In this collection of seven major essays (one of them published here for the first time), Monica Green argues that a history of women's healthcare in medieval western Europe has not yet been written because it cannot yet be written - the vast majority of texts relating to women's healthcare have never been edited or studied. Using the insights of women's history and gender studies, Green shows how historians need to peel off the layers of unfounded assumption and stereotype that have characterized the little work that has been done on medieval women's healthcare. Seen in their original contexts, medieval gynecological texts raise questions of women's activity as healthcare providers and recipients, as well as questions of how the sexual division of labor, literacy, and professionalization functioned in the production and use of medical knowledge on the female body. An appendix lists all known medieval gynecological texts in Latin and the western European vernacular languages.

Questions asked by Greek philosophy and science - how do we come to be? How do we grow? When are we recognizably human? - are addressed with new intensity today. Modern embryology has changed the methods of enquiry and given new knowledge. Public interest and concern are high because medical applications of new knowledge offer benefits and yet awaken ancestral fears. The law and politics are called upon to secure the benefits without realizing the fears. Philosophers and theologians are involved once again. In this volume some of the world's authorities on the subject trace the tradition of enquiry over two and a half thousand years. The answers given in related cultures - Greek, Latin, Jewish, Arabian, Islamic, Christian - reflected the purposes to be served at different times, in medical practice, penitential discipline, canon law, common law, human feeling. But the terms in which the questions were discussed were those set down by the Greeks and transmitted through the Arabic authors to medieval Europe.

Making Women's Medicine Masculine challenges the common belief that prior to the eighteenth century men were never involved in any aspect of women's healthcare in Europe. Using sources ranging from the writings of the famous twelfth-century female practitioner, Trota of Salerno, all the way to the great tomes of Renaissance male physicians, and covering both medicine and surgery, this study demonstrates that men slowly established more and more authority in diagnosing and prescribing treatments for women's gynecological conditions (especially infertility) and even certain obstetrical conditions.
Even if their "hands-on" knowledge of women's bodies was limited by contemporary mores, men were able to establish their increasing authority in this and all branches of medicine due to their greater access to literacy and the knowledge contained in books, whether in Latin or the vernacular. As Monica Green shows, while works written in French, Dutch, English, and Italian were sometimes addressed to women, nevertheless even these were often re-appropriated by men, both by practitioners who treated women nd by laymen interested to learn about the "secrets" of generation.
While early in the period women were considered to have authoritative knowledge on women's conditions (hence the widespread influence of the alleged authoress "Trotula"), by the end of the period to be a woman was no longer an automatic qualification for either understanding or treating the conditions that most commonly afflicted the female sex--with implications of women's exclusion from production of knowledge on their own bodies extending to the present day.

"The Trotula" was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to the first English translation ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world.Green here presents a complete English translation of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the midthirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The work is now accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice.

The Trotula A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine Edited and translated by Monica H. Green "This long-awaited book makes available an English translation of a set of texts which, in its various versions, both in Latin and in translations into many western European vernacular languages, represents the most important collection of material on women's diseases and their treatments for the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries."--"Social History of Medicine" ""The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine" furnishes students and scholars with an invaluable reference. Backed by more than twenty years of scrupulous research and publication, as well as an insightful methodology, it also provides them with an object of inspiration. Green's work is a remarkable example of scholarship."--"Comitatus" "The Trotula" was the most influential compendium on women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to this first edition of the Latin text since the sixteenth century, and the first English translation of the book ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the "Trotula" is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Arguing that these texts can be understood only within the intellectual and social context that produced them, Green analyzes them against the background of historical gynecological literature as well as current knowledge about women's lives in twelfth-century southern Italy. She examines the history and composition of the three works and introduces the reader to the medical culture of medieval Salerno from which they emerged. Among her findings is that the second of the three texts, "On the Treatments for Women," does derive from the work of a Salernitan woman healer named Trota. However, the other two texts--"On the Conditions of Women" and "On Women's Cosmetics"--are probably of male authorship, a fact indicating the complex gender relations surrounding the production and use of knowledge about the female body. Through an exhaustive study of the extant manuscripts of the "Trotula," Green presents a critical edition of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the mid-thirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The facing-page complete English translation makes the work accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice. Monica H. Green is Associate Professor of History at Duke University. The Middle Ages Series 2001 320 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 9 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3589-0 Cloth $79.95s 52.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0469-8 Ebook $79.95s 52.00 World Rights History, Medicine Short copy: "This long-awaited book makes available . . . the most important collection of material on women's diseases and their treatments for the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries."--"Social History of Medicine"