Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

"The nonnes of him they were full fayne,
For that he had the Saracenes slayne
And those haythene houndes.
And of his paynnes sare ganne them rewe.
Ilke a day they made salves new
And laid them till his woundes;
They gave him metis and drynkis lythe,
And heled the knyghte wunder swythe."

So universally during mediæval times was the healing art considered as pertaining to woman's calling that it became a part of the curriculum in convent schools; and no girl's education was considered complete unless she had an elementary knowledge of medicine and of that part of surgery which deals with the treatment of wounds. For during those troublous times a woman was liable to be called upon at any time to nurse the sick wayfarer or dress the wounds of those who had been maimed in battle or in the tourney.

Illustrations of these facts are found in many of the romances and fabliaux of the Middle Ages. Thus, when a sick or wounded man was given hospitality in a château or castle it was not the seigneur, but his wife and daughters, as being better versed in medicine and surgery, who acted as nurses and doctors and took entire charge of the patient until his recovery.

In the exquisite little story of Aucassin et Nicolette, the heroine is pictured as setting the dislocated shoulder of her lover in the following simple but touching language:

"Nicolette searched his hurt, and perceived that his shoulder was out of joint. She handled it so deftly with her white hands, and used such skillful surgery that, by the grace of God, who loveth all true lovers, the shoulder came back to its place. Then she plucked flowers and fresh grasses and green leafage, and bound them tightly about the setting with the hem torn from her shift, and he was altogether healed."

And in the mediæval Latin poem, Waltharius, written by a German monk, Ekkehard, reference is made to a sanguinary contest in which one of the combatants falls to the earth seriously wounded. Seeing this, Alpharides, in a loud voice, summons a young girl, who timidly comes forward and dresses the unfortunate man's wound.[186]

Still more to our purpose is a passage from the famous epic poem, Tristan and Isolde, written by Godfrey of Strasburg, in which Isolde, accompanied by her mother and cousin, is represented as administering restoratives to Tristan, who had fallen exhausted after his combat with the dragon. It shows that women, in accompanying an army to the field of battle, always went provided with bandages and medicaments for dressing wounds and fractured limbs. Similarly Angelica, in Orlando Furioso, and Ermina, in Jerusalem Delivered, are portrayed as surgeons with deftness of hand and leeches with rare knowledge and skill.

The frequent introduction of women doctors into the poems and romances of the Middle Ages would of itself, if other evidence were wanting, suffice to show what an important rôle women played in medicine and surgery at a time when, in many parts of Europe, women were far better educated and far more cultured than men—"when the knights and barons of France and Germany were inclined to look upon reading and writing as unmanly and almost degrading accomplishments, fit only for priests or monks, and especially for priests or monks not too well born."[187]

In the instances just quoted, as well as those mentioned by Homer and Euripides, the writers do no more than faithfully reflect conditions which then obtained, and truthfully report what were the occupations of women when their status was so different from what it is to-day. But, fortunately, we do not have to rely on works of the imagination for our knowledge respecting the women practitioners of the healing art, either during the Homeric period or during that which intervened between the downfall of Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance. For the history of medicine during mediæval times affords too many examples of women who became famous for their knowledge of medicine, as well as for their success in surgical and medical practice, to leave any doubt about the matter. Besides this, we have still the writings of many of these women, and are thus able to judge of their competency in those branches of knowledge on which they shed so great luster.

One of the most noted of them was the Benedictine abbess, St. Hildegard, of Bingen on the Rhine, who was eminent not only as a theologian but also as a writer whose treatises on various branches of science are justly regarded as the most important productions of the kind during the Middle Ages prior to the time of Albertus Magnus. Besides this, she not only wrote many books on materia medica, on pathology, physiology and therapeutics, but, as a practitioner, she gloriously sustained the best traditions of her sex in both theoretical and practical medicine.