Making Women's Medicine Masculine

Making Womens Medicine Masculine challenges the common belief that prior to the eighteenth century men were never involved in any aspect of womens healthcare in Europe. Using sources ranging from the writings of the famous twelfth-century female practitioner, Trota of Salerno, all the way to the great tomes of Renaissance male physicians, and covering both medicine and surgery, this study demonstrates that men slowly established more and more authority in diagnosing andprescribing treatments for womens gynaecological conditions (especially infertility) and even certain obstetrical conditions. Even if their hands-on knowledge of womens bodies was limited by contemporary mores, men were able to establish their increasing authority in this and all branches of medicine due to their greater access to literacy and the knowledge contained in books, whether in Latin or the vernacular. As Monica Green shows, while works written in French, Dutch, English, and Italian were sometimes addressed to women, nevertheless even these were often re-appropriated by men, both by practitioners whotreated women and by laymen interested to learn about the secrets of generation. While early in the period women were considered to have authoritative knowledge on womens conditions (hence the widespread influence of the alleged authoress Trotula), by the end of the period to be a woman was no longer an automatic qualification for either understanding or treating the conditions that most commonly afflicted the female sex - with implications of womens exclusion from production of knowledge on their own bodies extending to the present day.