WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 277 



monks, and especially for priests or monks not too well 

 born." 1 



In the instances just quoted, as well as those mentioned 

 by Homer and Euripides, the writers do no more than 

 faithfully reflect conditions which then obtained, and 

 truthfully report what were the occupations of women 

 when their status was so different from what it is to-day. 

 But, fortunately, we do not have to rely on works of the 

 imagination for our knowledge respecting the women prac- 

 titioners of the healing art, either during the Homeric 

 period or during that which intervened between the down- 

 fall of Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance. For the 

 history of medicine during medieval times affords too many 

 examples of women who became famous for their knowl- 

 edge of medicine, as well as for their success in surgical 

 and medical practice, to leave any doubt about the matter. 

 Besides this, we have still the writings of many of these 

 woman, and are thus able to judge of their competency in 

 those branches of knowledge on which they shed so great 

 luster. 



One of the most noted of them was the Benedictine ab- 

 bess, St. Hildegard, of Bingen on the Rhine, who was emi- 



i That the Germans, at the time under discussion, regarded learn- 

 ing as having an effeminating effect on men is well illustrated by 

 the following characteristic anecdote: "When Amasvintha, a very 

 learned woman who was a daughter of the Ostrogoth King, Theodoric, 

 selected three masters for the instruction of her son, the people 

 became indignant. ' Theodoric/ they exclaimed, 'never sent the 

 children of the Goths to school, learning making a woman of a man 

 and rendering him timorous. The saber and the lance are sufficient 

 for him.' " Procopius, De Bella GotUco, I, 2, Leipsic, 1905. 



If we may judge by a letter from Pace to Dean Colet, the noted 

 classical scholar and founder of St. Paul's school in London, such 

 views found acceptance in England as late as the time of More and 

 Erasmus. For we are told of a British parent who expressed his 

 opinion on the education of men in these words: "I swear by God's 

 body I'd rather that my son should hang than study letters. The 

 study of letters should be left to rustics. " 



