WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 297 



gery and whose names are still in their own land pro- 

 nounced with respect and veneration. 



One of the most noted practitioners in Southern Italy, 

 after the death of Trotula and her compeers, was one 

 Margarita, who had studied medicine in Salerno. One of 

 her patients was no less a personage than Ladislaus, King 

 of Naples. Among those that had diplomas for the prac- 

 tice of surgery were Maria Incarnata, of Naples, and 

 Thomasia de Matteo, of Castro Isiae. 



That women enjoyed in Rome the same privileges in the 

 practice of medicine and surgery as their sisters in the 

 southern part of the peninsula is manifest from an edict 

 issued by Pope Sixtus IV in confirmation of a law promul- 

 gated by the Medical Faculty of Rome, which reads as 

 follows: "No man or woman, whether Christian or Jew, 

 unless he be a master or a licentiate in medicine, shall pre- 

 sume to treat the human body either as a physician or as 

 a surgeon." 1 



In central and northern Italy in Florence, Turin, 

 Padua, Venice as well as in the southern part, we find 

 constantly recurring instances of women practicing medi- 

 cine and surgery and winning for themselves an enviable 

 reputation as successful practitioners. 



But after the decline of Salerno, consequent on the 

 establishment by Frederick II of a school of medicine in 

 Naples, the great center of medicine and surgery, as of civil 

 and canon law, was Bologna. 2 So renowned did it become 



1 ( { Nemo masculus aut f oemina, seu Christianus vel Judaeus, nisi 

 Magister vel Licentiatus in Medicina foret, auderet humano corpori 

 mederi in physica vel in chyrurgia." Marini, Archiatri Pontifici, 

 Tom. I, p. 199, Koma, 1784. 



2 Thomas Aquinas, the Angel of the Schools, who had taught in 

 Salerno, and was well acquainted with the leading universities of 

 Europe, was wont to say "Quattuor sunt urbes caeteris prseeminentes, 

 Parisius in Scientiis, Salernum in Medicinis, Bononia in legibus, 

 Aurelianis in actoribus " there are four preeminent cities: Paris, 



