Chapter 7 - Embracing the Body and the Soul

Summary

This essay addresses women and medicine in the Middle Ages, especially works concerning the female body and reproduction. Positive representations of the female body are found in the mystical writings of, for example, the thirteenth-century nuns of Helfta and Mechthild of Hackeborn, and, in contrast to later gynaecological works, which were often deeply misogynistic, Hildegard of Bingenߣs medical texts ascribe a redemptive quality to womenߣs reproductive processes. Most medical treatises, however, were not written for women, and even women involved in health care, including midwives, had little access to them. The Trotula, a compendium on womenߣs medicine taking its name from the twelfth-century woman physician Trota, was widely disseminated and translated as a whole and in parts, but although early Latin versions were addressed to women, later versions were owned largely by men. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of female readership and audiences, and the translation of medical treatises about women into the vernacular increased womenߣs access to this important form of textual knowledge.