Old-Time Makers of Medicine Part 7

VII

CONSTANTINE AFRICa.n.u.s

Probably the most important representative of the medical school at Salerno, certainly the most significant member of its faculty, if we consider the wide influence for centuries after his time that his writings had, was Constantine Africa.n.u.s. He is interesting, too, for many other reasons, for he is the first representative, in modern times, that is, who, after the incentive of antiquity had pa.s.sed, devoted himself to creating a medical literature by translations, by editions, and by the collation of his own and others' observations on medical subjects. He is the connecting link between Arabian medicine and Western medical studies. The fact that he was first a traveller over most of the educational world of his time, then a professor at the University of Salerno who attracted many students, and finally a Benedictine monk in the great abbey at Monte Ca.s.sino, shows how his life ran the gamut of the various phases of interest in the intellectual world of his time. It was his retirement to the famous monastery that gave him the opportunity, the leisure, the reference library for consultation that a writer feels he must have near him, and probably also the means necessary for the publication of his works. Not only did the monks of Monte Ca.s.sino itself devote themselves to the copying of his many books, but other Benedictine monasteries in various parts of the world made it a point to give wide diffusion to his writings.

As a study in successful publication, that is, in the securing of wide attention to writings within a short time, the career of Constantine and the story of his books would be extremely interesting. Medieval distribution of books is usually thought to have been rather halting, but here was an exception. It was largely because Benedictines all over the world were deeply interested in what this brother Benedictine was writing that wide distribution was secured for his work within a very short time. His superiors among the Benedictines had a profound interest in what he was doing. The great Benedictine Abbot Desiderius of Monte Ca.s.sino, who afterwards became Pope, used all of his extensive influence in both positions to secure an audience for the books--hence the many ma.n.u.script copies of his writings that we have. It is probable that Constantine established a school of writers at Monte Ca.s.sino, for he could scarcely have accomplished so much by himself as has been attributed to him. Besides, his works attracted so much attention that writers of immediately succeeding generations who wanted to secure attention for their works sometimes attributed them to him in order to take advantage of his popularity. It is rather difficult, then, to determine with absolute a.s.surance which are Constantine's genuine works.

Some of those attributed to him are undoubtedly spurious. What we know with certainty, however, is that his authentic works meant much for his own and after generations.

Constantine was born in the early part of the eleventh century, and died near its close, having lived probably well beyond eighty years of age, his years running nearly parallel with his century. His surname, Africa.n.u.s, is derived from his having been born in Africa, his birthplace being Carthage. Early in life he seems to have taken up with ardor the study of medicine in his native town, devoting himself, however, at the same time to whatever of physical science was available.

Like many another young man since his time, not satisfied with the knowledge he could secure at home, he made distant journeys, gathering medical and scientific information of all kinds wherever he went.

According to a tradition that seems to be well grounded, some of these journeys took him even into the far East. During his travels he became familiar with a number of Oriental languages, and especially studied the Arabian literature of science very diligently.

At this time the Arabs, having the advantage of more intimate contact with the Greek medical traditions in Asia Minor, were farther advanced in their knowledge of the medical sciences than the scholars in the West. They had better facilities for obtaining the books that were the cla.s.sics of medicine, and, with any desire for knowledge, could scarcely fail to secure it.

What was best in Arabian medicine was brought to Salerno by Constantine and, above all, his translation of many well-known Arabian medical authors proved eminently suggestive to seriously investigating physicians all over the world in his time. Before he was to be allowed to settle down to his literary work, however, Constantine was to have a very varied experience. Some of this doubtless was to be valuable in enabling him to set the old Arabian teachers of medicine properly before his generation. After his Oriental travels he returned to his native Carthage in order to practise medicine. It was not long, however, before his superior medical knowledge, or, at least, the many novelties of medical practice that he had derived from his contact with the East, drew upon him the professional jealousy of his colleagues. It is very probable that the reputation of his extensive travels and wide knowledge soon attracted a large clientele. This was followed quite naturally by the envy at least of his professional brethren. Feeling became so bitter, that even the possibility of serious personal consequences for him because of false accusations was not out of the question. Whenever novelties are introduced into medical science or medical practice, their authors are likely to meet with this opposition on the part of colleagues, and history is full of examples of it. Galvani was laughed at and called the frogs' dancing-master; Auenbrugger was made fun of for drumming on people; Harvey is said to have lost half of his consulting practice;--all because they were advancing ideas that their contemporaries were not ready to accept. We are rather likely to think that this intolerant att.i.tude of mind belongs to the older times, but it is rather easy to trace it in our own.

In Constantine's day men had ready to hand a very serious weapon that might be used against innovators. By craftily circulated rumors the populace was brought to accuse him of magical practices, that is, of producing his cures by a.s.sociation with the devil. We are rather p.r.o.ne to think little of a generation that could take such nonsense seriously, but it would not be hard to find a.n.a.logous false notions prevalent at the present time, which sometimes make life difficult, if not dangerous, for well-meaning individuals.[10] Life seems to have been made very uncomfortable for Constantine in Carthage. Just the extent to which persecution went, however, we do not know. About this time Constantine's work attracted the attention of Duke Robert of Salerno. He invited him to become his physician. After he had filled the position for a time a personal friends.h.i.+p developed, and, as has often happened to the physicians of kings, he became a royal counsellor and private secretary.

When the post of professor of medicine at Salerno fell vacant, it is not surprising, then, that Constantine should have been made professor, and from here his teaching soon attracted the attention of all the men of his time.

Constantine seems to have greatly enhanced the reputation of the medical school, and added to the medical prestige of Salerno. After teaching for some ten years there, however, he gave up his professors.h.i.+p--the highest position in the medical world of the time--apparently with certain plans in mind. He wanted leisure for writing the many things in medicine that he had learned in his travels in the East, so as to pa.s.s his precious treasure of knowledge on to succeeding generations; and then, too, he seems to have longed for that peace that would enable him not only to do his writing undisturbed, but to live his life quietly far away from the strife of men and the strenuous existence of a court and of a great school.

There was probably another and more intimate personal reason for his retirement. Abbot Desiderius of the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Ca.s.sino, not far away, had become a close and valued friend. Before having been made abbot, Desiderius and Constantine probably were fellow professors at Salerno, for we know that Desiderius himself and many of his fellow Benedictines taught in the undergraduate department there. Desiderius enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most learned men of the time when his election to the abbacy at Monte Ca.s.sino took him away from Salerno. His departure was a blow to Constantine, who had learned by years of friends.h.i.+p that to be near his intimate friend, the pious scholarly Benedictine, was a solace in life and a never failing incentive to his own intellectual work. Desiderius seems, indeed, to have been a large factor in influencing the great physician to write his books rather than devote himself to oral teaching, since the circulation of his writing would confer so much more of benefit on a greater number of people. Perhaps another element in the situation was that Desiderius was desirous of having the learned physician, the travelled scholar, at Monte Ca.s.sino, for the sake of his influence on the scholars.h.i.+p of the abbey, and for the incentive that he would be to the younger monks to apply themselves to the varied field of knowledge which the Benedictines had chosen for themselves at this time.

Whatever hopes of mutual solace and helpfulness and of the joys of intimate close friends.h.i.+p may have been in the minds of these two most learned men of their time, they were destined to be grievously disappointed. Only a few years after Constantine's entrance into the monastery at Monte Ca.s.sino Desiderius was elected Pope. The humble Benedictine did not want to take the exalted position, but it was plainly shown to him that it was his duty, and that he must not s.h.i.+rk it. Accordingly, under the name of Pope Victor III, he became one of the great Popes of the eleventh century. One might think that he could have summoned Constantine to Rome, but perhaps he knew that his friend would prefer the quietude of the cloister, and then, too, probably he wanted to allow him the opportunity to accomplish that writing for which Constantine and himself had planned when the great physician entered the monastery.

All that we know for sure is that some twenty years of Constantine's life were spent as a monk in Monte Ca.s.sino, where he devoted his time mainly to the writing of his books. One bond of union there was. Each of the works, as soon as completed, was sent off to the Pope as long as he lived. On the other hand, though busy with his Papal duties, Pope Victor constantly stimulated Constantine, even from distant Rome, to go on with his work. There were messages of brotherly interest and solicitude just as in the old days. The great African physician's best known work, the so-called "Liber Pantegni," which is really a translation of the "Khitaab el Maleki" of Ali Ben el-Abbas, is dedicated to Desiderius.

Constantine wrote a number of other books, most of them original, but it is difficult now to decide just which of those that pa.s.s under his name are genuine. Many were subsequently attributed to him that are surely not his.

These translators of the Middle Ages proved to be not only the channels through which information came to their generations, but they were also incentives to study and investigation. It is when men can get a certain amount of information rather easily that they are tempted to seek further in order to solve the problems that present themselves. There are three great translators whose work meant much for the Middle Ages at this time. They were, besides Constantine in the eleventh century, Gerard of Cremona, in the twelfth, and the Jewish Faradj Ben Salim, at Naples, in the thirteenth. Gerard did in Spain for the greater Arabian writers what Constantine had accomplished for those of lesser import.

Under the patronage of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, he published translations of Rhazes, Isaac Judaeus, Serapion, Abulcasis, and Avicenna.

His work was done in Toledo, the city in which, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so many translators were at work making books for the Western world.

Constantine did much more than merely bring out his translations of Arabian works. He gave a zest to the study of the old masters, issued editions of certain, at least, of the works of Hippocrates ("Aphorisms") and Galen ("Microtechnics"), and, in general, called attention to the precious treasure of medical lore that must be used to advantage if men were to teach the rising generation out of the acc.u.mulated knowledge of the past. Pagel, in Puschmann's "Handbook," does not hesitate to say that "a farther merit of Constantine must be recognized, inasmuch as that not long after his career the second epoch of the school of Salerno begins, marked not only by a wealth of writers and writings on medicine, but, above all, because from this time on the study of Greek medicine received renewed encouragement through the Latin versions of the Arabian literature. We may think as we will of the worth of these works, but this much is sure, that in many ways they brought about a broadening and an improvement of Greek knowledge, especially from the pharmacopeia standpoint."

Probably the best evidence that we have for Constantine's influence on his generation is to be found in what was accomplished by men who acknowledged with pride that he was their master, and who thought it a mark of distinction to be reckoned as his disciples.

Among these especially noteworthy is Johannes Afflacius, or Saracenus (whose surname of the Saracen probably means that he, too, came from Africa, as his master did). He was the author of two treatises on "Fevers and Urines," and the so-called "Cures of Afflacius." Some of these cures he directly attributed to Constantine. Then there is a Bartholomew who wrote a "Practica," or "Manual of the Practice of Medicine," with the sub-t.i.tle, "Introductions to and Experiments in the Medical Practice of Hippocrates, Constantine, and the Greek Physicians."

Bartholomew represents himself as a disciple of Constantine. This "Practica" of Bartholomew was one of the most commonly used books of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries throughout Europe. There are ma.n.u.script commentaries and translations, and abstracts from it not only in the Latin tongues, but especially in the Teutonic languages. Pagel refers to ma.n.u.scripts in High and Low Dutch, and even in Danish. The Middle High Dutch ma.n.u.scripts of this "Practica" of Bartholomew come mainly from the thirteenth century, and have not only a special interest because of their value in the history of philology, but because they are the main sources of all the later books on drugs which appeared in very large numbers in German. They have a very great historico-literary interest, especially for pharmacology.

To Afflacius we owe a description of a method of reducing fever that is not only ingenious, but, in the light of our recently introduced bathing methods for fever, is a little startling. In his book on "Fevers and Urines," Afflacius suggests that when the patient's fever makes him very restless, and especially if it is warm weather, a sort of shower bath should be given to him. He thought that rain water was the best for this purpose, and he describes its best application as in rainy fas.h.i.+on, _modo pluviali_. The water should be allowed to flow down over the patient from a vessel with a number of minute perforations in the bottom. A number of the practical hints for treatment given by Afflacius have been attributed to Constantine.

Constantine's reputation has, in the opinion of some writers, been hurt by two features of his published works, as they have come to us, that we find it difficult to understand. One of these is that his translations from the Arabic were made mainly not of the books of the great leaders of Arabian medicine, but from certain of the less important writers. The other is that it does not seem always to have been made clear in the ma.n.u.scripts that have come down to us, whether these writings were translations or original writings. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Constantine himself would have been quite willing to receive the credit for these writings.

As to the first of these objections, it may be said that very probably Constantine, in his travels, had come to realize that the books of the great Arabian physicians, Rhazes, Abulcasis, Avicenna, and others, already received so much attention that the best outlook for medicine was to call particular notice to the writings of such lesser lights as Ali Abbas, Isaac Judaeus, Abu Dschafer, and others of even less note.

Certainly we cannot but feel that his judgment in the matter must have been directed by reasons that we may not be able to understand at present, but that must have existed, for all that we know of the man proves his character as a practical, far-sighted scholar. Besides, it seems not unlikely that but for his interest in them we would not at the present time possess the translations of these minor Arabian writers, and that would be an unfortunate gap in medical history.

The other misunderstanding with regard to Constantine refers to the fact that it is now almost impossible to decide which are his own and which are the writings of others. It has been said that he even tried to palm off some of the writings of others as his own. This seems extremely unlikely, however, knowing all that we do about his life; and the suspicion is founded entirely on ma.n.u.scripts as we have them at the present time, about a thousand years after he lived. What mutilations these ma.n.u.scripts underwent in the course of various copyings is hard now to estimate. Monastic copyists might very well have left out Arabian names, because they were mainly interested in the fact that they were providing for their readers works that had received the approval of Constantine, and the translation of which at least had been made under his direction. It is quite clear that he did not do all the translating himself, and that he probably must have organized a school of medical translators at Monte Ca.s.sino. Then just how the various works would be looked at is very dubious. Undoubtedly many of the translations were done after his death, or certainly finished after his time, and at last attributed to him, because he was the moving spirit and had probably selected the books that should be translated, and made suggestions with regard to them. For all of his monks he was, as masters have ever been for disciples, much more important, and rightly so, than those writers to whom he referred them.

The whole question of plagiarism in these medieval times, as I have pointed out elsewhere, is entirely different from that of the present time. Now a writer may consciously or unconsciously claim another writing as his own. We have come to a time when men think much of their individual reputations. It was no uncommon thing, however, in the Middle Ages, and even later in the Renaissance, for a writer to attribute what he had written to some distinguished literary man of the preceding time, and sign that writer's name to his own work. The idea of the later author was to secure an audience for his thoughts. He seemed to be quite indifferent whether people ever knew just who the writer was, but he wanted to influence humanity by his writings. He thought much more of this than of any possible reputation that might come to him. Of course, there was no question of money. There never has been any question of money-making whenever the things written have been really worth while.

Literature that has deeply influenced mankind has never paid.

Publications that have paid are insignificant works that have touched superficially a whole lot of people. To think of Constantine as a plagiarist in our modern sense of the word, as trying to take the credit for someone else's writings, is to misunderstand entirely the times in which he lived, and to ignore the real problem of plagiarism at that time.

With the acc.u.mulation of information with regard to the history of medicine in his time, Constantine's reputation has been constantly enhanced. It is not so long since he was considered scarcely more than a monkish chronicler, who happened to have taken medicine rather than history for his field of work. Gradually we have come to appreciate all that he did for the medicine of his time. Undoubtedly his extensive travels, his wide knowledge, and then his years of effort to make Oriental medicine available for the Western civilization that was springing up again among the peoples who had come to replace the Romans, set him among the great intellectual forces of the Middle Ages. Salerno owed much to him, and it must not be forgotten that Salerno was the first university of modern times, and, above all, the first medical school that raised the dignity of the medical profession, established standards of medical education, educated the public mind and the rulers of the time to the realization of the necessity for the regulation of the practice of medicine, and in many ways antic.i.p.ated our modern professional life. That the better part of his life work should have been done as a Benedictine only serves to emphasize the place that the religious had in the preservation and the development of culture and of education during the Middle Ages.

VIII

MEDIEVAL WOMEN PHYSICIANS

Very probably the most interesting chapter for us of the modern time in the history of the medical school at Salerno is to be found in the opportunities provided for the medical education of women and the surrender to them of a whole department in the medical school, that of Women's Diseases. While it is probable that Salerno did not owe its origin to the Benedictines, and it is even possible that there was some medical teaching there for all the centuries of the Middle Ages from the Greek times, for it must not be forgotten that this part of Italy was settled by Greeks, and was often called Magna Graecia, there is no doubt at all that the Benedictines exercised great influence in the counsels of the school, and that many of the teachers were Benedictines, as were also the Archbishops, who were its best patrons, and the great Pope Victor III, who did much for it. For several centuries the Benedictines represented the most potent influence at Salerno.

For most people who are not intimately familiar with monastic life, and, above all, with the story of the Benedictines, their prestige at Salerno might seem to be enough of itself to preclude all possibility of the education of women in medicine at Salerno. For those who know the Benedictines well, however, such a departure as the accordance of opportunities for women to study medicine would seem eminently in keeping with the practical wisdom of their rules and the development of their work. From the beginning the Benedictines recognized that a monastic career should be open to women as well as to men, and Benedict's sister, Scholastica, established convents for them, as her brother did the Benedictine monasteries, thus providing a vocation for women who did not feel called upon to marry. That the members of the order should recognize the advisability of affording women the opportunity to study medicine, and of handing over to them the department of women's diseases in a medical school in which they had a considerable amount of authority, seems, then, indeed, only what might have been expected of them.

We are p.r.o.ne in the modern time to think that our generation is the first to offer to women any facilities or opportunities for education in medicine. We are p.r.o.ne, however, just in the same way, to consider that a number of things that we are doing are now being done for the first time. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult to find any important movement or occupation that is not merely a repet.i.tion of a previous interest of mankind. The whole question of feminine education we are apt to think of as modern, forgetting that Plato insisted in his "Republic," as absolutely as any modern feminist, that women should have the same opportunities for education as men, and that at Rome, at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, the women occupied very much the same position in social life as our own at the present time. Their husbands supplied the funds, and they patronized the artists, gave receptions to the poets, lionized the musicians, and, in general, "went after culture" in a way that is a startling reminder of what we are familiar with in our own time. Just as soon as Christianity began to influence education, women were given abundant opportunities for higher education in all forms. In Ireland, the first nation completely converted to Christianity,--where, therefore, the national policy in education could be shaped by the Church without hindrance,--St. Brigid's school at Kildare was scarcely less famous than St. Patrick's at Armagh. It had several thousand students, and, to a certain extent at least, co-education existed. In Charlemagne's time, with the revival of education on the Continent, the women of the Imperial Court attended the Palace School, as well as the men. In the thirteenth century we find women professors in every branch at Italian universities. Some of them were at least a.s.sistants in anatomy. The Renaissance women were, of course, profoundly educated. In a word, we have many phases of feminine education, though with intervals of absolutely negative interest, down the centuries.

There had evidently been quite a considerable amount of opportunity, if not of actual encouragement, for women in medicine, both among the Greeks and the Romans, in the early centuries of the Christian era.

Galen, for instance, quotes certain prescriptions from women physicians.

One Cleopatra is said to have written a book on cosmetics. This name came afterwards to be confounded with that of Queen Cleopatra, giving new prestige to the book, but neither Galen nor Aetius, the early Christian physician, both of whom quote from her work, speak of her as anything except a medical writer. Some monuments to women physicians from these old times have escaped the tooth of time. There was the tomb of one Basila, and also of a Thecla, both of whom are said to have been physicians. Two other names of Greek women physicians we have, Origenia and Aspasia, the former mentioned by Galen, the latter by Aetius in his "Tetrabiblion." Daremberg, the medical historian, announced in 1851 that he had found a Greek ma.n.u.script with the t.i.tle, "On Women's Diseases,"

written by one Metrodora, a woman physician. He promised to publish it.

It was unpublished at the time of his death, but could not be found among his papers. There is a ma.n.u.script on medical subjects, bearing this name, mentioned in the catalogue of the Greek Codices of the Laurentian Library at Florence, but this is said to give no indication of the time when its author lived. We have evidence enough, however, to show that Greek women physicians were not very rare.

The Romans imitated the Greeks so faithfully--one might almost say copied them so closely--that it is not surprising to find a number of Roman women physicians. The first mention of them comes from Scribonius Largus, in the first century after Christ. Octavius Horatia.n.u.s, whom most of us know better as Priscian, dedicated one of his books on medicine to a woman physician named Victoria. The dedication leaves no doubt that she was a woman in active practice, at least in women's diseases, and it is a book on this subject that Priscian dedicates to her. He mentions another woman physician, Leoparda. The word _medica_ for a woman physician was very commonly used at Rome. Martial, whose epigrams have been a source of so much information in medical history, especially on subjects with regard to which information was scanty, mentions a _medica_ in an epigram. Apuleius also uses the word. There are a number of inscriptions in which women physicians are mentioned.

Among the Christians we find women physicians, and Theodosia, the mother of St. Procopius, the martyr, is said to have been very successful in the practice of both medicine and surgery. She is numbered among the martyrs, and occurs in the Roman Martyrology on the 29th of May. Father Bzowski, the Polish Jesuit, who compiled "Nomenclatura Sanctorum Professione Medicorum" (Rome, 1621; the book is usually catalogued under the Latin form of his name, Bzovius), has among his list of saints who were physicians by profession a woman, St. Nicerata, who lived at Constantinople in the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, and who is said to have cured St. John Chrysostom of a serious disease.

The organization of the department of women's diseases at Salerno, under the care of women professors, and the granting of licenses to women to practise medicine, is not so surprising in the light of this tradition among Greeks and Romans, taken up with some enthusiasm by the Christians. We are not sure just when this development took place. The first definite evidence with regard to it comes in the life of Trotula, who seems to have been the head of the department. Some of her books are well known, and often quoted from, and she contributed to a symposium on the treatment of disease, in which there are contributions, also, from men professors of Salerno at the time. She seems to have flourished about the middle of the eleventh century. Ordericus Vitalis, a monk of Utica, who wrote an ecclesiastical history, tells of one Rudolph Malcorona, who, in 1059, came to Utica and remained there for a long time with Father Robert, his nephew. "This Rudolph had been a student all his life, devoting himself with great zeal to letters, and had become famous for his visits to the schools of France and Italy, in order to gather there the secrets of learning. As a consequence he was well informed not only in grammar and dialectics, but also in astronomy and in music. He also possessed such an extensive knowledge of the natural sciences that in the town of Salerno, where, since ancient times, the best schools of medicine had existed, there was no one to equal him with the exception of a very wise matron."

This wise matron has been identified with Trotula, many of the details of whose life have been brought to light by De Renzi, in his "Story of the School of Salerno."[11] According to very old tradition, Trotula belonged to the family of Ruggiero. This was a n.o.ble family of Salerno, many of the members of which were distinguished in their native town at least, but the name is not unusual in Italy, as readers of Dante and Boccaccio are likely to know. It was, indeed, as common as our own Rogers, of which it is the Italian equivalent.

De Renzi has made out a rather good case for the tradition that Trotula was the wife of John Platearius I--so called because there were probably three professors of that name. Trotula was, according to this, the mother of the second Platearius, and the grandmother of the third, all of them distinguished members of the faculty at Salerno.

Her reputation extended far beyond her native town, and even Italy itself, and, in later centuries, her name was used to dignify any form of treatment for women's diseases that was being exploited. Rutebeuf, one of the _trouveres_, thirteenth-century French poets, has a description of the scene in which one of the old herbalist doctors who used to go round and collect a crowd by means of songs and music, and then talk medicine to them--just as is done even yet in many of the smaller towns of this country--is represented as saying to the crowd when he wants to make them realize that he is no ordinary quacksalver, that he is one of the disciples of the great Madame Trot of Salerno. The old-fas.h.i.+oned speech runs somewhat as follows: "Charming people: I am not one of these poor preachers, nor the poor herbalists, who carry little boxes and sachets, and who spread out before them a carpet. I am the disciple of a great lady, who bears the name of Madame Trot of Salerno. And I would have you know that she is the wisest woman in all the four quarters of the world."

Two books are attributed to Trotula; one bears the t.i.tle, "De Pa.s.sionibus Mulierum," and the other has been called "Trotula Minor," or "Summula Secundum Trotulam," and is a compendium of what she wrote. This is probably due to some disciple, but seems to have existed almost in her own time. Her most important work bears two sub-t.i.tles, "Trotula's Unique Book for the Curing of Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labor," and the other sub-t.i.tle, "Trotula's Wonderful Book of Experience (_experimentalis_) in the Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labor, with Other Details Likewise Relating to Labor."

The book begins with a prologue on the nature of man and of woman, and an explanation of how the author, taking pity on the sufferings of women, came to devote herself to the study of their diseases. There are many interesting details in the book, all the more interesting because in many ways they antic.i.p.ate modern solutions of difficult problems in women's diseases, and the care of the mother and child before, during, and after labor. For instance, there are a series of rules on the choice of the nurse, and on the diet and the regime which she should follow if the child is to be properly nourished without disturbance.

Probably the most striking pa.s.sage in her book is that with regard to a torn perineum and its repair. This pa.s.sage may be found in De Renzi or in Gurlt. It runs as follows: "Certain patients, from the severity of the labor, run into a rupture of the genitalia. In some even the v.u.l.v.a and a.n.u.s become one foramen, having the same course. As a consequence, prolapse of the uterus occurs, and it becomes indurated. In order to relieve this condition, we apply to the uterus warm wine in which b.u.t.ter has been boiled, and these fomentations are continued until the uterus becomes soft, and then it is gently replaced. After this the tear between the a.n.u.s and v.u.l.v.a we sew in three or four places with silk thread. The woman should then be placed in bed, with the feet elevated, and must retain that position, even for eating and drinking, and all the necessities of life, for eight or nine days. During this time, also, there must be no bathing, and care must be taken to avoid everything that might cause coughing, and all indigestible materials."

There is a pa.s.sage, also, almost more interesting with regard to prophylaxis of rupture of the perineum. She says, "In order to avoid the aforesaid danger, careful provision should be made, and precautions should be taken during labor somewhat as follows: A cloth should be folded in somewhat oblong shape, and placed on the a.n.u.s, so that, during every effort for the expulsion of the child, that should be pressed firmly, in order that there may not be any solution of the continuity of tissue."

Her book contains, also, some directions for various cosmetics. How many of these are original, however, is difficult to say. Trotula's name had become a word to conjure with, and many a quack in the after time tried to make capital for his remedies in this line by attributing them to Trotula. As a consequence, many of these remedies gradually found their way into the ma.n.u.script copies of her book, and subsequent copyists incorporated them into the text, until it became practically impossible to determine which were original. There are ma.n.u.scripts of Trotula's work in Florence, Vienna, and Breslau. Some of these contain chapters not in the others, undoubtedly added by subsequent hands. In one of these, that at Florence, from which the edition of Strasburg was printed in 1544, and of Venice, 1547, one of the Aldine issues, there is a mention in the last chapter of spectacles. We have no record of these until the end of the thirteenth century, when this pa.s.sage was probably added. It was also printed at Basle, 1566, and at Leipzig as late as 1778, which would serve to show how much attention it has attracted even in comparatively recent times.