284 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



Athens of the two Sicilies, was her boundless liberality 

 toward scholarship and culture regardless of sex. For. 

 with a chivalrous admiration for intellect, wherever found, 

 and with a sense of intellectual justice that has put to 

 shame all medical schools outside of Italy, until less than 

 fifty years ago, the school of Salerno was the first to throw 

 open its portals to women as well as men, and give to an 

 admiring world a number of women those celebrated 

 mulieres Salernitance who were eminent not only as physi- 

 cians, but also as professors of the theory and practice of 

 medicine. For this reason, if for no other, it can be truly 

 affirmed that ' ' No school of medicine in any age or country, 

 if only for this, can ever over-peer her in renown; and, 

 even as formerly in the universities of Europe, at the bare 

 mention of the name of the learned Cujacius, every scholar 

 instinctively uncovered himself, so at the very name of 

 Salernum, the fount and nurse of rational medicine, every 

 physician should recall her memory 'with mute thanks and 

 secret ecstasy' as among the most spotless and venerated 

 chapters in the history of his art." 1 



The most noted professor and successful practitioner 

 among the women of Salerno was Trotula, wife of the dis- 

 tinguished physician, John Platearius, and a member of the 

 old noble family of the Ruggiero. She flourished during 

 the eleventh century and enjoyed a reputation as a physi- 

 cian that was not inferior to that of the most noted doctors 

 of her time. Besides occupying a chair in the school of 

 medicine and having an extensive practice, she was the 

 author of many works on medicine which had a great 

 vogue among her contemporaries. Some of them, especially 

 those relating to diseases of her own sex, 2 were published 



1 See Storia Documentata della Scuola Medico, di Salerno, lit. sup., 

 p. 474 et seq., and p. Ixxvi et seq. of Appendix; also Ordronaux, 

 ut sup., p. 16. 



2 Probably her most noted work is the one which bears the title 

 De Morbis Mulierum et Eorum Cura The Diseases of Women and 

 Their Cure, 



