Trotula de Ruggiero, a woman physician, was magistra of the Salerno Medical School and author of texts on gynecology and obstetrics that have remained exemplary for centuries.
XI secolo
Medichessa, magistra Scuola Medica Salernitana
Women also practiced medicine in Salerno, specializing in women’s diseases; they were the famous mulieres salernitanae. The most famous and important of them all was Trotula de Ruggiero, from a very noble family, who lived in the 11th century, the most glorious period in the history of the Medical School, the period of the transition from the Lombards to the Normans, in which Alfano I and Constantine the Africanus were operating. Wife and mother of physicians, she was not merely a doctor among others (the others), but scholar and teacher, Trotula, as well as author of texts on what we now call “gynecology.” Her texts knew a very long life, until they had a printed version in the 16th century, when they were still used as manuals. His most important book was precisely De passionibus mulierum ante in et post partum (On the Diseases of Women Before and After Childbirth), in which he deals with gynecological problems.
But, faithful to the prescriptions of the Medical School, which linked health and well-being-modern concepts that have been reevaluated today-he also deals with cosmetics and female beauty in De ornatu mulierum (On Women’s Cosmetics), in which he precisely gives advice and guidance on how to preserve youth and beauty, in the idea that health cannot be separated from general well-being.
In Salerno, on Via Vinciprova the well-known Neapolitan artist Jorit has dedicated a splendid mural to Trotula de Ruggiero, as part of a project promoted by Salerno Mobility in collaboration with the Alfonso Gatto Foundation.
