05-09-2026, 04:32 PM
I don’t know if this has already been discussed here, but could it be that the “Stars” are related to something like the “Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum” (also known as “Flos medicinae” or “Flores medicinae Salerni”)?
I came across it in Sir Alexander Croke’s 1830 edition. According to Croke, these are Latin didactic poems associated with the medical school of Salerno that deal primarily with the preservation of health.
Its subject matter is health in the medieval sense: eating and drinking, sleep, air, the properties of individual foods, wine, and herbs; the four bodily humors (blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholy) and their corresponding temperaments; and an extensive section on the practice of bloodletting.
Much of the text is written in rhymed hexameter, often in the tradition of Leonine verse, which presumably contributed to its mnemonic character and popularity.
The work has not been preserved as a single, fixed text. Various manuscripts contain very different numbers of verses, as well as different additions and arrangements. Croke’s base text comprises 363 lines of verse (That's why I thought of the stars first), but then he mentions manuscripts with 183, 664, 1,073, 1,096, and 1,239 verse.
Modern scholarship generally regards the “Regimen” as a composite and evolving text rather than the work of a clearly identified author. Its exact date of origin and early development are disputed; the core tradition dates to the Middle Ages—roughly the 12th century—and was already widely disseminated long before the 15th century.
Sources:
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[attachment=17547]
Note: It was too time-consuming for me to extract them all, so I had an AI do it, double-checked the results, found some errors, ran it again, and again. I hope it’s at least somewhat correct now—the English translations were also done by the AI. I include the URL of the original, after all...
I came across it in Sir Alexander Croke’s 1830 edition. According to Croke, these are Latin didactic poems associated with the medical school of Salerno that deal primarily with the preservation of health.
Its subject matter is health in the medieval sense: eating and drinking, sleep, air, the properties of individual foods, wine, and herbs; the four bodily humors (blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholy) and their corresponding temperaments; and an extensive section on the practice of bloodletting.
Much of the text is written in rhymed hexameter, often in the tradition of Leonine verse, which presumably contributed to its mnemonic character and popularity.
The work has not been preserved as a single, fixed text. Various manuscripts contain very different numbers of verses, as well as different additions and arrangements. Croke’s base text comprises 363 lines of verse (That's why I thought of the stars first), but then he mentions manuscripts with 183, 664, 1,073, 1,096, and 1,239 verse.
Modern scholarship generally regards the “Regimen” as a composite and evolving text rather than the work of a clearly identified author. Its exact date of origin and early development are disputed; the core tradition dates to the Middle Ages—roughly the 12th century—and was already widely disseminated long before the 15th century.
Sources:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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[attachment=17547]
Note: It was too time-consuming for me to extract them all, so I had an AI do it, double-checked the results, found some errors, ran it again, and again. I hope it’s at least somewhat correct now—the English translations were also done by the AI. I include the URL of the original, after all...
