AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN II. MEDICAL WOMEN OF THE (Conclusion)* By KATE CAMPBELL HURD-MEAD, M.D.

HADDAM, CONN.

Eighth Cent ury studied medicine in order to practice AS we turn from the seventh cen- among the poor. She founded a mon- / vL tury to the eighth, we cross astery at Heidenheim, between Mu- the Channel [to , nich and Nuremberg, and tended the **- Bohemia and , where we patients in its hospital. In the stories of find conditions of life not very differ- her life she is always described or ent from those in . The cur- pictured with a flask of urine in one rents of Christianity and spiritual hand, and bandages in the other. Her freedom, set in motion by Benedict pupils became famous teachers in and Scholastica, had penetrated all several institutions. After Walpurga’s over Europe by this time, and along death, she, too, was sainted, and from with the names of learned bishops her grave there gushed forth a healing there are records of as learned and spring of oil such as she had used pious women who devoted their time during her life, and thousands of and money to the sick. Among them patients were healed by it, for faith was an Abbess named Odilia, or Ottila cures were very common in those of Hohenburg, in Germany, who in days. 720 built a monastery and a hospital Harless says (p. 143) that the which became famous for its cures of daughters of Count Crocus of Bohemia eye troubles. It was said that Ottila1 were all skilled in medicine. This is was born blind, and according to the affirmed by Pope Pius the Second, custom of the times she was cast out to Aeneas Sylvius, who tells us that these die, utterly neglected by her parents. women were named Brela or Kassa, Some nuns found her by the roadside and Tetka and Libussa. They were and took her to their church for bap- well trained and very religious as well tism. No sooner did the holy water as rich. Libussa “became a veritable touch her eyes than their sight was Medea in her healing, whether by miraculously restored. The child was prayer, by medicine or by magic.” educated at the monastery and became Turning to Italy we find that a specialist in the diseases of the eyes, Nicaise is probably right in his state- like Lucia of Italy. ment that there were many laymen Another “medical ” of and women practicing medicine in this century was Walpurga (754- Europe from the seventh to the ninth 778)2. She was an English princess who centuries, while priest doctors or nuns belonged especially to the sixth.1 1 Nutting and Dock, Vol. 1, p. 161. Jameson, 1 Nicaise, E. Les Ecoles de Medecine et la p. 85- Fondation des Universites au Moyen Age. 2 Alice Kemp Welch, op. cit., Chap. 1. 1891. *Previous installments appeared in the Annals , n.s. 5: 1 (Jan.); 171 (); 281 (May); 390 (July); 484 (Sept.), 1933. Among the lay medical women, ac- Even in far off Persia, however, in cording to Neubnrgcr,1 there were a .d . 712, the language of commerce several in Lombardy who had been and medicine was still Greek by order taught by Paul the Deacon, the of the Caliph of Bagdad, for the historian of Lombardy (720-800).2 were the rulers of that country. One of these students was Adelbcrgcr, This century saw not only the or Bertha, the daughter of Desiderius change in the calendar adopted by the king, who ruled 756-774, the last various nations, but great advances ruler of the . There was a in geography. died in 735 believ- guild of lay , says Paul, ing that the earth is flat, though centering in northern Italy, in Lucca circular and four cornered, with a and Pistoia, and they established layer of water above the sky, but certain requirements for the practice even in his time there were some of medicine. Paul the Deacon was intelligent minds who dared to doubt almost the first medieval historian, a these beliefs. Then, too, the hand- man of great erudition, and perhaps writing was changing to a new style, we may think of him as of Paul of beautiful to look at but hard to read, Aegina, a forerunner of the teachers called the Beneventan script from the of the of Salerno, or town in southern Italy where monks rather a link between the monks who were busily copying manuscripts. were copying books and the women Not only were these significant doctors who needed them. Paul the changes taking place in chronology Deacon was a Benedictine monk of and geography and script, but as the Como, much less medical than Paul of countries were in the main at peace Aegina. and visited by neither famine nor During the eighth century it is plague, their people became lazy and evident that manners and customs extravagant in their food and clothing. and languages were all changing be- Men and women who could afford cause of the continually increasing luxuries “decked themselves limb by volume of trade. French was becom- limb” with robes of many colors. ing quite distinct from Latin, and They wore vests of fine linen of violet Spanish and Italian were already color, scarlet tunics with hoods, sleeves somewhat differentiated from each with fur or silk trimmings, and they other. The Arabs or Moors were curled their hair with crisping irons. swarming along the coasts and bring- Women added a thin white veil to ing into the ports many new and their head dresses with ribbons reach- strange words, while Greeks from ing to the ground, and they pared Constantinople, Jews from Palestine, their fingernails to resemble the talons and merchants from the far north all of a falcon. Even nuns dressed them- met at various centers and each had selves in such style for their journeys some influence on the language of to Rome on horseback. Abbesses took the others, although Latin was still pilgrimages with a retinue of servants. the language of the scholars and very They visited monasteries and abbeys advantageous for travelers as well. cn route to Rome, picked up the 1 Neuburger. Op. cit. Vol. 11, p. 9. latest fashions in food and clothing, 2 Encyc. Brit. 1929, Vol. xvn, Paulus and heard the freshest gossip. As a Diaconus. rule they went as far south as Monte Cassino to buy books, but a visit to doctors, not . The fee tables the Pope was the main object of the were much like those of former cen- journey. One of these abbesses, at the turies, and the penalties for death or end of this century, was Lisba, Abbess injury in surgical cases were as hor- of Bischofsheim1 on the Tauber, who rifying as in earlier times. If, for was so learned that she was often example, a patient died after an consulted by Charlemagne and his the who caused it Queen when they were at Aix. An- might forfeit her life, and her descend- other was Eadburg of Thanet, in Kent, ants to the seventh generation were England, who corresponded with Pope obliged to pay an indemnity to the Boniface, telling him of her visions. family of the deceased. Her letters are lost, but the Pope’s During this century the power of replies show that she must have been a the Popes was steadily increasing. forerunner of Dante and of the other Pepin, the king of the western peo- women like Hildegarde and Herrade ples in 754, made Pope Stephen 11 of Landsburg who had vivid, poetic the “visible head of the church.” imaginations. Among the “seers” Sarton says this act effectually di- was the Abbess Hildelith of Barking vided the Italian peninsula into the in England who saw impersona- kingdom of the Lombards, where tions of sin and suffering, and Desiderius and his daughter, Adel- souls like blackbirds, and fiery rivers, berger, were happily ruling (756-774), and a ferry of burning pitch over and the papal kingdom at the south. which souls passed to Paradise and In the time of Charlemagne, twenty the New Jerusalem. Some of the years later, it was necessary for him letters of these Abbesses were written to protect the papal from with silver or gold ink on purple the Lombards, and at the same time to parchment like the famous Gothic combine all the spare forces of the East- Gospels, the Codex Argenteus of the ern and Western kingdoms against sixth century. A certain nobleman the Arabs on every coast. In gratitude named Ealdhelm2 of the eighth cen- for this protection Pope Leo in placed tury, who wrote a treatise in praise of the iron crown of Theodolinde on the virginity, praised ten women by name head of Charlemagne, a .d . 800, and for such manuscripts. He says that thus was born the Holy Roman they “were not only scholars and Empire. Fortunately, Charlemagne gymnosophists but as busy as bees was sufficiently powerful to bring collecting materials for study, biblical, peace to Europe for a time, and he medical, philosophical, and historical. ” speedily established schools through- As for the more strictly medical or out his great kingdom where boys and practical women of this century we might study all the known arts know scarcely a name, but we find and sciences. He built hospitals and that all over Europe there were laws libraries, endowed monasteries where enacted for the medical profession manuscripts were copied, and en- which specifically mentioned women couraged the planting of herb-gardens. He had been a student at Monte 1 Tuker, M. A. R. and Malleson, Hope, Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Cassino and well knew the value of Rome. 1900, p. 80. medical books and the necessity for 2 Eckenstein. Op. cit., 1896, p. 45, Chap. 111. medical plants, so that in 820, six years after his death, the herbs of countries, but the Arabs eventually the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzer- made themselves at home and kept land, were famous as drugs which were the peace for nearly five hundred

F i g . 36. A C h a in e d L ib r a r y in H o l l a n d , T h i r t e e n t h C e n t u r y , S a in t W a l p u r g a ’s M o n a s t e r y . sold to “honest people” who were in years. Under the great Haroun al reality itinerant vendors, and by them Raschid, of Bagdad (763-809), a re- taken all over the world. Daremberg markable civilization sprang up in all believes that many original medical the Arab countries. Mosques were books were produced at St. Gall which built in every large city and attached sometime may again see the light of to these there was always a school and day. Alcuin of York (736-804), a a hospital, generally built in beautiful great friend and companion of Charle- style with the best of sanitation and magne, had been commissioned to the greatest comfort. In Bagdad the institute medical teaching in every medical school had six thousand pu- such monastery along with the ordi- pils, women as well as men, and the nary subjects, and thus was founded schools in Cairo, Kairouan, Cordova, the monastery of St. Albans in 794, not and Toledo were almost as important. far from London, where its schools Women were given practical courses and its library of chained books drew in and alchemy in order to students from all over Europe, espe- care for the Mohammedan women, for cially during the ninth century when midwives were naturally physicians Alfred was king. and in the harems. At Bagdad It is to be remembered that this however there was one especial man was the century when the Arabs began teacher of obstetrics, named Abul to be famous as medical students and Faragh. He had been educated at the translators and writers of medical Nestorian school in Persia, and having books. In 711 they conquered Spain, been one of the physicians of Charle- as they had already conquered Persia magne’s family he was summoned to and northern Africa. Settling in Spain, be a teacher at the Mohammedan however, was a longer and more school in Mesopotamia because of his difficult process than in the other great ability. Hence, being strong and self-reliant as well as the teacher of passed an excellent examination in obstetrics at this important school, he anatomy, the humors, astrology, ma- was the only man allowed to enter teria mcdica, and she was an expert the lying-in rooms in case the mid- in testing urine by the newest methods. wives needed a stronger hand in This may be just an old tale of the difficult labor cases. He always praised “Thousand and One Nights,” but at them for their own skill and they least it tells us that there must have were always grateful for his help. been slaves or free women who were The Arabs were famous translators as skilful as any man in the medical and copyists from either Latin or subjects usually studied, and what Greek, and the Jews were as busy as the subjects were. the Arabs in literary work although In this and the following centuries their Latin was “barbarous.”1 In there were several Arabians who wrote either case the libraries of the Arabs medical books for the general public. grew with leaps and bounds. That at Such a writer was Mesue (777-837), Cordova, within a hundred years, was son of a and a Christian. said to have two hundred and twenty- He was physician to one of the Caliphs four thousand books. Many of our of Bagdad. At his own house he medical terms were coined at that opened an academy of medicine, and time, such as alcohol, naphtha, cam- there he wrote the famous “Anti- phor, etc. dotarium” which at once became Unfortunately, the Arabs and Jews very popular because written in easy disliked and the study of language on such common topics as anatomy. Dissections were hateful to fevers, bloodletting, astrology, baths, them, but they did notice and record etc. This book became the basis the fact that the human uterus is not of all the books on these subjects for seven-parted or like that of a pig. many years. Mesue’s theory as to However, their statement made no the cause of disease was simple but difference in the usual teaching of somewhat original. He thought that anatomy, for Galen was not to be disease was a sort of putrefaction controverted, and after all, it was which bred flies and that the flies more interesting to them to translate caused the symptoms of the sickness. books in a quiet corner of the library It is not known what Mesue’s family than to listen to the complaints of the name was, for this was evidently a sick. pen-name, and in those days it was the A pertinent story from Haroun al fashion for authors to sign an assumed Raschid’s court (766-809) comes to name or to be anonymous. The absence us from several sources, quoted by of signatures to paintings and manu- George Saintsbury2 and it tells of a scripts or other expert work in slave at the court of the great Byzantine times is as noticeable as in Arab, who was so learned in medicine medicine; the work was the , that none of the wise men could find not the worker, and each workman anything in any medical author which seemed to delight in his own creations she could not recite by heart. She because they were intrinsically beauti- 1 Neuburger. Vol. 11, p. 47. ful or original. Evidently one of 2 Flourishing of Romance in the twelfth Mesue’s hobbies was his anesthetic and thirteenth Centuries. 1897, pp. 2-37. sponge. He called it his “consolation”; it contained poppy juice, mandrake, Rhazes (860-932). He is classified by and vinegar soaked up by a sponge, Garrison with , Aretaeus, heated and inhaled. He said it would and Sydenham, as “a clinician of cure the blues, drive away all pain, ability who described diseases with strengthen the patient’s optimism, understanding.” He had been a stu- and help a in labor. This dent at Bagdad, and he became the became a favorite two hundred years director of its largest hospital and or more later among the teachers at also court physician. He is said to Salerno. have written more than two hundred articles on medicine, astronomy, phi- Ninth Cent ury losophy and physiochemistry. The Then comes another Christian Arab, majority of these are lost, but from Johannitius (809-873), who also wrote those that remain we find that he a popular medical book called the knew the Greek, Arabic, Persian, and “Articella. ” This book, like that of Indian languages. He had travelled in Mesue, was mostly taken from Galen many countries, had collected books, but written in an easy style and was and had written an encyclopedia of all also a favorite for centuries among knowledge. Arabs, Jews, and Christians. We may Sudhoff says that Rhazes was the ask ourselves if these entertaining first to give us a book on pediatrics, books, written for the bedside practice the first to describe measles and small- of men and women may not have been pox, and the first to distinguish other written by women. Possibly women exanthematous diseases. He believed may have thought that their books in the curative effect of sunlight and would sell better if signed with a fresh air, and in every way was as man’s name.1 progressive as was possible in that The most famous writer of the century. There were sixty hospitals in ninth century was an Arab named Damascus when he lived there, all 1 Neuburger, Vol. n, p. 47, says that the under his jurisdiction. It is therefore Arabians copied and translated into bar- small wonder that he was able to barous Latin whatever they found. They diagnose certain diseases better than cared nothing for the rules of grammar, his predecessors who could not have mutilated names, corrupted technical terms, had his wide experience. made almost unintelligible transpositions in the text, and often confused the meaning so It is amusing to find Rhazes with that it is a wonder that historians have been all his wisdom and honors not a little able to make any sense out of the manu- jealous of the women doctors by whom scripts except by comparing many different he was surrounded. One of his books1 copies of the same work. It is sometimes has on its title page a sort of apology impossible to understand what the original or explanation as to reason “ writer intended to say. One historian tells us the why that in the ninth century there were one ignorant practitioners and common hundred Christian medical writers, three women may be more successful in pagans who worshipped the stars, three Jews curing certain complaints than bet- and five Mussulmans. Two hundred years ter informed physicians.” It is evident later the tables had turned and there were that sores were rankling in his breast only four Christian writers, seven Jews and the rest Mussulmans. See Withington, E. T., because of the beneficial treatment of Medical History from the Earliest Times, diseases of women and children by 1894. 1 Neuburger. Vol. 1, pp. 360-363. women doctors. He says, “If a doctor this workshop of the monks he could does not cure a patient quickly, a not find even a small remnant of a woman doctor is then called in and manuscript. The monks and copyists she gets the credit of the cure.” had been driven away before the army He politely acknowledges, however, of “infidels” who had disposed of that he had often learned new remedies everything left behind. A few scientific from women and herbalists . . . who books were taken away by the robbers had little knowledge of medicine but themselves, and thus saved, and it is great insight into the human body, possible that some others may have and from them too he had learned been smuggled into Salerno in that to try small doses of rather wild dash from the hill-top to the sea. than to use stronger remedies. He also It has also been thought that Salerno’s says that women doctors often succeed famous school was a direct result of by kindness and optimism without so this raid on Monte Cassino, but as we great presumption as men are wont to shall see later, the school at Salerno display, and that women have greater was distinctly a lay school, whereas humanity than men. Such fairness and the older school on the hill was frankness in Rhazes is certainly a monastic. Probably women had been delight, expecially when one considers allowed to study at the monastery, how many great affairs he had on especially when such liberal men were his mind. It was Rhazes who attended there as the famous Bishops, Des- to providing good drinking water iderius and Alfano.1 for the Muslim cities where hitherto However peaceful the large cities dead animals were supposed not to of the Arabs themselves may have harm any wells or streams, for any- been in the ninth and tenth centuries, thing wet was supposed to be harm- there was little peace in the rest of less. It is sad to find that despite his Europe after the days of Charlemagne. generosity and learning Rhazes died As the Saracens or Mohammedans blind and in poverty in 823. Sarton poured up from the south, so also the calls him the greatest clinician of poured down from the Islam, and we may be sure that if he north, both advancing over Europe had desired to ignore women doc- like huge stone rollers. And still tors he could have done as some other further to disrupt peace came a de- writers of the Middle Ages did, al- cided opposition to the rule of the though, as we have seen, the greatest popes in southern Italy. In 928, among them in every century either Theodora, a concubine of one of the wrote books for women or at least Roman senators as well as of the mentioned their work and remedies as reigning Pope, John x, with the help of value. of her children and others, attacked Unfortunately there is a dark side the papal palace, dragged the Pope to the picture of Arabic greatness. out and imprisoned him in Castle In a .d . 831 the Emir of Kairouan St. Angelo where he soon died. Then sacked the libraries and monasteries Theodora’s son was made Pope under of , and in 846 he destroyed the the name of John xi. This act shows library and part of the monastery the temper of the women of Italy at at Monte Cassino, near Naples. We 1 De Renzi, Salvatore. CoIIectio Salerni- remember that when Boccaccio visited tana. 1852-59, Vol. 1. that time. And not only were women It happened that one of the opponents obstreperous in Italy but also in of Cuchulinn received such injuries that England. When John Scot Erigena, every bone in his body was broken. He or the Irishman, was teaching at the was taken to a bone-setter of Ulster to be court of Alfred (849-901), his students, healed. The leech’s house had four wide- women as well as men, stabbed him to open doors to let the winds pass through freely. A stream of pure water also flowed death because they objected to his through the hall. The leech and his theology. His worst fault seems to assistants, many of them maidens, set all have been that he believed that the bones and made the patient com- creation was a process instead of one fortable on a bed of healing, and then solitary act.1 they (?) gave an eloquent and agreeable discourse to the audience which had Tenth Cen tu ry gathered to watch the proceedings.1 As this century was merging into In the meantime, while the Arabian the tenth we find a few interesting writers were copying texts, the Jewish “straws” to show where the wind was physicians, although “contraband lux- blowing in . Alfred Percival uries” according to Billings, were the Graves tells2 us that there was peace chief doctors of the royal families of in that country during most of the Europe.2 They were also eagerly sought ninth century. The people were super- and handsomely paid by princes and stitious, poetic, imaginative, and they merchants in every country. Naturally, were preparing for the Millennium by their methods, they gained the to the best of their ability. The prac- hatred of the Christian and Arab tical teachings of Patrick and Bridget doctors whose patients they treated. had been submerged in a sea of This led to the persecution of the tradition. The test of any diagnosis Jews by those of other sects, and was then to heal the disease quickly moreover the patience and gentle by any method, and therefore the spirit of the Jews told against them criterion of a good physician was “to at a time when war heroes were the cure the malady with expedition, to ideals of all men and women. However, let no after-consequence remain, and the large fees may have been a tempta- to name a diagnosis without pain.” tion to the physicians whether they Whether this diagnosis was correct were men or women, Jews, or Arabs, or or not made very little difference to Christians. We are told that one of the patient, for the treatment was the the Arab doctors received the equiva- same in any case. Graves (p. 138) tells lent of $750 for bleeding and purging us a story of a “leech” of this period the Commander of the Faithful twice to illustrate how the doctors and nurses did their work: 1 It is said that the Celtic Esculapius was 1 This theory was too revolutionary for named Diancecht, who lived a .d . 831-903. the people of the Middle Ages. At this time He had a son and daughter who excelled him the Abbey of St. Albans, where King Alfred in healing. Vida Latham (Med. Woman s J., established a medical school not far from 1917) says that their house was on the bank London, was England’s teaching center. of a stream, open to wind and sun, and Alfred’s was his tutor. furnished with heat, baths, etc. 2 Alfred Percival Graves, Irish Translations 2 Withington, E. T. Medical History from of the Ninth Century. 1927. the Earliest Times. 1894, p. 171. a year, and even less popular doctors a special anatomical organ to cure were given handsome presents by that organ. grateful patients. When one begins to study the Although in the tenth century med- history of materia medica it seems ical treatment was unscientific if amazing that people had sufficient judged by the standards of the twen- faith to adhere to the most ancient tieth century, it seems to be probable medical notions promulgated as late as that, since we know of only one, few the tenth century; but even in Morocco women doctors had heretofore em- today one finds these notions still in ployed magic and astrology to any existence, and the Leech Book of extent. We recall that either in the Bald written about a .d . 900 is quite time of Celsus or during the third or as good as anything now in use among fourth century a .d ., there had been the uneducated Arabs of Marrakech or a magician named Cleopatra1 who Fez. was also an alchemist, but she evi- This Leech Book1 of Bald is an dently had few women successors. Anglo-Saxon Materia Medica in three Something tangible has always ap- volumes, in fact an early encyclopedia. pealed to women doctors and their The first volume is an alphabetically patients, and as there was generally arranged formulary of remedies, the some new remedy in the market or a second is on internal diseases, and reversion to an old one, there was no the third is a concise account of herbs, lack of practical methods to employ. charms, and prayers. Leech was the old Just at this time, however, there was a name for doctor, and Bald may have new theory of dosage on the similia been the name of the author.2 The similibus curantur plan, to be used book was written in the common with certain prayers so that it was language for the common people of only necessary to know where there England. Women among the Teutonic was a pain and then to find its counter- and Celtic peoples had always been part. For instance, the lungs of a fox famous for their medical knowledge, were given for a cough, its brains for and this new book arranged their epilepsy, its fresh muscles for anemia, material in an easy form. Whether at and plants of the approximate shape of home or on the battle fields, they had their women surgeons and phy- sicians to care for the sick or wounded 1 Sarton has notes on this subject, vol. i, PP- 238, 339. men, women or children. The pagans Costa ben Luca, of Baalbek, in the ninth of the Eddas, and the Celtic Chris- century, prepared an epistle concerning tians, too, had traditions of a medical incantations for the Caliph of Musta, in goddess Eir, and another named Eaba which he says that incantations and amulets according to Vida Latham, who were help those who believe in them. He had a patient who was bewitched, and he cured her quite the equals of any of the healing by showing her a passage from the book of gods of Greece, Egypt and Rome, so Cleopatra, the magician, where it is written 1 Payne, J. F. The Fitzpatrick Lectures. that such a patient must have her body 1903. Neuburger. Vol. n, p. 18. rubbed with the gall of a crow mixed with Cockayne, Rev. O. Leechdoms, Wort- sesame oil. The patient was cured at once by cunning and Starcraft. 1865, Vol. 2. this means. See Thorndike, Lynn. Magic and 2 Lynn Thorndike suggests that a Jew, Experimental Science. 1923, Vol. 1, Chap. named Jesu Haly, of Bagdad, may have been XXVIII. its author. that in all probability there had never written on cloth and worn by the been a time when the medical women patient were all considered useful. of the west of Europe had been looked For pains of labor the names of down upon by the men, but rather the Virgin Mary or of Lazarus were the contrary was the case. to be written in wax and bound A few examples from the Leech beneath the foot of the patient—the Book will show us what sort of name of Lazarus being used because remedies these medical women used, he came quickly out of the tomb when and nevertheless how dependent they called. Sores and eczema were exor- were upon magical phrases. For bleed- cised by calling upon Solomon, and ing hemorrhoids: Longinus was mentioned in connection with a stitch in the side. For fever Delve round a plant of celandine root several herbs were gathered, such as and take it with thy two hands turned fever-few, fennel, and plantain, then upwards, and sing over it nine pater- nosters, and at the ninth, at Deliver us boiled with holy water, and the names from evil, snap it up and take from that of the Apostles repeated along with a plant and others that may be there a little hodgepodge of Arabic words denoting cupful of the juice and let him drink it. ancient idols. It will soon be well with him. Could anything be more absurd than these remedies? It would hardly For the delirious: seem possible, although even after a Gather bishop’s root, lupin, boneset, thousand years there are still intelli- polypodium-fern, corn-cockles and ele- gent people who believe in such campane, sing the names of the and extraordinary nonsense as the possi- a pater-noster thrice about these herbs, bility of preventing rheumatism by then take them to church and sing again wearing a rabbit’s foot or dried potato the names and twelve Masses in honor of or a “cramp ring,” or in curing a the twelve apostles. pain by having a nonsensical “oxygen- For a large boil: ator” tied to the patient’s foot or hand. As for the midwifery of this century Dig up a dock, jerk it from the ground there is little to say except that it to the tune of a pater-noster, take five had degenerated abominably from slices of it and seven pepper-corns, mix the time of Cleopatra the gynecologist, them thoroughly while singing twelve and Soranus. There was no longer times the miserere and gloria and pater- any idea of turning the infant, either noster, then pour it all over with wine, by podalic or cephalic version. Often and at midnight drink the dose and wrap thyself up warm. the ignorant midwives waited until the infant and the mother were both Some of their remedies were to be dead before extracting the child with dug or cut at a certain time of the the fillet and hook. Gynecology con- moon, others were to be stabbed with sisted mainly in the use of poisonous a knife, in silence, and left while remedies for sterility, and barbarous the gatherer went to church to pray, operations for procuring , and then returned to take it and instead of the tampons and soothing mix it with moss from a crucifix. remedies of the earlier times. Holy water from a baptismal font, There are still, however, native wax from an ear, pious formulae doctors in Egypt and Morocco, de- scendants of the educated Arabs of the these same “infidels” were the best ninth century who depend upon the medical writers of Europe, and in remedies of the . addition to those already mentioned, Magical stones are used today which the Jew Donnolo (born a .d . 913) are said to have been “tested” before should have his name recorded, for being used for certain complaints. though not an Arab born, he was Painful spots on the surface of the kidnapped as a child by the Saracens body are tatooed in peculiar designs and taken to Palermo to be educated. while the so-called doctor mutters There he learned both Arabic and some jargon over the patient.1 The Latin, studied all the sciences, and midwives still believe in the expectant finally escaped to Salerno, where the method of watchful waiting, or else, medical school was in its infancy. He while the patient squats on the floor, was quite a prodigy and soon became a the scratches and pulls on friend of the noted Christians who the baby. The will of Allah determines went to Salerno either for its healing life or death, and nothing can change springs or its medical school. Here the fate of the patient. Niketas was copying Soranus once The old teachings of Hippocrates more and illustrating his manuscript and Herophilus have thus been super- with nearly a hundred free hand seded among the Arabs of our time drawings, and here Bishop Peter 111, by native traditions that have nothing and Bishop Alfanus, “prudentissimus to do even with Trotula of Salerno et nobilissimus clericus” were already of the eleventh or the great midwives teaching medicine. Donnolo, owing of of the sixteenth and seven- to his acquaintance with several lan- teenth centuries. In the market place guages, became also a teacher of in Marrakech and Fez the traveler materia medica, and his “Anti- today may see Arab so-called doctors dotarium” was popular for years be- squatting on the ground while apply- cause of its condensed list of drugs, ing filthy remedies to sore eyes, giving only about one hundred in all, mostly goat’s dung pills to sick patients, and of vegetable origin, as against nearly adjusting very inadequate splints to a seven hundred which at the same time broken bone. Fortunately, the Doctor- were being recorded by the Japanese. esse Legey and her assistants from Sarton (p. 682) believes that to such France are displacing the natives and men as Donnolo who wrote in Hebrew, are carrying on maternity hospitals and his contemporaries who wrote in and clinics for these poor and benighted Latin and Greek and Arabic, was due people whose ancestors were once the the founding of the great cosmopolitan medical lights of Europe. school of Salerno, where, as we shall While we do not forget that it was see later, women as well as men be- to subdue these Arabians, the Sara- longed to the staff of teachers. cenic followers of Mohammed, that There is one other Mohammedan the crusades were instituted, we must writer, perhaps the most important remember that in the tenth century of all, whose books were used by the medical profession for centuries, very 1 See the writings of La Doctoresse Legey, published by the Institut des Hautes-fitudes nearly superseding Galen. This was Marocaines. Also her Contes et Legendes Ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna. Populaire du Maroc, 1926. He was a great scholar, born near Bokhara in a .d . 980. In his fifty- plans did give opportunity for the seven years of life he wrote one growth of the Salerno medical school hundred and five books in Arabic as an international institution. and Persian, elaborated and reclassi- In the meantime at Braunschweig, fied the works of Galen and Aristotle, in the northern part of Germany, and although never much of a practi- there lived certain learned women, tioner and hating the sight of blood, one of whom, Hrosvitha, is historically he was able to keep a score of copyists famous and as worthy to sit among busy while he went about in very the immortals as any of the Arabian beautiful clothes, and led a licentious writers. These women were as far life. Such was the man whose works removed from the wizardry and super- seemed so perfect and so final that stition of the Anglo-Saxon women, and they discouraged all original experi- from a reliance on the truth of the mentations and investigations for hun- tales of Merlin and the troubadours dreds of years.1 To the women doctors of France, as they were from the of all those years his books were alchemy of the Saracens and the precious, for they were easy to under- distractions caused by the wars of stand, easy to memorize, and pleasing the Holy Roman Empire. One of in style. Avicenna offered them a the most noted of these women far wider range of medicines than was Hrosvitha, a Benedictine nun Donnolo had done, and that was of Gandersheim, “illustris et clarissima important in an age when there were virgo et monacalis” (935-1000) who no specific remedies, and when the wrote religious dramas modelled on more complex the nostrums the better Terence, Vergil, Horace and Plautus. they were liked by the patients. In the midst of her pedantry she While Salerno’s medical school in gathered herbs for medicine and trav- the early part of the tenth century eled about among the rich and poor, was in its infancy men and women of caring for the sick.1 all nationalities met there to study and Sarton2 says that Hrosvitha “em- practice medicine in perfect equality bodied the science, mathematics, liter- and harmony, but the papal king- ature and drama of her age.” Her six dom was having troublesome times. religious comedies were anticipations Thieves and assassins roamed the of the later miracle plays, and her streets of Rome, and the court was “Carmen de gestis Oddonis,” (i.e. growing more and more dissolute. the history of Otto 1, the Great, The great Hildebrand conceived a died May 7, 973) was comparable brilliant idea of reforming the priest- to the English Chronicle written for hood, emancipating church and state, or by Alfred the Great who died and uniting the Greeks, Latins and in 901. She was the daughter of Jews in a southern kingdom under Heinrich, duke of Bavaria, and cousin the led by Robert Guiscard, of this Otto 1. It is said that she read brother of Greek and Latin and “wrote both of England. We shall see in a fu- by divine grace.”3 ture chapter why these schemes did 1 Crump and Jacobs. Op. cit., p. 167. not work, but for the time being, 2 Sarton, G. Op. cit., p. 658. and under the Normans, Hildebrand’s 3 Eckenstein, Lena. Op. cit., p. 162. (Otto 1, the Great, was crowned with the iron crown 1 Sarton, pp. 709-711. of Theodolinda in Rome, 926.) It is a pleasure to visualize this Bavaria (crowned in 1002) retired to nun Hrosvitha as she went about a monastery and gave her time and on her peaceful mission among the strength to the sick. She became a suffering mortals in the neighborhood Benedictine nun in 1024, and at of her monastery, returning to her once founded the monastery of Bam- cell after evensong to write her history berg. There is a story that when she and dramas. Although she never be- was accused of having immoral re- came an abbess, we are told that she lations with a man of the court taught medicine, prepared remedies, she walked bare-footed over burning and treated patients like any other plowshares to prove her innocence. woman doctor, besides attending to Whether or not her feet or her literary work in her free hours. We reputation were scorched the story may only regret that she never wrote shows us a vivid picture of the times. anything that has as yet come to light We also have a word picture of on medical topics and much of her another nun who, while having an history is lost, but when the countries ecstatic vision, had self-control suf- all about Braunschweig were in tumult ficient to keep the fish she was frying the monastery at Gandersheim was an from burning. And so we find these oasis of peaceful study. This monastery women always very human, often and others like it were the forerunners very benevolent, and frequently gen- of our women’s colleges, and were well erous to a fault, doing the humble endowed. Their standard of education duties of physician and nurse in the was high, their teachers came from midst of this troublesome century, aristocratic families, and they had no when, by command of Saint Vladimir lack of pupils, for no vows were the Terrible, the Russians were forced obligatory for either students or teach- to adopt Christianity at the point of ers although they were Christians. the sword, and Constantine vii was Many of them, however, became compelling the people of his vast abbesses in due time. kingdom not only to keep the peace Such a woman was Mathilda, abbess but to study art and literature, and of the monastery at Quedlinburg, to build great churches, while at the who ruled the whole empire during the same time the Bulgarians were swarm- infancy of her nephew, Otto hi , ing into Greece, and the into grandson of Otto i; she even raised an England, and France and Spain army and defeated the invading were undergoing continuous internal Wends in 983. She also supplied revolutions. Hrosvitha with considerable material for her historical work. But even Ele ve nt h Cen tu ry before Hrosvitha’s birth, and a genera- As the tenth century merged into tion before Mathilda, we find that the eleventh we find the medical Maud, the empress of Germany, queen Arabs still copying Galen, disbelieving of Henry the Fowler, the first Saxon in the efficacy of holy relics as remedies king (crowned 919), was spending for disease, trying experiments with all her money on the poor and sick new chemicals, and translating books “whom she tended with pious fervor. ” unceasingly from one language into And Cunegunde, somewhat later the another, thus preserving the historic widow of Henry 11, the emperor of documents which became the first textbooks for the new medical school treatment. In her historical work she at Salerno, on the west coast of Italy. gives us many an interesting bit of In , moreover, a new medical information as to medical practice treatment by was de- during her father’s life, as well as veloping, by means of which medicines sidelights about the dress and homes were done away with entirely, and the of the people. We find it pointed out, body divided into more than three for instance, that Robert Guiscard was hundred parts from each of which a tall and handsome and, like women, devil of disease might be exorcised. he wore his long blonde hair in ringlets This theory, fortunately, did not under his helmet. Women’s caps were affect the students of the West where modeled on these helmets, and as the “Canon of Avicenna” was becom- women wore their cloaks in the same ing the great textbook of medicine, fashion as those of the men it was as much prized as the “Almagest” difficult at a distance to distinguish of Ptolemy (second century a .d .) men from women. Jewelry and amu- on mathematics, astronomy and geog- lets, bright-colored undergarments, raphy, written eight hundred years and sleeves patterned on those of earlier. When, therefore, a student of soldiers were worn by men and women the early eleventh century wished alike. to study medicine he or she studied The houses of the people in Con- with a small group under a famous stantinople were more comfortable master in his or her own country, or than those in the country, but even went in crowds to larger schools in the time of Anna Comnena they organized on the plan of Plato’s had no chimneys and no window academy, such as that at Salerno, glass; their beds were bunks along which was a great and easily accessible the walls, or they slept on straw port for merchants from all over the mats on the floor of the hall. Smoke world. Thus this became in a modern from the central fire found exit some- sense of the word the first coeduca- how from the roof, but at times the tional medical school in western eyes of the family and their guests Europe, as in fact it was the beginning must have wept involuntarily from of all scientific education in medicine. the smoke that lingered down be- At the end of the eleventh century, low. We have already seen that however, there was also a medical the Empress Theodora, in the sixth school in Constantinople where Anna century, had installed great cisterns Comnena (1083-1148), daughter of of drinking water for the city, but Alexis 1, studied all that was then as yet there were no sewers to carry taught of medicine and the liberal off the waste into the sea. arts. Like Hrosvitha she too wrote a Such, then, were the conditions of great history, an elaborate work in life in most of the civilized countries fifteen volumes, of her own father’s of Europe. They force us to realize reign (1069-1118). She also practiced that the Middle Ages were by no medicine in the hospitals and orphan means an advance in comfort and asylums of Constantinople, and in civilization over the old Greek and her father’s last illness she presided Roman times, although women in at the daily medical consultations certain respects were regarded more of the doctors as to his condition and highly than in the time of the Roman Empire. They were literary, and prob- for the purpose of caring for sick ably more interested in charitable pilgrims on their way to the Holy work, and much more active in med- City.1 This latter “order” was founded ical practice than before. It is seldom by a certain Gerard (1040-1120), that they are referred to as midwives who became a guardian of the hospital or nurses, but usually as physicians at Jerusalem. The Order of the or surgeons and we may not doubt sisters, called the Beguines, was that their work was appreciated. founded in Flanders in the same There was a poet Saint Bernard1 century, and officially recognized by of Cluny, who in 1108 wrote: the Church under Pope Innocent 111 I am Iyght as any roe in 1216. This Order is still in existence, To praise womene wher that I goo. and its nursing sisters still visit pa- tients in the hospitals and in their And again: homes all over , conspicuous A woman is a worthy thyng, in their black gowns and white bon- They do the washe and do the wrynge, nets but quiet and serene in their LuIIay! LuIIay! she do the synge, little community houses.2 And yet she has but care and woo. Finally, in the eleventh century we But further, as an indication of again find examples of queens and woman’s universal desire for peace royal women to whom the study of at that time, we find the following medicine was a pleasure as well as beautiful lines from his pen: to the common people. Such a queen Yes, peace! for war is needless,— was Gisela, wife of Conrad 11, who Yes, calm, for storm is past,— was crowned head of the Holy Roman And goal from finished labor, Empire in 1024. Gisela is said to have And anchorage at last.2 1 We recall that in the early centuries of This great Bernard of Cluny built Christianity, Fabiola and other Christian many hospitals wherever he went on women built hospitals in the Holy Land. his singing journeys, preaching recon- When Godfrey de Bouillon visited Palestine ciliation and happiness through Chris- in 1099, soon to be its king, he found these hospitals in excellent condition and the tian methods. Like him was the patients well cared for, even though the Italian Lanfranc (born in Pavia, 1005) Hospitallers themselves were hungry and who had studied medicine and built ragged. There was a noble Roman woman hospitals wherever he could. His hos- named Agnes at the head of the hospital of pital in Canterbury was the best in Saint Mary Magdalene. She had a corps of England, opened in well-trained women nurses under her. These 1084, the ruins were the Sisters of Saint John. They nursed of which are still visible. Mohammedans as tenderly as Christians. It was about this time that the great Later they built a hospital at Valetta, Malta, nursing “orders” were established, as which is still in existence, and there, during well as the order of the Knights of the great war of 1914-1918, scores of British Saint John of Jerusalem organized medical women superintended the medical work, performed surgical operations on 1 Bernard of Cluny wrote many hymns, wounded soldiers, treated their diseases, and such as “Jerusalem the Golden,” etc. acted as pathologists, radiologists, etc. 2 Translations by John Mason Neale from 2 Les Beguines de Bruges, Abbe Hoornaert, “Theodora Phranza, or the Fall of Con- 1924. Bede, p. 215, mentions their patron stantinople,” 1903, and from Neale’s trans- Begu as a nun in a .d . 680. She was also called ation of Bernard’s “De Contemptu Mundi.” Bega and Bees. held clinics at her castle gate every write medical books on gynecology day, and she attended patients in which Soranus and Moschion and the hospitals as well. Another medical Aetius and others used freely in their queen was Margaret of , niece of and wife of the great Malcolm. At the age of twenty-four she was the mother of eight children, but she found time to treat the sick in the hospitals or in their homes, washing their wounds, giving them their medicines, and superintending all the arrangements of the hospitals. Malcolm could neither read nor write, but he admired the jeweled bindings on his wife’s books and presented her with many new ones. Margaret died in 1093, and after she was sainted her bones were taken to the Escorial in Spain, where they are said to have worked many miracles of healing. Her daughter, Maud or Matilda, wife of Henry 1 of England, was also one of the most learned women of the century, and she inherited her mother’s love for own compilations. At the same time, the study of medicine and for the from the fact that we know so few personal care of the sick. Whether or names of outstanding women doctors not these women ever officiated in we may infer that because they did midwifery cases is not known, but not keep their names before the Rhodius tells us of certain women public it was because they were too “quae difficilem partum expertae busy with a medical practice, such an sunt.” He also tells us of a Joanna ordinary vocation as not to be worth Serrana who wrote as follows: “Jam mentioning any more than it would vero nonnae et ipsae obstetrices re- have been necessary to call atten- mediis et carminibus possunt portas tion to the work of an ordinary exsuscitare. ” mother. It was for such quiet women, Thus we find from our study of the therefore, that many books on gyne- medical men and women and their cology were written, just as at a later surroundings during the Dark Ages age many other books such as that of that, like the little coral insects, Rosslin on obstetrics were compiled they were unconsciously building up for the midwives. The study of the a great island upon which the super- trivium and quadrivium, music, arith- structure of the medical school of metic, grammar, logic, etc. were the Salerno, the Hippocratic city, could foundations for all vocations, but be founded as the basis of scientific even if studied freely by women they medicine. We have also found that alone of course could not have made so there were several women who did good a doctor as the practical study of patients in a sick room or clinic or inspection of the urine. To them fever hospital. While monks were trying to was regular or intermittent, and it cure some diseases by prayers and needed no name. The patient died or holy relics, practical women were was cured by more or less nauseating able to bring comfort to the cur- remedies taken with good faith. Cer- able and incurable with hot com- tain symptoms were to be treated presses, soothing drinks, and anesthetic according to Galen, others accord- sponges. It was an old saying that ing to the specific rules of the Church, where philosophy went out medicine but in any case we may infer that the came in to fill its place. women doctors were ready and willing Hence it seems evident that from to attend to the petty details of the the beginning of history to the twelfth sickroom with far more patience than century there never was a century in is usually shown by men, and up to which women were not treating their the end of the eleventh century, as we patients not only by the same methods have seen, no man would have cared as they were being treated by men to take an obstetric case, even if asked, doctors but also much more atten- with its weary hours of waiting and tively and intelligently and effectively. watching, except at the occasional Both men and women made a diagnosis urgent call of a midwife who needed in the same way,—by the appearance an extra pair of strong arms for a of the patient, by the pulse, and by the short time in an emergency.

[Redi: Opere. Napoli, 1778.]