Exploring Medieval Cosmetics: A Study on Trotula's Teachings

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The purpose of our project was to examine how accessible it would be to make medieval cosmetics from the Trotula while evaluating the effectiveness of these cosmetics. The Trotula was written in Southern Italy and consisted of a group of three texts describing women’s medicine. The third section of the Trotula focuses mainly on Women’s Cosmetics. The purpose of this section was to teach females how to improve their appearance themselves, except females, did not read these resources. It was not written by a woman, but by a male physician for male physicians. These male physicians wanted to discover “women’s secrets”. Due to the authorship of the Trotula, there were several problems that appeared when trying to replicate these recipes. Male physicians …show more content…

For example, there was a lack of information regarding the toxicity of ingredients such as the nutmeg. I used enough nutmeg to cover the veil, which came out to be approximately a teaspoon. Thankfully, this dosage is much lower than the dosage of two tablespoons or more that can cause people to have out-of-body sensations, “intense nausea, dizziness, extreme dry mouth, and a lingering slowdown of normal brain function”. The lack of information regarding the toxicity of certain ingredients was not limited to this recipe. Instead, there was a recipe involving the use of ashes without specifying the type of ash needed. Ashes are produced in various locations such as in areas with dead plague-ridden bodies or from volcanoes. Ashes near a plague-ridden body have no medical or cosmetic benefits, but it has numerous toxicants like lead, arsenic, and mercury. However, volcanic ash has medical and cosmetic benefits. In terms of medical benefits, volcanic ash is anti-bacterial and a disinfectant. In terms of cosmetic benefits, volcanic ash is able to synthesize collagen. Not all of the medieval cosmetic recipes were focused on purely cosmetic benefits, but there were some medical benefits included perhaps due to the fact that this is the third section of a book focused on Women’s medicine. for eliminating worms of the face, which causes some people to lose their hair or

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