Part 8 (1/2)

After Trotula we have a number of women physicians of Salerno whose names have come down to us. The best known of these bear the names Constanza, Calendula, Abella, Mercuriade, 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, Louise Trencapilli, and others. The t.i.tles of some of their books, as those of Mercuriade, who occupied herself with surgery as well as medicine, and who is said to have written on ”Crises,” on ”Pestilent Fever,” on ”The Cure of Wounds,” and of Abella, who acquired a great reputation with her work on ”Black Bile,” and on the ”Nature of Seminal Fluid,” have come down to us. Rebecca Guarna wrote on ”Fevers,” on the ”Urine,” and on the ”Embryo.” The school of Salernitan women came to have a definite place in medical literature.

While, as teachers, they had charge of the department of women's diseases, their writings would seem to indicate that they studied all branches of medicine. Besides, there are a number of licenses preserved in the archives of Naples in which women are accorded the privilege of practising medicine. Apparently these licenses were without limitation.

In many of these mention is made of the fact that it seems especially fitting that women should be allowed to practise in women's diseases, since they are by const.i.tution likely to know more and to have more sympathy with feminine ills. The formula employed as the preamble of this license 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.”

Salerno continued to enjoy a reputation for training women physicians thoroughly, until well on in the fifteenth century, for we have the record of Constance Calenda, the daughter of Salvator Calenda, who had been dean of the faculty of medicine at Salerno about 1415, and afterwards dean of the faculty at Naples. His daughter, under the diligent instruction of her father, seems to have obtained special honors for her medical examination. Not long after this, Salerno itself lost all the prestige that it had. The Kings of Naples endeavored to create a great university in their city in the thirteenth century. They did not succeed to the extent that they hoped, but the neighboring rival inst.i.tution hurt Salerno very much, and its downfall may be traced from this time. Gradually its reputation waned, and we have practically no medical writer of distinction there at the end of the fourteenth century, though the old custom of opportunities for women students of medicine was maintained.

This custom seems also to have been transferred to Naples, and licenses to practise were issued to woman graduates of Naples. This never achieved anything like the reputation in this department that had been attained at Salerno. Salerno influenced Bologna and the north Italian universities profoundly in all branches of medicine and medical education, particularly in surgery, as can be seen in the chapter on ”Great Surgeons of the Medieval Universities,” and the practice of allowing such women as wished to study medicine to enter the university medical schools is exemplified in the case of Mondino's a.s.sistant in anatomy, Alessandra Giliani, though there are also others whose names have come down to us.

The University of Salerno had developed round a medical school. It was the first of the universities, and, in connection with its medical school, feminine education obtained a strong foothold. It is not surprising, then, that with the further development of universities in Italy, feminine education came to be the rule. This rule has maintained itself all down the centuries in Italy, so that there has not been a single century since the twelfth in which there have not been one or more distinguished women teachers at the Italian universities.

University life gradually spread westward, and Paris came into existence as an organized inst.i.tution of learning after Bologna, and, doubtless, with some of the traditions of Salerno in the minds of its founders.

Feminine education, however, did not spread to the West. This is a little bit difficult to understand, considering the reverence that the Teutonic peoples have always had for their women folk and the privileges accorded them. A single unfortunate incident, that of Abelard and Helose, seems to have been sufficient to discourage efforts in the direction of opportunities for feminine education in connection with the Western universities. Perhaps, in the less sophisticated countries of the North and West of Europe, women did not so ardently desire educational opportunities as in Italy, for whenever they have really wanted them, as, indeed, anything else, they have always obtained them.

In spite of the absence of formal opportunities for feminine education in medicine at the Western universities, a certain amount of scientific knowledge of diseases, as well as valuable practical training in the care of the ailing, was not wanting for women outside of Italy. The medical knowledge of the women of northern France and Germany and England, however, though it did not receive the stamp of a formal degree from the university and the distinction of a license to practise, was none the less thorough and extensive. It came in connection with certain offices in their own communities, held by members of religious orders.

Genuine information with regard to what the religious were doing during the Middle Ages was so much obscured by the tradition of laziness and immorality, created at the time of the so-called reformation in order to justify the confiscation of their property by those whose one object was to enrich themselves, that we have only come to know the reality of their life and accomplishments in comparatively recent years. We now know that, besides being the home of most of the book knowledge of the earlier Middle Ages, the monasteries were the constant patrons of such practical subjects as architecture, agriculture in all its phases, especially irrigation, draining, and the improvement of land and crops; of art, and even what we now know as physical science. Above all, they preserved for us the old medical books and carried on medical traditions of practice. The greatest surprise has been to find that this was true not only for the monks, but also for the nuns.

One of the most important books on medicine that has come to us from the twelfth century is that of a Benedictine abbess, since known as St.

Hildegarde, whose life was spent in the Rhineland. Her works serve to show very well that in the convents of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries there was much more of interest in things intellectual than we have had any idea of until recent years, and that, indeed, one of the important occupations of convent life was the serious study of books of all kinds, some of them even scientific, as well as the writing of works in all departments. The century before St. Hildegarde there is the record of Hroswitha, who wrote a series of dramas in imitation of Terence, that were meant to replace, for the monks and nuns of that period, the reading of that rather too human author. Hroswitha, like Hildegarde, was a German, and we have the record, also, of another religious writer, abbess of the Odilian Cloister, at Hohenberg, who wrote a book called ”Hortus Deliciarum, the Garden of Delights,” a book of information on many subjects not unlike our popular encyclopedias of the modern time, the t.i.tle of which shows that the place of information in life was considered to be the giving of pleasure. While this work deals mainly with Biblical and theological and mystical questions, there are many purely scientific pa.s.sages and many subjects of strictly medical interest treated.

The life of the Abbess Hildegarde is worthy of consideration, because it ill.u.s.trates the period and makes it very clear that, in spite of the grievous misunderstanding of their life and work, so common in the modern time, these old-time religious had most of the interests of the modern time, and pursued them with even more than modern zeal and success, very often. Her career ill.u.s.trates very well what the foundation of the Benedictines had done for women. When St. Benedict founded his order for men, his sister, Scholastica, wanted to do a similar work for women. We know that the Benedictine monks saved the old cla.s.sics for us, kept burning the light of the intellectual life, and gave a refuge to men who wanted to devote themselves in leisure and peace to the things of the spirit, whether of this world or the other.

We have known much less of the Benedictine nuns until now the study of their books shows that they provided exactly the same opportunities for women and furnished a vocation, a home, an occupation of mind, and a satisfaction of spirit for the women who, in every generation, do not feel themselves called to be wives and mothers, but who want to live their lives for others rather than for themselves and their kin, seeking such development of mind and of spirit as may come with the leisure and peace of celibacy.

Hildegarde was born of n.o.ble parents at Bockelheim, in the county of Sponheim, about the end of the eleventh century (probably 1098). In her eighth year she went for her education to the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg. When her education was finished, she entered the cloister, of which, at the age of about fifty, she became abbess. Her writings, reputation for sanct.i.ty, and her wise saintly rule 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 Rupertsberg, which English and American travellers will remember because it is not far from Bingen on the Rhine. Here she came to be a centre of attraction for most of the world of her time. She was in active correspondence with nearly every important man of her generation. She was an intimate friend of Bernard of Clairvaux, who was himself, perhaps, the most influential man in Europe in this century.

She was in correspondence with four Popes, and with the Emperors Conrad and Frederick I, and with many distinguished archbishops, abbots, and abbesses, and teachers and teaching bodies of various kinds. These correspondences were usually begun by her correspondents, who consulted her because her advice in difficult problems 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 on medical subjects. The first is called ”Liber Simplicis Medicinae,” and the second ”Liber Compositae Medicinae.” These books were written in order to provide information mainly for the nuns who had charge of the infirmaries of the monasteries of the Benedictines. Almost constantly someone in the large communities, which always contained aged religious, was ailing, and then, besides, there were other calls on the time and the skill of the sister infirmarians. There were no hotels at that time, and no hospitals, except in the large cities. There were always guest houses in connection with monasteries and convents, in which travellers were permitted to pa.s.s the night, and given what they needed to eat. There are many people who have had experiences of monastic hospitality even in our own time. Sometimes travellers fell ill. Not infrequently the reason for travelling was to find health in some distant and fabulously health-giving resort, or at the hands of some wonder-working physician. Such high hopes are nearly always set at a distance. This of itself must have given not a little additional need for knowledge of medicine to the infirmarians of convents and monasteries. There were around many of the monasteries, moreover, large estates; often they had been cleared and made valuable by the work of preceding generations of monks, and on these estates peasants came to live. Workingmen and workingwomen from neighboring districts came to help at harvest time, and, after a chance meeting, were married and settled down on a little plot of ground provided for them near the monastery. As these communities grew up, they looked to the monasteries and convents for aid of all kinds, and turned to them particularly in times of illness. The need for definite instruction in medicine on the part of a great many of the monks and nuns can be readily understood, and it was this need that Hildegarde tried to meet in her books. The first of her books that we have mentioned, the ”Liber Simplicis Medicinae,” attracted attention rather early in the Renaissance, and was deemed worthy of print. It was edited at the beginning of the sixteenth century by Dr. Schott at Strasburg, under the t.i.tle, ”Physica S.

Hildegardis.” Another ma.n.u.script of this part was found in the library of Wolfenb.u.t.tel, in 1858, by Dr. Jessen. This gave him an interest in Hildegarde's contributions to medicine, and, in 1859, he noted in the library at Copenhagen a ma.n.u.script with the t.i.tle ”Hildegardi Curae et Causae.” On examination, he was sure that it was the ”Liber Compositae Medicinae” of the saint. The first work consists of nine books, treating of plants, elements, trees, stones, fishes, birds, quadrupeds, reptiles, and metals, and is printed in Migne's ”Patrologia,” under the t.i.tle ”Subtilitatum Diversarum Naturarum Libri Novem.” The second, in five books, treats of the general diseases of created things, of the human body and its ailments, of the causes, symptoms, and treatment of diseases.

It would be very easy to think that these are small volumes and that they contain very little. We are so apt to think of old-fas.h.i.+oned so-called books as scarcely more than chapters, that it may be interesting to give some idea of the contents and extent of the first of these works. The first book on Plants has 230 chapters, the second on the Elements has 13 chapters, the third on Trees has 36 chapters, the fourth on various kinds of Minerals, including precious stones, has 226 chapters, the fifth on Fishes has 36 chapters, the sixth on Birds has 68 chapters, the seventh on Quadrupeds has 43 chapters, the eighth on Reptiles has 18 chapters, the ninth on Metals has 8 chapters. Each chapter begins with a description of the species in question, and then defines its value for man and its therapeutic significance. Modern scientists have not hesitated to declare that the descriptions abound in observations worthy of a scientific inquiring spirit. We are, of course, not absolutely sure that all the contents of the books come from Hildegarde. Subsequent students often made notes in these ma.n.u.script books, and then other copyists copied these into the texts.

Unfortunately we have not a number of codices to collate and correct such errors. Most of what Hildegarde wrote comes to us in a single copy, of none are there more than four copies, showing how near we came to missing all knowledge of her entirely.

Dr. Melanie Lipinska, in her ”Histoire des Femmes Medecins,” a thesis presented for the doctorate in medicine at the University of Paris in 1900, subsequently awarded a special prize by the French Academy, reviews Hildegarde's work critically from the medical standpoint. She says that the saint distinguishes a double mode of action of different substances, one chemical, the other physical, or what we would very probably call magnetic. She discusses all the ailments of the various organs, the brain, the eyes, the teeth, the heart, the spleen, the stomach, the liver. She has special chapters on redness and paleness of the face, on asthma, on cough, on fetid breath, on bilious indigestion, on gout. Besides, she has other chapters on nervous affections, on icterus, on fevers, on intestinal worms, on infections due to swamp exhalations, on dysentery, and a number of forms of pulmonary diseases.

Nearly all of our methods of diagnosis are to be found, hinted at at least, in her book. She discusses the redness of the blood as a sign of health, the characteristics of various excrement.i.tious material as signs of disease, the degrees of fever, and the changes in the pulse. Of course, it was changes in the humors of the body that const.i.tuted the main causes for disease in her opinion, but it is well to remind ourselves that our frequent discussion of auto-intoxication in recent years is a distinct return to this.

Some of Hildegarde's antic.i.p.ations of modern ideas are, indeed, surprising enough. For instance, in talking about the stars and describing their course through the firmament, she makes use of a comparison that is rather startling. She says: ”Just as the blood moves in the veins which causes 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.sage 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.

It is no wonder that Mlle. Lipinska thinks St. Hildegarde the most important medical writer of her time. Reuss, the editor of the edition of Hildegarde published in Migne's ”Patrology,” 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.”

When such books were read and widely copied, it shows that there was an interest in practical and scientific medicine among women in Germany much greater than is usually thought to have existed at this time. Such writers, though geniuses, and standing above their contemporaries, usually represent the spirit of their times and make it clear that definite knowledge of things medical was considered of value. The convents and monasteries of this time are often thought of by those who know least about them as little interested in anything except their own ease and certain superst.i.tious practices. As a matter of fact, they cared for their estates, and especially for the peasantry on them, they provided lodging and food for travellers, they took care of the ailing of their neighborhood, and, besides, occupied themselves with many phases of the intellectual life. It was a well-known tradition that country people who lived in the neighborhood of convents and monasteries, and especially those who had monks and nuns for their landlords, were much happier and were much better taken care of than the tenantry of other estates. For this a cultivation of medical knowledge was necessary in certain, at least, of the members of the religious orders, and such books as Hildegarde's are the evidence that not only the knowledge existed, but that it was collected and written down, and widely disseminated.

Nicaise, in the introduction to his edition of Guy de Chauliac's ”Grande Chirurgie,” reviews briefly the history of women in medicine, and concludes:

”Women continued to practise medicine in Italy for centuries, and the names of some who attained great renown have been preserved for us. Their works are still quoted from in the fifteenth century.

”There was none of them in France who became distinguished, but women could practise medicine in certain towns at least on condition of pa.s.sing an examination before regularly appointed masters. An edict of 1311, at the same time that it interdicts unauthorized women from practising surgery, recognizes their right to practise the art if they have undergone an examination before the regularly appointed master surgeons of the corporation of Paris. An edict of King John, April, 1352, contains the same expressions as the previous edict. Du Bouley, in his 'History of the University of Paris,' gives another edict by the same King, also published in the year 1352, as a result of the complaints of the faculties at Paris, in which there is also question of women physicians. This responded to the pet.i.tion: 'Having heard the pet.i.tion of the Dean and the Masters of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, who declare that there are very many of both s.e.xes, some of the women with legal t.i.tle to practise and some of them merely old pretenders to a knowledge of medicine, who come to Paris in order to practise, be it enacted,' etc.