Trotula of Salerno

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Trotula of Salerno (b. c. 1090), also known as Trotula di Ruggiero, Trotula Platearius, Trota and Trocta, was a female physician who wrote several influential works on women's medicine, the most prominent of which is The Diseases of Women, or Passionibus Mulierum Curandorum, also known as Trotula Major.

Little is known of Trotula's life. She is believed to have been a professor of medicine at the School of Salerno. Her books argued for a focus on the unique medical ailments faced by women, including menstruation and childbirth. In some ways, her writings challenged the status quo: one example is her support for giving women opiates during childbirth to ease the pain, a practice that was then denounced by almost all authorities. In other ways, her work supported the beliefs of her time: she claimed that, because of Eve's sin, women naturally were more susceptible to disease, and therefore were in greater need of special medical attention.

Nothing is known of when and where Trotula died. A few medieval scholars doubt that Trotula was a woman, and some are of the opinion that she was an entirely fictional character. A modern translator has suggested that the text referred to as The Trotula actually comprises three distinct texts, only one of which was written by Trotula.^[1]

She collaborated with her husband John Platearius in writing the Encyclopaedia regimen sanitatis and is credited with the authorship of a treatise on gynecology and obstetrics, Trotulae curandarum aegritudinum mulierorium ante et post partum (Trotula's Curing of Sick Women Before and After Birth), also known as De passionibus mulierum (The Diseases of Women), in sixty chapters. This treatise is referred to simply as The Trotula.

References

1. ↑ Introduction to The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, Monica H. Green, ed., trans., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001 (reviewed by Vivian Nutton)

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