12th century

The Trotula, “the three most important specialized texts on women’s medicine in medieval western Europe” (M. Green, 14): Publication as a single volume of three separate works on gynecology, obstetrcis, and cosmetics. The volume, titled The Trotula, the book comprise: 1. On the Conditions of Women; 2. On Treatments for Women; and 3. On Women’s Cosmetics. Each work had at least one author, and only book 2 incorporated the contributions of Trotula (i.e., Trotta, a female practitioner in Salerno, an empiric who may not have been literate, who treated the women of Salerna. It is clear that, whether or not she wrote the text, it embodied the manner in which women practitioners – who, unlike males, could touch the female genitalia – treated women in the 12th c. Salerno. Book 3 On Cosmetics may have been authored by a man who observed the appearance of Muslim women, probably in Sicily. During the 17th century, the three texts were edited for publication as a single highly condensed volume. The Renaissance edition was the basis for modern translations, which passed on “the historical distortions of the Renaissance edition, a work which is in fundamental respects a humanist fabrication” (M. Green, Intro).