There were many women in medieval times who were involved in medicine and the sciences. They were capable, and were experts in their field, and being attended to by a fellow woman was often more comfortable for female patients than to have a male doctor. Women then were just as capable as they are today; unfortunately, around the fourteenth century, women were barred from attending universities and effectively prohibited from gaining the licences that were now needed to practise medicine. This meant that the medical field — including areas such as gynaecology — was taken over by men, and remained that way for hundreds of years.

In New York, there stands a statue of J. Marion Sims, a man known as the ‘father of gynaecology’. Said ‘father’ was entirely unethical in the development of these techniques, which included performing surgery without anaesthesia on enslaved Black women, who were unable to give their consent.

Asks historian Monica H. Green — ‘why the field of women’s medicine has a father but no mother’.

The question is in fact answered by Green herself: there is one, who existed 700 years before Sims, but she has mostly vanished.

Very little of Trota of Salerno remains to the present day. She may or may not have been married, she may or may not have had children, she may have died young or old; she may or may not have even existed, according to some. Based on contemporary sources, her birth and death dates have been ambiguously placed in the 12th century, but that is as close as we can get to understanding the life of the woman behind her work.

Trota, probably of Lombard origin, lived in Salerno, Italy. At the time, Salerno was a flourishing town which was transforming into the centre of Western medical learning. As it was a trading post between Europe and Africa, it was one of the first places to benefit from Arabic medical techniques, which were more scientific and thus more successful than European ones. There is some evidence to suggest that Trota wasn’t actually involved in the heart of this revolution, but she may have also been the first female professor of medicine, teaching at a university in Salerno.

At the very least, there was one (potentially more) female lecturer at the university; whether this was Trota or not is uncertain.

What we know of Trota’s work mostly comes from the Trotula — once thought to have been all written by the same person, it has now been discovered that the three different sections were by three different authors. One of these was, most likely, Trota.

The section she (probably) wrote is called Treatments for Women (De curis mulierum). In it, Trota discusses not only diseases concerning women, but also cosmetics and care of children. But she was, and is, mainly known for her work on gynaecology, which is considered the ‘most widely circulated medical work on gynaecology and women’s problems’.

Her work was revolutionary in that she encouraged an intimate understanding of women’s bodies. What would have been unthinkable to male physicians — touching patients to feel for tumours or growths, performing examinations on the female genitals, etc. — was possible, natural even, for Trota as a fellow woman. She believed that there was nothing shameful about the body, and she wrote:

[Women’s] misfortune, which ought to be pitied [has] impelled me to give a clear explanation regarding their diseases in caring for their health.

Trota of Salerno

There is one recorded incident, in which a young woman went to a male physician complaining of abdominal pain. As an in-depth physical examination was not carried out, she was misdiagnosed as having an intestinal rupture, and so was about to be operated on, a procedure that would probably have involved cauterisation. 

Enter Trota. ‘Completely astonished’ by what she saw (whether the severity of the woman’s condition or the carelessness of the physician is unknown), she decided to take the woman home with her. She determined that the woman was actually suffering from ‘wind in the womb’ (ventositas matricis) and performed hands-on treatment involving massages, baths, and plasters on the abdomen. At the end of it all, the woman was sent on her way, entirely cured.

So we see evidence of Trota’s knowledge and talents, which defied European convention at the time. She even advocated for the use of opiates during labour, so that women need not suffer unrelenting pain; Christian beliefs were that the pain was necessary due to the sin of Eve.

To go further, Trota also pointed out something else that was borderline unthinkable — that, maybe, men could have a part in conception problems, or may have perhaps been responsible for difficulties during birth. This is not to say that Trota was unsympathetic towards men or shifted the blame to them; she actually included in her written treatments specific cures for conditions relating to the male genitalia. 

There are some women to whom in giving birth things go wrong, and this happens on account of the inadequacy of those assisting. But let this observation remain our secret among women.

Trota of Salerno was ‘like a master’, as she was described in a contemporary account. She knew exactly what she was talking about and her genius was in fact recognised — her gynaecological treatments were foregrounded in a contemporary compendium of medical knowledge, with the compiler all but ignoring male physician’s input, such was the strength of her influence.

She was a pioneer in women’s medicine, and it is unfortunate that it is Sims who is today remembered for the work Trota carried out centuries before.

Sources:

• Green, Monica Helen., Making Women’s Medicine Masculine the Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)
• Susan Signe Morrison, ‘Trota of Salerno (Twelfth Century)’, in A Medieval Woman’s Companion (Oxbow Books, 2015), p. 96
• http://scihi.org/trotula-of-salerno-and-womens-health-in-the-middle-ages/
• https://womenyoushouldknow.net/trota-salerno-medieval-womens-medicine/
• https://scientificwomen.net/women/trota_of_salerno–91