The Origins of Alcoholic Distillation in the West: 4. The Medical School of Salerno

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The Origins of Alcoholic Distillation in the West: 4. The Medical School of Salerno

In the South of Italy, on the Tyrrenian sea, lay the ancient city of Salerno. In the Early Middle Ages, the city was an important political and commercial center and a crossroads of influences between all Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.

According to a legend, a Greek pilgrim named Pontus had stopped in the city of Salerno and found shelter for the night under the arches of the ancient aqueduct. There was a thunderstorm and another Italian wanderer, named Salernus, happened in the same place. He was hurt and the Greek, at first suspicious, approached to look closely at the dressings that the Italian applied to his wound. Meanwhile, two other travelers, the Jew Helinus and the Arab Abdela, had come. They also showed interest in the wound and at the end they discovered that all four were doctors. Together they founded the Schola Medica Salernitana, Medical School of Salerno, the oldest medical school in the West where their knowledge could be collected and disseminated.

We do not have reliable information about the beginnings of the School. The nearby great Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino must have given its contribution: Arabic medical treatises, both those that were translations of Greek texts and those that were originally written in Arabic, had accumulated in its library, where they were translated into Latin. This book knowledge was supplemented and enriched by Arabic and Jewish medical practice, known from contacts with nearby Arab Sicily and North Africa. As a result, the medical practitioners of Salerno were unrivalled in the medieval Western Mediterranean for medical treatments. What we know for sure is that in the X century the School was already famous and from all parts of Europe sick people flocked to Salerno to be cured, and doctors to learn. 

The “School” was based on a synthesis of Greek, Latin, Arab and Jewish culture and medical tradition. The approach was based on the practice and culture of prevention rather than cure, thus opening the way for the empirical method in medicine. Moreover, an important contribution to the School of Salerno was made by women as female practitioners, and among them, Trotula de Ruggiero was the most renowned. For the first time a woman ascends to the honors of the chair, and gives instructions to women in labor. She is credited with having written several books on gynecology and cosmetics.

In the middle of XII century, the School was at its apogee and provided a notable contribution to the formulation of a medical curriculum for medieval universities all over Europe. In Salerno there appeared also the new art of surgery which was elevated to the dignity of a true science by Ruggiero di Fugaldo. He wrote the first treatise on rational surgery that spread throughout Europe.

In 1231, the authority of the School was sanctioned by Emperor Federico II who established that the activity of a doctor could only be carried out by doctors holding a diploma issued by the Medical School of Salerno.

The most famous work of the School was the Regimen Sanitatis, a Latin poem of rational, dietetic, and hygienic precepts, many of them still valid today. For instance:

“Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant haec tria: mens laeta, requies, moderata diaeta”

(If you lack doctors, let these three things be your doctors: a cheerful disposition, quiet, a frugal diet) 

And in Salerno in the XII century perhaps starts the journey of alcohol in the West, that journey which goes all the way to the present and to us. In fact, as far as we know, the earliest instructions for the distilling of alcohol from wine appear in a short introduction to the study of medicine written around 1150 by a not well-known “Master of Salerno” or maybe a “Salernus” in a manuscript of the so-called “Mappae Clavicula”. The Mappae Clavicula (more or less “The Little Key of the Map”, but the title and its meaning are uncertain) is a medieval Latin text which contains recipes describing crafts techniques about metals, glass, mosaics, and dyes and tints for materials. The core was probably originally compiled around AD 600, perhaps in Alexandria in Egypt. The number of recipes was expanded over the course of the centuries, and some medieval copies have deletions as well as additions, so it is better thought of as a family of texts with a largely common core, not a single text. It was one of the few scientific treatises available in the Early Middle Ages in Latin Europe. Only the twelfth century and later versions contain the recipe for the preparation of alcohol in the form of a cryptogram. There exist slightly different versions of the cryptogram in different manuscripts, here is one of them:

“De commistione puri et fortissimi XKNK cum III QBSUF TBMKT cocta in ejus necocii vasis fit aqua, quae accensam flammam incombustam servat”

That, more or less, means:

“A mixture of pure and very strong XKNK with III QBSUF TBMKT cooked in the usual vessel make a water, which will flame up when set on fire but leave the material unburnt”

The three nonsense words are simple word puzzles with a mistake. They are formed by substituting for the proper letter - in Latin - the one which follows it in the alphabet: XKNK = VINI (wines); QBSUF = PARTE (part); and TBMKT = SALIS (salt). The ‘n’ in the word XKNK is probably a mistake of the amanuenses, it should have been an ‘o’.

It is interesting to notice how, in this first description of wine distillation, the name given to the new substance thus produced, which we call alcohol, is aqua, that is, water. We’ll get back to this.

Therefore, we can subscribe to the statements of our Forbes “ … alcohol was discovered about 1100 and the evidence points to Italy, where the school of Salerno was then the most important chemical centre. The reason of the late discovery of alcohol was of course partly due to inefficient cooling and the unnecessary long pre-heating period but certainly also to the fact that even the strongest distillate which the early stills could separate in one distillation still contained so much water that it would not burn.

The secret of the success after 1100 was not only the rectification of the distillate or the recovery of this distillate in several fractions, but mainly the addition of such substances as salt, tartar (potassium carbonate), etc. which absorbed part of the water and made the rest ready to distill. Now this enabled them to make alcoholic distillates which burn quite readily because they contain less than 35% of water, and to obtain even absolute alcohol after several rectifications.”

As we have seen in the previous articles, alcohol might already have been discovered, by distilling wine, by Arabic and Alexandrine alchemists, but they had been isolated experiences, confined to the alchemists’ laboratories, often kept secret. In Salerno, on the other hand, the new substance was used in medicine and, although slowly and in narrow circles, it started to be known and used increasingly often.

Later on, in the course of the XIII century, with the general booming of economy and culture, the Arabic books becoming more common, and with deep changes in the political situation of Southern Italy, the scientific influence of the Medical School of Salerno decreased. The cultural leadership of Latin Europe passed to the new Universities, among them those of the rich, thriving cities of Northern Italy, the “Comuni”. And there, first of all in Bologna, alcohol, would make the leap towards fame and success.

As we’ll endeavor to tell you in the next articles.

-Article written by Mr. Marco Pierini- 

My name is Marco Pierini, I was born in 1954 in a little town in Tuscany (Italy) where I still live. I got a degree in Philosophy in Florence and I studied Political Science in Madrid., but my real passion has always been History. Through History I have always tried to know the world. Life brought me to work in tourism, event organization and vocational training. Then I discovered rum. With Francesco Rufini, I founded La Casa del Rum (The House of Rum), that runs a beach bar and selects Premium Rums in Italy, www.lacasadelrum.it

And finally I have returned back to my initial passion: History, but now it is the History of Rum. Because Rum is not only a great distillate, it’s a world. Produced in scores of countries, by thousands of companies, with an extraordinary variety of aromas and flavors; it has a terrible and fascinating history, made of slaves and pirates, imperial fleets and revolutions.

All this I try to cover in this column, in my FB Profile: www.facebook/marco.pierini.3 and in my new Blog: www.therumhistorian.com

I have published a book on Amazon:

“AMERICAN RUM - A Short History of Rum in Early America”.