Remedies In The Trotula

The profession of midwife was highly specialized, even before university education, and highly valued. Especially in regards to childbirth, women’s health was considered women’s business; indeed, when it came to childbirth in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, only women were socially permitted to attend. If women were the only ones allowed in the birth room, then there must have been at least one woman who specialized in obstetrics, and knew procedures and remedies to counteract any mishaps during a birth. The Trotula would have been immensely useful in these situations, with many of its remedies and herbal recipes having to do with the care of a pregnant woman, the care if women’s genitalia, and actions one could take in the case of a birth

These herbal mixtures served to lighten or darken hair, or prevent bad breath. This section of the text in particular could also serve as a bridge between the men and women who may have encountered it. For while the language explicitly refers to how women were to combine the ingredients and thus create the mixtures to alter their appearance, there is no indication that men could have applied these mixtures to themselves as well, if they so

Looking at the text itself through this lens makes the end destination, and the eventual fall, of the bridge much clearer, even though we are still in the process of crossing. Historians have argued that the introduction to the text makes its intended audience quite clear, and for the sake of this discussion, I concur. It is easy to see the path the author intended for the text. The wide geographic distribution of the text also contributes to the logical conclusion that it would be accessible even to women who were not literate, as they could have had a learned women read it to them. For if there were a text such as The Trotula devoted specifically to illness of parts of the anatomy specific to women, there would be no need for them to discuss these illnesses with a physician, who would typically be a