded, co-operated and gave support to and received support from fellow physicians in Italy and the Arab lands in the search for truth and the pursuance of the art of good medicine to help one’s fellow man. The last descendant of the Physicians of Myddfai was John Jones who died in 1743. The Physicians had practised Herbal Medicine in Myddfai for 500 years in continuous succession.
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