Using sources ranging from the famous 12th-century female practitioner, Trota of Salerno, through to the great tomes of Renaissance male physicians, this is a pioneering study challenging the common belief that, prior to the 18th century, men were never involved in any aspect of women's healthcare in Europe.

Monica H. Green is Professor of History at Arizona State University where she holds affiliate appointments in Women's and Gender Studies; Bioethics; and the Program in Social Science and Global Health in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Women's Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts, a collection of her major essays, was co-winner of the 2004 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book in medieval studies from the Medieval Academy of America. Her other publications include The 'Trotula': A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, of which she was both editor and translator.

• Preface


• Introduction: literacy, medicine, and gender


• 1: The gentle hand of a woman? Trota and women's medicine at Salerno


• 2: Men's practice of women's medicine in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries


• 3: Bruno's paradox: women and literate medicine


• 4: In a language women understand: the gender of the vernacular


• 5: Slander and the secrets of women


• 6: The masculine birth of gynaecology


• The medieval legacy: medicine of, for, and by women


• Appendix I: medieval and Renaissance owners of Trotula manuscripts


• Printed gynaecological and obstetrical texts, 1474-1600


• References


• Index of manuscripts cited


• General Index