The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women's MedicineMonica Helen Green 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Salerno | 3 |
Womens Medicine | 14 |
The Fate of the Trotula | 51 |
Note on This Translation | 62 |
Book on the Conditions of Women | 65 |
On Treatments for Women | 89 |
On Womens Cosmetics | 113 |
Compound Medicines Employed in the Trotula Ensemble | 125 |
Materia Medica Employed in the Trotula | 137 |
Notes | 165 |
209 | |
221 | |
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References to this book
Damsels Not in Distress: The True Story of Women in Medieval Times Andrea Hopkins, Ph.D. Limited preview - 2003 |