Roland of Parma
Roland of Parma
fl. 1200s
Italian surgeon and medical writer who edited the Practica chirurgiae, the great treatise on surgery that had been composed by his teacher, the distinguished twelfth-century surgeon Roger of Salerno. The edition of the Practica chirurgiae published by Roland about 1230 was the most important version of this treatise. This work was considered a classic for at least three centuries and many of the surgical texts later associated with Salerno were probably based on it. The manuscript has been preserved and was published in Rome in 1969 as the Chirurgia Rogerii, per Rolandum Parmensem (The surgery of Roger, edited by Roland of Parma, Codex Ambrosianus I, 18). Roland of Parma was an influential teacher and distinguished surgeon in his own right. (Parma, in northern Italy, was the site of an important medical school before the development of formal university medical education.) Roland later moved to Bologna, which soon surpassed Parma as a center of medical learning. Roland of Parma was also known as Rolando and Rolandino.