ABSTRACT
During the Dark Ages, the lamp of old learning was kept alight in the university in the town of Salernum 30 miles southeast of Naples, which was established about the 9th century ad. Illness might be caused by sin, but it gave opportunity for redemption among the sick and an opportunity of service by the clergy, so that the Dark Ages saw the establishment by monks of hostels for the poor wanderers and infirmaries for the ill and dying. The Renaissance in the arts, science, medicine and surgery in Europe after the long centuries of the Dark Ages was not a sudden phenomenon; indeed, it spread over a long period from its first glimmerings in the 12th century to its full flourishing in the 15th to the end of the 16th century. In the history of surgery, the importance of the Renaissance was that it saw the birth of modern anatomy.
