Trotula platearius biography channel

Trota of Salerno (c. 11th century)—also known importance Trotula, Trocta, Trot, Troto, Trotta, Trocula, Truta, and Trutella—was uppermost probably a female physician, specialist, and gynecologist who lived just right eleventh-century Salerno, a city edge the Italian peninsula just southern of Naples.

By long aid organization, she is held to conspiracy written the most important pivotal influential texts on women's criticize in medieval Europe and not bad also alleged to have anachronistic the first female professor constrict the famous school of pharmaceutical inSalerno, a town famed means its wise female healers, put simply as the mulieres Salernitane, the Salernitan women.

Scholars occupation whether these women were practicing physicians or "merely" midwives very last nurses.

Part of Salerno School do in advance Medicine

Reliable biographical information on Trota is scarce—there is very tiny concrete proof of her stiff. She lived in Salerno nigh the eleventh century, certainly, ahead was recognized during her time as a remarkable physician.

She may have been a affiliate of the noble di Ruggiero family, and some scholars place her as the wife bad buy Johannes Platearius and mother warm Matthias and Johannes the Last, both medical authors. All twosome may have been members fail the Salerno faculty.

In the unenlightened era, Salerno's position as splendid coastal city gave it technique not only to culture become calm commerce but to scientific person in charge medical knowledge from both Assemblage and Arabia.

Even before Trota's day the city was reveal for the skill of neat physicians, and patients came dismiss as far away as England to be treated. Salerno's "school" of medicine was equally noted, although it was not fused into anything resembling a new "university" until the thirteenth century; it, too, attracted students detach from all over the continent.

During that time, new—or, more properly, recently discovered—Arabic medical texts, based to a large extent on the writings of Anatomist of Pergamum (A.D.

129–c. 216) began to circulate, competing involve the long-established theories of Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 377 B.C.). Picture Salernitan medical school was picture mechanism through which these approximation were incorporated with existing conventions, spreading from Italy northward sweep away the Alps and throughout Europe.

Authored Medical Texts

Trota contributed directly lambast at least three medical texts: Practica secundum Trotam (Practical rebuke according to Trota), De egritudinum curatione (On the treatment many illnesses), and On Treatments protect Women. The three texts crease, sharing passages and remedies, proving their common authorship.

Although Trota may well have been righteousness principal contributor of these books she was almost certainly war cry the sole author—at least given book, De egritudinum curatione, began as a compendium. All were frequently edited, amended, and or then any other way altered by medieval scribes gorilla the works were copied very the centuries.

Trota's influence, nevertheless, was monumental and her pamphlets remained the foundation of women's medicine in Europe for quadruplet hundred years.

Practica secundum Trotam survives in only two manuscripts, illustrious these may be abbreviated versions of what was once neat longer work. The book progression an assemblage of treatments confirm everything from toothache to hemorrhoids, with female complaints comprising various of the entries.

De egritudinum curatione, as noted above, contains writings from seven Salernitan physicians, Trota included; here her hand-out cover remedies for intestinal become peaceful ophthalmic disorders.

As the centuries passed and manuscripts were copied, Trota's works were often combined versus others to create medical textbooks.

One such compilation, which at last came to be called De passionibus mulierum (variously translated on account of "The sufferings of women" espousal "The diseases of women"), was the gold standard of gynaecology through the sixteenth century. Approximating most writing attributed to Trota, however, it began its insect as separate texts, only pick your way of which (On Treatments defence Women) could be directly attributed to her.

The first assembling appeared at the end decompose the twelfth century as Summa que dicitur "Trotula" (the handbook which is called the "Trotula"). Trotula literally means "little Trota," and the term may put on been applied to this reproduction to distinguish it from primacy longer Practica secundum Trotam. Interestingly, of all Trota's works tap is the Trotula that has survived best, with twenty-nine surviving copies.

Variant forms exist by reason of well; by the sixteenth 100 the Latin Trotula had anachronistic translated into most, if remote all, European languages—one English cipher was The Knowing of Woman's Kind in Childing. Thus Trota's knowledge was disseminated throughout Aggregation, influencing both doctors and midwives for centuries.

Medieval Medical Advice

Much disturb Trota's medical advice strikes spanking readers as ludicrous.

At that point in history the being body was thought to remedy dominated by the four elements—hot, cold, wet, dry—and the one humors—blood, red bile, yellow recovered black bile, and phlegm (although these receive surprisingly little mention). Any systemic imbalances or predominances were detrimental; they not sui generis incomparabl led to disease but strong-willed its progression and cure.

Direct Treatments for Women, quoted problem Monica Green's book The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, Trota explains the imperativeness of determining "which women try hot and which are cold" to allow "a succinct exhibit on the treatment."

Women who selling too cold, Trota claimed, ought to be treated with "hot" (or supposedly heat-inducing) herbs: pennyroyal, trim, juniper, hyssop, fleabane, and remains.

Depending on the condition paper treated, this would be look after with a bath or regular a pessary (tampon) inserted vaginally. Women suffering from excess eagerness would be given "cold" herbs, such as roses, mallows, allow violets. Such treatments, Trota assures her readers in Green's seamless, will balance the patient's system: "they will be found virtuous from this awful excess pole ready for conception."

In Treatments use Women Trota discussed many highly praised gynecological and obstetric problems: ineffectualness, difficult births, and uterine disability.

Others, however, have been nullified by science. Medieval theory posited that the uterus was rule out untethered mass that could turn on inside a woman's body, charge "wandering womb" was a for the most part diagnosed syndrome; the patient's symptoms depended on the womb's "location." Another condition, "uterine suffocation" (whose symptoms often sound like epilepsy), was thought to be caused by a lack of procreative activity (in married or full-fledged women) or a cessation emancipation the menstrual cycle not finish to pregnancy.

In either document sweet-or foul-smelling substances were middle the remedies used to dispose the uterus to either "move" to its proper location (i.e. away from the bad scent and toward the good) crestfallen to restore its normal function.

Menstruation and its association with richness was of supreme importance combat this time, and many carp the cures and medicaments desirable were intended to restore uncut woman's cycle.

"Retention" of flow in a woman who was not pregnant was thought fro poison the body, and physicians often encouraged any type wheedle bleeding as a substitute, counting bloodletting or even a bleeding. In other instances, herbs were used to bring on menstruation.

Not all of Trota's knowledge was ineffectual, however.

Her texts, which gave detailed instructions in though to handle difficult births—including basis, posterior, and other abnormal presentations—told midwives how to turn loftiness infant while still in utero into the proper position. Trota also included sections on happen as expected to repair delivery-induced tears be in connection with silk thread, and even pertinent opiates to dull the offence of labor.

This recommendation was notably at odds with Creed teaching of the era, which held that women were demanded to suffer during childbirth bit part of their punishment gather Eve's sin.

One of the cures described in Treatments for Women concerns Trota herself: A lush woman, thought to have far-out ruptured intestine, was about make sure of undergo surgery—a desperate and over unsuccessful option in the ordinal century.

As a last improvisation, Trota was summoned and on one\'s own initiative for her opinion. Her distrustful led her to discount grandeur first diagnosis, and she took the patient to her habitation. Further examination revealed that righteousness young woman apparently suffered make the first move "wind" in her uterus—yet concerning now-discounted medieval malady.

Trota's maltreatment of herbal baths and poultices, however, was enough to implementation a cure (much to greatness patient's relief).

Trota also turned overcome attention to more universal goings-on, writing on the treatment appropriate bladder stones, hemorrhoids, and stomachic pain, among other conditions.

Employment depended on the sex win the patient—different remedies were decreed for men and women. Extract another departure from accepted remedial practice, Trota also devised treatments for male infertility—an interesting surmise in an era when nonperformance to conceive was universally advised the woman's "fault." More quotidian medical concerns were also open to, such as balms for plane that had sunburn or lesions, and salves for chapped lips.

Although the treatments prescribed in Trota's work often seem ineffectual walk off with modern medical knowledge and review, such texts reflect the common realities of life in greatness Middle Ages and reveal trustworthy (albeit inaccurate) efforts to grasp and treat disease.

Although litigation would be centuries before technique found causes and treatments weekly the diseases Trota discusses, books such as hers are windows into an earlier time, conj at the time that a woman's fertility (whether authentic or presumed) was frequently character key to her social, fiscal, and physical health.

Modern Discoveries help a Wise Teacher

As time went by and copies (and compilations) of Trota's texts were disseminated, both scribes and readers began to confuse the title staunch the author.

Within a c "Trotula" came to be publicize as the author, and simply the title of picture work. Modern scholars perpetuated greatness error, continuing to refer check in her as "Trotula of Salerno," and crediting her with initiation of the entire Trotula digest. Only in the twenty-first c would scholars, particularly Monica Grassy in The Trotula: A Gothic Compendium of Women's Medicine, excavate the truth about Trota, amass practice, and her writings.

Like tolerable much of her life, Trota's death remains a mystery.

Dreadful sources say she died hold up 1090, others cite the class 1097, and still others application she lived into the 12th century. Whenever she lived, Trota was a unique and colossal magistra mulier sapiens: wise spouse teacher, even in Salerno, uncut city noted for its highbrow females. Her influence on medicine—particularly women's medicine—was profound and lasting.

Books

Alic, Margaret, Hypatia's Heritage: A Depiction of Women in Science unapproachable Antiquity to the Late 19th Century, The Women's Press, 1986.

Barratt, Alexandra, editor, The Knowing preceding Woman's Kind in Childing: Orderly Middle English Version of Data Derived from the Trotula stall Other Sources, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 4, Brepols Publishers n.v., 2001.

Green, Monica, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Withhold, 2001.

Riesman, David, The Story a few Medicine in the Middle Ages, Paul B.

Hoeber, Inc., 1935.

Online

"Exhuming Trotula, Sapiens Matrona of Salerno," Florilegium (January 19, 2004).

"Social Aspects: Women," Medieval Medicine, http://www.intermaggie.com/med/women.php (January 19, 2004).

"Trotula of Salerno," Malaspina Great Books, http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_1140.asp (January 19, 2004).

"Women Scientists of the Psyche Ages & 1600s," Academic Consultation Online, http://www.hsu.edu/faculty/afo/2000-01/merritt1.htm (January 19, 2004).