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Trotula is a name referring to a group of three texts on women's medicine that were composed in the southern Italian port town of Salerno in the 12th century. The name derives from a historic female figure, Trota of Salerno, a physician and medical writer who was associated with one of the three texts. However, "Trotula" came to be understood as a real person in the Middle Ages and because the so-called Trotula texts circulated widely throughout medieval Europe, from Spain to Poland, and Sicily to Ireland, "Trotula" has historic importance in "her" own right.
Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of pseudoscientific ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behaviour, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
Apothecary is an archaic English term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern terms 'pharmacist' and 'chemist' have taken over this role.
In the history of medicine, "Islamic medicine" is the science of medicine developed in the Middle East, and usually written in Arabic, the lingua franca of Islamic civilization.
Abella, often known as Abella of Salerno or Abella of Castellomata, was a physician in the mid fourteenth century. Abella studied and taught at the Salerno School of Medicine. Abella is believed to have been born around 1380, but the exact time of her birth and death is unclear. Abella lectured on standard medical practices, bile, and women's health and nature at the medical school in Salerno. Abella, along with Rebecca de Guarna, specialized in the area of embryology. She published two treatises: De atrabile and De natura seminis humani, neither of which survive today. In Salvatore De Renzi's nineteenth-century study of the Salerno School of Medicine, Abella is one of four women mentioned who were known to practice medicine, lecture on medicine, and wrote treatises. These attributes placed Abella into a group of women known as the Mulieres Salernitanae, or women of Salerno.
The presence of women in medicine, particularly in the practicing fields of surgery and as physicians, has been traced to the earliest of history. Women have historically had lower participation levels in medical fields compared to men with occupancy rates varying by race, socioeconomic status, and geography.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to medicine:
Gilbertus Anglicus was a medieval English physician. He is known chiefly for his encyclopedic work, the Compendium of Medicine, most probably written between 1230 and 1250. This medical treatise was an attempt at a comprehensive overview of the best practice in pharmacology, medicine, and surgery at the time. His medical works, alongside those of John of Gaddesden, "formed part of the core curriculum that underpinned the practice of medicine for the next 400 years".
Women in the Middle Ages in Europe occupied a number of different social roles. Women held the positions of wife, mother, peasant, artisan, and nun, as well as some important leadership roles, such as abbess or queen regnant. The very concept of women changed in a number of ways during the Middle Ages, and several forces influenced women's roles during this period, while also expanding upon their traditional roles in society and the economy. Whether or not they were powerful or stayed back to take care of their homes, they still played an important role in society whether they were saints, nobles, peasants, or nuns. Due to context from recent years leading to the reconceptualization of women during this time period, many of their roles were overshadowed by the work of men. Although it is prevalent that women participated in church and helping at home, they did much more to influence the Middle Ages.
Constance Calenda was an Italian surgeon specializing in diseases of the eye. She studied at the University of Salerno, and was one of the women known as the "ladies of Salerno".
Mercuriade (14th-century) was an Italian physician, surgeon and medical author. She is one of the few woman physicians known from the Middle Ages.
Rebecca Guarna, was an Italian physician and surgeon and author. She is one of a number of female physicians known from the Middle Ages. She was one of the women known as the "ladies of Salerno".
Jewish medicine is medical practice of the Jewish people, including writing in the languages of both Hebrew and Arabic. 28% of Nobel Prize winners in medicine have been Jewish, although Jews comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population.
Midwifery in the Middle Ages impacted women's work and health prior to the professionalization of medicine. During the Middle Ages in Western Europe, people relied on the medical knowledge of Roman and Greek philosophers, specifically Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle. These medical philosophers focused primarily on the health of men, and women's health issues were understudied. Thus, these philosophers did not focus on the baby and they encouraged women to handle women's issues. In fact, William L. Minkowski asserted that a male's reputation was negatively affected if he associated with or treated pregnant patients. Resultantly, male physicians did not engage with pregnant patients, and women had a place in medicine as midwives. Myriam Greilsammer notes that an additional opposition to men's involvement in childbearing was that men should not associate with female genitalia throughout the secret practices of childbearing. The prevalence of this mindset allowed women to continue the practice of midwifery throughout most of the Medieval era with little or no male influence on their affairs. Minkowski writes that in Guy de Chauliac's fourteenth-century work Chirurgia magna, "he wrote that he was unwilling to discourse on midwifery because the field was dominated by women." However, changing views of medicine caused the women's role as midwife to be pushed aside as the professionalization of medical practitioners began to go up.
Trota of Salerno was a medical practitioner and writer in the southern Italian coastal town of Salerno who lived in the early or middle decades of the 12th century. Her fame spread as far as France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. A Latin text that gathered some of her therapies was incorporated into an ensemble of treatises on women's medicine that came to be known as the Trotula, "the little book [called] 'Trotula'". Gradually, readers became unaware that this was the work of three different authors. They were also unconscious of name of the historical writer, which was "Trota" and not "Trotula". The latter was thenceforth misunderstood as the author of the whole compendium. These misconceptions about the author of Trotula contributed to the erasure or modification of her name, gender, level of education, medical knowledge, or the time period in which the texts were written; this trend often resulted from the biases of later scholars. Trota's authentic work was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the late 20th century.
Peretta Peronne was an unlicensed female surgeon operating in Paris in the early fifteenth century.
Monica H. Green is an author and a historian who was a professor of history at Arizona State University. She is an expert in the history of women's health care in premodern Europe, medicine and gender, and she specialises in the history of infectious diseases in the pre-modern period.
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
Guillemette du Luys, was a French surgeon in service of king Louis XI of France. She was one of two women to have served as royal physicians in France.
The women of Salerno, also referred to as the ladies of Salerno and the Salernitan women, are a group of women physicians who studied in medieval Italy, at the Schola Medica Salernitana, one of the first medical schools to allow women.
References
- ↑ L. Whaley: Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800
- ↑ Green, Monica H. "Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe". Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 14: 434–73. PMID 11618104.
