Experimentarius medicinae. Continens Trotulae curandarum aegriudinum muliebrium ante, in & post partium lib. unicum, nusquam antea editum…[Georg Kraut]
Publication Details
Strasbourg, France: apud Joannem Schottum, 1544 CE.
First printed edition of the gynecological writings attributed to the woman physician, Trota, who is frequently called Trotula after the name of the collection of works with whom she is associated. Trota is said to have taught at Salerno during the 12th century. Trota was the earliest woman physician to write significant medical treatises. Her writings were Liber de sinthomatibus mulierum ("Book on the Conditions of Women"), De curis mulierum ("On Treatments for Women", and De ornatu mulierum ("On Women’s Cosmetics"). "The Trotula was published not because it was still of immediate clinical use to learned physicians (it had been superseded in that role by a variety of other texts in the 15th century), but because it had been newly "discovered" as a witness to empirical medicine by a Strasbourg publisher, Johannes Schottus. Schottus persuaded a physician colleague, Georg Kraut, to edit the Trotula, which Schottus then included in a volume he called Experimentarius medicinae ("Collection of Tried-and-True Remedies of Medicine"), which also included the Physica of Trota of Salerno's near contemporary, Hildegard of Bingen. Kraut, seeing the disorder in the texts, but not recognizing that it was really the work of three separate authors, rearranged the entire work into 61 themed chapters. He also took the liberty of altering the text here and there. As [Monica] Green has noted, "The irony of Kraut's attempt to endow "Trotula" with a single, orderly, fully rationalized text was that, in the process, he was to obscure for the next 400 years the distinctive contributions of the historic woman Trota" (Wikipedia article on Trotula, accessed 08-03-15).
Thematic Classifications
| Catalog Metadata | Reference Information |
|---|---|
| Entry Number | #6009.1 |
| Permanent Link | https://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/7186 |
| Author Bio Link | Wikipedia ↗ |
| External URL | experimentarius-medicinae-continens-trotulae-curandarum-aegriudinum-muliebrium-ante-in-post-partium-lib-unicum-nusquam-antea-editum |
Geographic Context
Publication place: Strasbourg, France