MEDICAL EDUCATION FOR WOMEN

Among the rather startling surprises that have developed, as the growth of our knowledge of medieval history, through consultation of the documents in recent years, is constantly contradicting traditions founded on lack of information, perhaps the greatest has been to learn that women were given opportunities for the higher education at practically all of the Italian universities, and that they became not only students, but professors, at many of these institutions. No century from the twelfth down to the nineteenth was without some distinguished women professors at Italian universities, and in the later Middle Ages there was a particularly active period of feminine education.

The most interesting feature of this development for us is that the application of women to medical studies from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries was not only not discouraged, but was distinctly encouraged, and we find evidence that a number of women studied and taught medicine, wrote books on medical subjects, were consulted with regard to medico-legal questions, and in general were looked upon as medical colleagues in practically every sense of the word. The very first medical school that developed in modern times, that of Salerno, which came into European prominence in the eleventh century, was quite early in its history opened to women students, and a number of women professors were on its faculty.

Considering the modern idea that ours is the first time when women have ever had any real opportunity for the higher education, and above all professional education, it is a source of no little astonishment to find that at Salerno not only an opportunity was afforded to women to study medicine, but the department of women’s diseases was handed over entirely to them, and as a consequence we have a Salernitan School of Women Physicians, some of whom wrote textbooks on the subject relating to this speciality. De Renzi, in his “Storia della Scuola di Salerno,” has brought to light many details of the history of this phase of medical education for women at the first important medical school that developed in modern Europe. The best known of these medieval women physicians was Trotula, to whom is attributed a series of books on medical subjects—though doubtless some of these were due rather to disciples, but became identified with the more famous master, as so often happened with medieval books. Trotula’s most important book bears two sub-titles: “Trotula’s Unique Book for the Curing of Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labour,” and the other sub-title, “Trotula’s Wonderful Book of Experiences (experimentalis) in the Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labour, with Other Details Likewise Relating to Labour.”

Probably the most interesting passage in her book for the modern time is that with regard to a torn perineum and its repair, even when prolapse of the uterus is a complication. The passage, which may be found readily in De Renzi or in Gurlt, runs:

“Certain patients, from the severity of the labour, run into a rupture of the genitalia. In some even the vulva and anus become one foramen, having the same course. As a consequence, prolapse of the uterus occurs, and it becomes indurated. In order to relieve this condition, we apply to the uterus warm wine in which butter has been boiled, and these fomentations are continued until the uterus becomes soft, and then it is gently replaced. After this we sew the tear between the anus and vulva in three or four places with silk thread. The woman should then be placed in bed, with the feet elevated, and must retain that position, even for eating and drinking, and all the necessities of life, for eight or nine days. During this time, also, there must be no bathing, and care must be taken to avoid everything that might cause coughing, and all indigestible materials.”

There is a passage almost more interesting with regard to prophylaxis of rupture of the perineum. Trotula says: “In order to avoid the aforesaid danger, careful provision should be made, and precautions should be taken during labour after the following fashion: A cloth folded in somewhat oblong shape should be placed on the anus, and during every effort for the expulsion of the child, that should be pressed firmly, in order that there may not be any solution of the continuity of tissue.”

There are records of other women professors of Salerno, though none of them as famous as Trotula. A lady of the name of Mercuriade is said to have written “On Crises in Pestilent Fever,” and as she occupied herself with surgery as well as medicine, there is also a work on “The Cure of Wounds.” Rebecca Guarna, who belonged to the old Salernitan family of that name, a member of which in the twelfth century was Romuald, priest, physician, and historian, wrote “On Fevers,” “On the Urine,” and “On the Embryo.” Abella acquired a great reputation with her work “On Black Bile,” and curiously enough on “The Nature of Seminal Fluid.” From these books it is clear that, while as professors they had charge of the department of women’s diseases, they studied all branches of medicine. There are a number of licences preserved in the Archives of Naples in which women are accorded the privilege of practising medicine, and apparently these licences were without limitation as to the scope of practice. The preamble of the licence, however, suggests the eminent suitability of women treating women’s diseases. It ran as follows:

“Since, then, the law permits women to exercise the profession of physicians, and since, besides, due regard being had to purity of morals, women are better suited for the treatment of women’s diseases, after having received the oath of fidelity, we permit,” etc.

The story of medical education for women with the free opportunity for practice, and above all the recognition accorded by making them professors at the University of Salerno, will seem all the more surprising to those who recall that the Benedictines largely influenced the foundation at Salerno, and were important factors in its subsequent growth and management. Ordinarily it would be presumed that monastic influence would be distinctly against permitting women to secure such opportunities for education, and, above all, encouraging their occupation with medical practice. As a matter of fact, it seems indeed to have been monastic influence which secured this special development. The Benedictines were already habituated to the idea that women were quite capable, if given the opportunity, of taking advantage of the highest education; and besides, they were accustomed to see them occupied, and successfully, with the care of the ailing. When St. Benedict established the monks of the West in retreats, where the men of the earlier Middle Ages could secure, in the midst of troubled times and with men in the cities utterly neglectful of intellectual interests, a refuge from the disturbed life around them, and an opportunity for intellectual development, his sister Scholastica afforded similar opportunities for such women as felt that they were called rather to the intellectual and spiritual life than to the taking up of the burden of domestic duties and a wife’s labours.

In these Benedictine convents for women, as they spread throughout Italy—and afterwards throughout Germany, and France, and England, though the fact is often ignored—the intellectual life was pursued as faithfully as the spiritual. Besides, there gathered around the convent gates as around the monasteries the farmers who worked their estates, and who found it so good “to live under the crozier,” as the rule of the Abbot or Abbess was called, and who always suffered severely whenever, by confiscation or war or like disturbances, the monastic lands passed into the hands of laymen. For their own large numbers as well as for their peasantry, and for the travellers who stayed in their guest-houses, the nuns had to provide medical attendance; and the infirmarians of the convents, situated as they were so often far from cities or towns, acquired considerable medical knowledge and came to apply it with excellent success. The traditions were gathered from many quarters, and passed on for centuries from one house to another; and they gathered simples and treated the ordinary ailments, and nursed the ailing into moods of greater courage and states of mind that predisposed to recovery.

Probably the most important book on medicine that we have from the twelfth century is written by a Benedictine Abbess, since known as St. Hildegarde. She was born of noble parents at Boeckelheim in the county of Sponheim, about the end of the eleventh century. She was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg, and when her education was finished she entered the house as a religious, and at the age of about fifty she became abbess. Her writings, reputation for sanctity, and her wise rule, eminently sympathetic as she was, attracted so many new members to the community that the convent became overcrowded. Accordingly, with eighteen of her nuns, Hildegarde withdrew to a new convent at Rupertsburg, which English and American travellers will doubtless recall because it is not far from Bingen on the Rhine, made famous in the later time by Mrs. Hemans’s poem. Here she came to be a sort of centre for the intellectual life of her period. According to traditions, some of which are dubious, she was in active correspondence with nearly every important personage of her generation. She was an intimate friend of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who was himself perhaps the most influential man of Europe in this century. Her correspondence was enormous, and she was consulted from all sides because her advice on difficult problems of any and every kind was considered so valuable.

In spite of all this time-taking correspondence she found leisure to write a series of books, most of them on mystical subjects, but two of them, strange as it may seem, on medicine. The first is called “Liber Simplicis MedicinÆ,” and the second “Liber CompositÆ MedicinÆ.” These books were written as a contribution of her views with regard to the medical knowledge of her time, but were evidently due, partly at least, to the Benedictine traditions of interest in medicine. Dr. Melanie Lipinska in her “Histoire des Femmes MÉdicins,” a thesis presented for the doctorate in medicine at the University of Paris in 1900, which was subsequently awarded a special prize by the French Academy, reviews Hildegarde’s work critically from the medical standpoint. She does not hesitate to declare the Abbess Hildegarde the most important medical writer of her time. Reuss, the editor of the works of Hildegarde as they are published in Migne’s “Patrologia,” the immense French edition of all the important works of the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints of the Church, says:

“Among all the saintly religious who have practised medicine or written about it in the Middle Ages, the most important is without any doubt St. Hildegarde....” With regard to her book he says: “All those who wish to write the history of the medical and natural sciences must read this work, in which this religious woman, evidently well grounded in all that was known at that time in the secrets of nature, discusses and examines carefully all the knowledge of the time.” He adds: “It is certain that St. Hildegarde knew many things that were unknown to the physicians of her time.”

Some of Hildegarde’s expressions are startling enough because they indicate discussion of, and attempts to elucidate, problems which many people of the modern time are likely to think occurred only to the last few generations. For instance, in talking about the stars and describing their course through the firmament, she makes use of a comparison that seems strangely ahead of her time. She says: “Just as the blood moves in the veins, causing them to vibrate and pulsate, so the stars move in the firmament, and send out sparks as it were of light, like the vibrations of the veins.” This is, of course, not an anticipation of the discovery of the circulation of the blood, but it shows how close were men’s ideas to some such thought five centuries before Harvey’s discovery. For Hildegarde the brain was the regulator of all the vital qualities, the centre of life. She connects the nerves in their passage from the brain and the spinal cord through the body with manifestations of life. She has a series of chapters with regard to psychology, normal and morbid. She talks about frenzy, insanity, despair, dread, obsession, anger, idiocy, and innocency. She says very strongly in one place that “when headache and migraine and vertigo attack a patient simultaneously, they render a man foolish and upset his reason. This makes many people think that he is possessed of a demon, but that is not true.” These are the exact words of the saint as quoted in Mlle. Lipinska’s thesis.

With this story of St. Hildegarde in mind, and the recall of other educational developments among the Benedictine nuns, it is easy to understand the developments that took place at Salerno, where monastic influence was so prominent. Just as the medical, and above all the surgical, traditions of Salerno found their way to Bologna at the beginning of the thirteenth century, so also did the regulations regarding standards in medical education, and with them medical education for women. There are definite historical documents which show that women not only studied but taught in the medical department of Bologna. The name of one of them at least is very well known. She was Alessandra Giliani, and, strange as it might appear, was one of the prosectors in anatomy of Mondino, the founder of teaching by human dissection. According to the “Cronaca Persicetana,” quoted by Medici in his “History of the Anatomical School at Bologna”:

“She became most valuable to Mondino because she would cleanse most skilfully the smallest vein, the arteries, all ramifications of the vessels, without lacerating or dividing them, and to prepare them for demonstration she would fill them with various coloured liquids, which, after having been driven into the vessels, would harden without destroying the vessels. Again, she would paint these same vessels to their minute branches so perfectly, and colour them so naturally, that, added to the wonderful explanations and teachings of the master, they brought him great fame and credit.”This passage with its description, as coming from a woman, of a very early anticipation of our most modern anatomical technique—injection, hardening, and colouring, so as to imitate nature for the making of anatomical preparations, for class and demonstration purposes—is all the more interesting because the next great improvement in anatomical teaching, the use of wax models of dissected specimens coloured to imitate nature, came also from a woman, Madame Manzolini, also of Bologna. Feminine instinct aroused women to use their inventive ability to do away with the necessity for always recurring to the deterrent material of fresh dissections, and yet securing such preparations as would make teaching not less but more effective.

Some doubt has been thrown on certain details of the story of Alessandra Giliani, but the memorial tablet erected at the time of her death in the Hospital Church of Santa Maria de Mareto in Florence gives all the important facts, and tells the story of the grief of her fiancÉ, who was himself Mondino’s other assistant. Like her, he died young also, when there were high hopes of his ability, and there is more than the suspicion that these two untimely deaths may have been due to dissecting wound infections. She died “consumed by her labours,” so that it may have been phthisis; but he was taken by “a swift and lamentable death.”Nicaise, in the Introduction to his edition of Guy de Chauliac’s “Grande Chirurgie” (Paris, 1893), has a brief review of the history of women in medicine, with special reference to France. He supplies practically all the information available in very short compass, as well as the references where more details can be obtained.

There seems, however, to have been not nearly so much freedom or so much encouragement for women in medicine in France as in Italy. Indeed, in the whole matter of education for women, medieval France has but little to record compared to Italy’s significant chapter in the history of feminine education. One reason for this was doubtless the HÉlÖise-AbÉlard incident early in the history of the University of Paris. This seems to have discouraged efforts in the direction of the securing of the higher education for women in most of the Western Universities. Oxford was a daughter university of Paris, and Cambridge of Oxford, and they and all the other universities of the West were more deeply influenced in their customs and organization by Paris than by Italy, and as a consequence we hear little of feminine education in the West generally. One result of this has been the existence of a feeling that, since women had very few opportunities for the higher education in Western Europe, they must have had them nowhere else. This presumption forms the basis of not a little misunderstanding of the Middle Ages in our time. It often takes but a little incident to set the current of history in a very different direction from that in which it might have gone, and this seems to have been the case as regards the higher education for women in France and Spain and England.