The women of Salerno , also referred to as the ladies of Salerno and the Salernitan women (Latin : mulieres Salernitanae), were a group of women physicians who studied in medieval Italy, at the Schola Medica Salernitana, one of the first medical schools to allow women.
These women practiced medicine, and were known to both teach and to publish medical works. [1] Additionally, there is evidence that the study of female diseases was not their only interest, but they studied, taught, and practiced all branches of medicine, indeed multiple references attest to the vital role they played in surgical and scientific achievements. [2] [ page needed ]
It was possible for them to assert themselves within Salerno thanks to a climate of great tolerance that extended itself from women practitioners as well as Jews and Arabs. In addition, during most of its lifetime, Salerno was the only medical school in Europe that opened its doors to women. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
In medieval southern Italy, Salerno was, in the 11th century, a "city of extraordinary wealth and splendor for its trade, in which it had supplanted Amalfi and Gaeta. There were cedars, almonds, coated walnuts, imperial drapes, fine gold ornaments; wine, nuts, fruit, trees and crops abounded. Beautiful palaces adorned it; attractive women and upright men lived there" (Guglielmo di Puglia, 1090). In this political, social and cultural background, the women shared the deeds of men, participated in battles and exercised the medical art, as doctor or not. Intellectual openness excluded dogmas and confronted with the daily practice of dialogue and experience, with the comparison of Greek, Latin, and Arab texts that were studied without prejudices or hierarchies of value. In this climate, accepting women as students and even more as teachers seemed natural and important. Indeed, the remedies used by women are appreciated and welcomed in the writings of the Schola Medica Salernitana. [8] [9] Matteo Plateario (1140–1180) mentioned the women of Salerno and their remedies in his Liber De Semplici Medicina.
The women of Salerno were free to talk about sexual topics without moralisms or religious conditioning. In addition, their writings were some of the first to talk about menstruation. [10]
During the early years of the 1000s, people were already talking about fundamental modern values, such as prevention and healthy eating, as a base for medical treatments. The Mulieres Salernitanae preferred treatments like aromatized baths, therapies with herbs and massages, and there are no traces in their history of prayers or other supernatural methods in order to treat diseases. [11]
Generally, Trota's and the other women's writings were the first studies on the female body in medicine. [12]
Fundamental for them was the history of the patient, in order to identify the right therapy. Reading their works shows that they were not only deeply acquainted with the female body, but also had a high knowledge of plants and the benefits of herbs. They were innovative in many respects, considered prevention fundamental, proposed unusual methods for the time, stressed the importance of hygiene, a balanced diet, physical activity, their advice included baths and massages, decoctions, bloodletting. They had no fear of revealing truths never told and to solve problems never solved, their lessons were taught with extreme naturalness of sexuality, contraception using a simple language accessible to all. [12] Their students were able to differentiate between typhoid and malaria, they could calculate fever temperatures and estimate recovery times, and they could treat complex wounds with appreciable chances of success.
There were also many rumours about the mulieres salernitanae: as an example, Arnaldo da Villanova, a Spanish scientist, explained that women of Salerno drank mysterious potions during gestation and for this reason women grew aberrant, accompanying the recitation of the Pater noster with a mysterious magic formula:
Binomie lamion lamium azerai vaccina deus deus sabaoth
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, hosanna in excelsis. [13]
These rumors were born due to the fact that, despite the wealth and intellectual openness of the city of Salerno, the early medieval era also represented the start of prejudice towards women and the theory of feminine inferiority. Jules Michelet (1862) stated that “the only doctor of the people, for a thousand years, was the Witch”.
Despite these rumors of discredit, however, their fame grew, not only in Italy but also beyond the Alps. [14] [9] [13]
These women included:
The first to remember the women of Salerno was a historian from Salerno, Antonio Mazza, prior of the School of Medicine in the seventeenth century, who in the essay "Historiarum epitome de rebus salernitanis" [16] writes: "We have many learned women, who in many fields surpassed or equalled by ingenuity and doctrine many men and, like men, were remarkable in the field of medicine." [17] Among the most famous women who attended the school of Salerno was Francesca Cenci, wife of Matteo Romano Cenci, who received a degree in medicine and surgery from Carlo D’Angiò, Duke of Calabria, in 1321. Abella, from the noble family of Castellaneta, wrote “De atrabile” and “De nature seminis humani”, of which, unfortunately, any trace has been lost. Rebecca de Guarna specialized in the study and treatment of urinary diseases and fevers. Mercuriade, surgeon, wrote many didactic essays: “Le crisi”, “La febbre da pestilenza”, and “La cura delle ferite”. The most known of the women of Salerno is Trota, who was a Magistra of Medicine at the School of Salerno and ran a prolific clinical practice. She taught her students about three types of diseases: inherited, contagious, and self-generated, [18] and this type of teaching was carried on by all the other women.
One of the most important contributions of the women of Salerno is a textbook that was widely distributed throughout Europe. The textbook, “De Passionibus Mulierum ante in et post partum”, [19] that witnesses the birth of obstetrics and gynecology as science, was first published around 1100 AD and completely revised by Ambrose Paré's assistants in the early 17th century. Also Paley, one of the greatest anatomist of his time, stated that many of his important anatomical and surgical considerations came directly or indirectly from the work of Salerno women. He advances that Salerno women first documents, thoughts and practices are an interesting and important part of our surgical heritage. [20]
The work begins by outlining the characteristic nature of the female gender, which, unlike the nature of the male, hot and dry, is rather cold and humid. So, women lacking the heat necessary to dissipate bad moods, their diseases were more frequent and mainly affect the reproductive organs. To defend themselves from moods women have a particular purification, the menstruation, whose regularity is a source and sign of health. The first task of the doctor is then to diagnose the reasons for the interruption of the regularity or scarcity of the menstruation and to identify with the pharmacopoeia the appropriate remedies.
Perineal tears and uterine tears are common wounds often experienced by midwives, giving Trotula and her students ample opportunity to develop new techniques and remedies for wound healing.
The anatomy of the reproductive organs was known only through animal anatomy and written descriptions in Islamic texts. Salerno female physicians made an important contribution on this subject because female physicians had greater access to female patients than their male colleagues. They deepened the study of the female body, coming to theorize that infertility could also depend on men and not only women. [21]
Salerno is an ancient city and comune (municipality) in Campania, southwestern Italy, and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after Naples. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. In recent history the city hosted Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, who moved from Rome in 1943 after Italy negotiated a peace with the Allies in World War II, making Salerno the capital of the "Government of the South" and therefore provisional government seat for six months. Some of the Allied landings during Operation Avalanche occurred near Salerno.
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.
In the Middle Ages, the medicine of Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing 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 behavior, 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.
The Schola Medica Salernitana was a medieval medical school, the first and most important of its kind. Situated on the Tyrrhenian Sea in the south Italian city of Salerno, it was founded in the 9th century and rose to prominence in the 10th century, becoming the most important source of medical knowledge in Western Europe at the time.
Saint Alfanus I or Alfano I was the archbishop of Salerno from 1058 until his death. He was famed as a translator, writer, theologian, and medical doctor. He has been described as "the greatest cultural protagonist of literature and science in Salerno". His feast day is commemorated on October 9th.
Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, Latin: The Salernitan Rule of Health, full title: Regimen sanitatis cum expositione magistri Arnaldi de Villanova Cathellano noviter impressus, is a medieval didactic poem in hexameter verse. It is allegedly a work of the Schola Medica Salernitana, a medieval medical school in Salerno. This school founded in the 9th century is considered possibly the oldest medical school, in a southern Italian city, which held the most important medical information, the most famous and notable being Regimen santiatis Salernitanum. Nearly 300 copies of this poem are published, in various languages, for medical professionals.
Romuald Guarna was the Archbishop of Salerno from 1153 to his death. He is remembered primarily for his Chronicon sive Annales, an important historical record of his time.
Dorotea Bocchi (1360–1436) was an Italian noblewoman known for studying medicine and philosophy. Dorotea was associated with the University of Bologna, though there are differing beliefs regarding the extent of her participation at the university ranging, from whether she taught or held a position there. Despite these debates, there is consensus that she flourished and was active at the university for more than 40 years, beginning from 1390 onwards.
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.
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".
Gilles de Corbeil was a French royal physician, teacher, and poet. He was born in approximately 1140 in Corbeil and died in the first quarter of the 13th century. He is the author of four medical poems and a scathing anti-clerical satire, all in Latin dactylic hexameters.
Mercuriade was an Italian physician, surgeon and medical author. She is one of the few woman physicians known from the Middle Ages.
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani is an Italian historian, specializing in the history of the papacy, cultural anthropology, and in the history of the body and the relationship between nature and society during the Middle Ages.
Matthaeus Platearius was a physician from the medical school at Salerno, and is thought to have produced a twelfth-century Latin manuscript on medicinal herbs titled "Circa Instans", later translated into French as "Le Livre des simples medecines". It was an alphabetic listing and textbook of simples that was based on Dioscorides "Vulgaris", which described the appearance, preparation, and uses of various drugs. It was widely acclaimed, and was one of the first herbals produced by the newly developed printing process in 1488. Ernst Meyer considered it equal to the herbals of Pliny and Dioscorides, while George Sarton thought it an improvement on "De Materia Medica".
The history of herbalism is closely tied with the history of medicine from prehistoric times up until the development of the germ theory of disease in the 19th century. Modern medicine from the 19th century to today has been based on evidence gathered using the scientific method. Evidence-based use of pharmaceutical drugs, often derived from medicinal plants, has largely replaced herbal treatments in modern health care. However, many people continue to employ various forms of traditional or alternative medicine. These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food-borne pathogens.
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 unaware of the 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.
Salvatore De Renzi was an Italian physician and writer.
Adelle of the Saracens was a physician of Arab descent and the Islamic heritage, based in Salerno in Southern Italy. Her people, at the time, were referred to as Saracens by the Italian and European Christians. She practiced medicine and was a lay teacher at the Salerno Medical School. Her medical practice included Medieval Islamic and Early Italian renaissance ideals, including humanism.
David Gentilcore is Professor of Modern History at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, with particular interests in the history of popular religion, the history of medicine and health, and the history of food and diet. His Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's "Dr Jason A. Hannah medal" in 2008 and in 2012 he was awarded the "Salvatore De Renzi International Prize" for his contribution to the history of medicine, by the University of Salerno medical school and the Ordine dei Medici of Salerno. He has held visiting professorships at McMaster University (Canada) and Villa I Tatti, Florence, and visiting fellowships at IMéRA - Institute for Advanced Study, Aix-Marseille University (France) and the School of Advanced Study, University of London. He has been the recipient of research grants from the European Research Council, the European Institutes for Advanced Study Fellowship Programme, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. He is the son of historical geographer Rocco Louis Gentilcore.
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