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

by J. A. Zahm

How different it was in Italy, which, since the fall of the Roman Empire, has ever been in the van of civilization, and which has always continued the best traditions of Græco-Roman learning and culture—Italy, which has been the home of such supreme masters of literature, science, art as Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Brunelleschi—Italy, the mother of universities, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the recognized leader of intellectual progress among the nations of the world. Here in the favored land of the Muses and the Graces, women enjoyed all the rights and privileges accorded to men; here the doors of schools and universities were open to all regardless of sex; and art, science, literature, law, medicine, jurisprudence counted its votaries among women as well as among men; here, far from encountering jealousy and opposition in the pursuit of knowledge or in the practice of the professions, women never found aught but generous emulation and sympathetic coöperation.

For a thousand years women were welcomed into the arena of learning and culture on the same footing as men. In Salerno, Bologna, Padua, Pavia, they competed for the same honors and were contestants for the same prizes that stimulated the exertions of the sterner sex. Position and emolument were the guerdons of merit and ability, and the victor, whether man or woman, was equally acclaimed and showered with equal honor. Women asked for no favors in the intellectual arena and expected none. All they desired were the same opportunities and the same privileges as were granted the men, and these were never denied them. From the time when Trotula taught in Salerno to the present, when Giuseppina Catani is professor of general pathology in the medical faculty of Bologna, the women of Italy always had access to the universities and were at liberty to follow any course of study they might elect. We thus find them achieving distinction in civil and canon law, in medicine, in theology even, as well as in art, science, literature, philosophy and linguistics. No department of knowledge had any terrors for them, and there was none in which some of them did not win undying fame. They held chairs of language, jurisprudence, philosophy, physics, mathematics, medicine and anatomy, and filled these positions with such marked ability that they commanded the admiration and applause of all who heard them.

This is not the place to tell of the triumphs of the women professors in the Italian universities, or to recount the achievements of those who were honored with degrees within their classic walls. Let it suffice to recall the names of a few of those who won renown in medicine and surgery and whose names are still in their own land pronounced with respect and veneration.

One of the most noted practitioners in Southern Italy, after the death of Trotula and her compeers, was one Margarita, who had studied medicine in Salerno. One of her patients was no less a personage than Ladislaus, King of Naples. Among those that had diplomas for the practice of surgery were Maria Incarnata, of Naples, and Thomasia de Matteo, of Castro Isiae.

That women enjoyed in Rome the same privileges in the practice of medicine and surgery as their sisters in the southern part of the peninsula is manifest from an edict issued by Pope Sixtus IV in confirmation of a law promulgated by the Medical Faculty of Rome, which reads as follows: "No man or woman, whether Christian or Jew, unless he be a master or a licentiate in medicine, shall presume to treat the human body either as a physician or as a surgeon."[207]

In central and northern Italy—in Florence, Turin, Padua, Venice—as well as in the southern part, we find constantly recurring instances of women practicing medicine and surgery and winning for themselves an enviable reputation as successful practitioners.

But after the decline of Salerno, consequent on the establishment by Frederick II of a school of medicine in Naples, the great center of medicine and surgery, as of civil and canon law, was Bologna.[208] So renowned did it become as a teaching and intellectual center that it was, as Sarti informs us, known throughout Europe as Civitas Docta—the learned city—and Mater Studiorum—the mother of studies. On its coins were stamped the words Bononia Docet—Bologna teaches—and on the city seal, which is still used for certain public documents, were the words Legum Bononia Mater—Bologna, the Mother of Laws.

Here, more than in Salerno, more than in any other city in the world, was, for long centuries, witnessed a blooming of female genius that has, since the time of Gratian and Irnerius, given the University of Bologna preëminence in the estimation of all friends of woman's education and woman's culture. For here, within the walls of what was for centuries the most celebrated university in Christendom, women had, for the first time, an opportunity of devoting themselves at will to the study of any and all branches of knowledge. And it can be truthfully affirmed that no seat of learning can point to such a long list of eminent scholars and teachers among the gentler sex as is to be found on the register of Bologna's famous university. For here, to name only a few, achieved distinction, either as students or as professors, such noted women as Bitisia Gozzadina, Bettina and Novella Calendrini, Dorotea Bocchi, Giovanna and Maddalena Bianchetti, Virginia Malvezzi, Maria Vittoria Dosi, Elisabetta Sirani, Ippolita Grassi, Properzia de Rossi, Maria Mastellagri, Laura Bassi, Maddelena Noe-Candedi, Clotilda Tambroni and Anna Manzolini. In this honor list we have a group of savantes that were famed throughout Europe for their attainments in law, philosophy, science, ancient and modern languages, medicine, and surgery—the rivals, and sometimes the superiors, in scholarship of the ablest men among their distinguished colleagues.

It would be a pleasure to recount the achievements of these justly celebrated daughters of Italy; but lack of space precludes the mention of more than one of them. This was Maria dalle Donne, who was born of poor peasants near Bologna, and who at an early age exhibited intelligence of a superior order. After pursuing her studies under the ablest masters, she obtained from the University of Bologna, maxima cum laude, the degree of doctor in philosophy and medicine. On account of her knowledge of surgery, as well as of medicine, she was soon afterward put in charge of the city's school for midwives. When Napoleon, in 1802, passed through Bologna he was so struck by the exceptional ability of the young dottoressa that, on the recommendation of the savant Caterzani, he had instituted for her in the university a chair of obstetrics—a position which she held until the time of her death, in 1842, with the greatest credit to herself and to the institution with which she was identified.

Maria dalle Donne is a worthy link between that long line of women doctors, beginning with Trotula, who have so honored their sex in Italy, and those still more numerous practitioners in the healing art who, shortly after her death, began to spring up in all parts of the civilized world.[209]