WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 285 



several times after the invention of printing, and many 

 manuscript copies of her works are still found in various 

 libraries of Europe. But she did not confine her practice 

 to the diseases of women. She was also well versed in gen- 

 eral medicine and exhibited, besides, as her works testify, 

 marked skill as a surgeon in many cases that would even 

 now be considered as peculiarly difficult of treatment. 



One of her books was entitled De Compositione Medico- 

 mentorum the Compounding of Medicaments and it was 

 this work, doubtless, that gave her much of the fame she 

 enjoyed beyond the confines of Italy. Ruteboeuf, a noted 

 French trouvere of the thirteenth century, gives us a quaint 

 picture of a scene frequently witnessed in his day. Crowds 

 were frequently attracted by herbalists venders of sim- 

 ples who, stationed at street corners or in other public 

 places, near tables covered with a cloth of flaring colors, 

 were wont to descant, somewhat after the style of certain 

 of our patent-medicine hawkers and quack-salvers, upon 

 the extraordinary curative properties of the various drugs 

 and panaceas which they had for sale. 



"Good people," one of these traveling herb doctors 

 would begin, "I am not one of those poor preachers, nor 

 one of those poor herbalists who carry boxes and sachets 

 and spread them out on a carpet. No, I am a disciple of 

 a great lady named Madame Trotte of Salerno, who per- 

 forms such marvels of every kind. And know ye that she 

 is the wisest woman in the four quarters of the world. ' ' 



Ordericus Vitalis, an English Benedictine monk, in his 

 Historia Ecclesiastica, tells us of the impression made by 

 Trotula on Rudolfo Malacorona, one of those famous itiner- 

 ant scholars of the Middle Ages, who spent their lives in 

 wandering from one university to another in pursuit of 

 knowledge. He had been a student from his youth and 

 was a man of remarkable attainments in every department 

 of learning. After visiting and conferring with the learned 

 men of the most celebrated universities of France and 



