cult to say. Trotula's name had
become a word to conjure with, and many a quack in the after time tried
to make capital for his remedies in this line by attributing them to
Trotula. As a consequence, many of these remedies gradually found their
way into the manuscript copies of her book, and subsequent copyists
incorporated them into the text, until it became practically impossible
to determine which were original. There are manuscripts of Trotula's
work in Florence, Vienna, and Breslau. Some of these contain chapters
not in the others, undoubtedly added by subsequent hands. In one of
these, that at Florence, from which the edition of Strasburg was printed
in 1544, and of Venice, 1547, one of the Aldine issues, there is a
mention in the last chapter of spectacles. We have no record of these
until the end of the thirteenth century, when this passage was probably
added. It was also printed at Basle, 1566, and at Leipzig as late as
1778, which would serve to show how much attention it has attracted even
in comparatively recent times.

After Trotula we have a number of women physicians of Salerno whose
names have come down to us. The best known of these bear the names
Constanza, Calendula, Abella, Mercuriade, Rebecca Guarna, who belonged
to the old Salernitan family of that name, a member of which, in the
twelfth century, was Romuald, priest, physician, and historian, Louise
Trencapilli, and others. The titles of some of their books, as those of
Mercuriade, who occupied herself with surgery as well as medicine, and
who is said to have written on "Crises," on "Pestilent Fever," on "The
Cure of Wounds," and of Abella, who acquired a great reputation with her
work on "Black Bile," and on the "Nature of Seminal Fluid," have come
down to us. Rebecca Guarna wrote on "Fevers," on the "Urine," and on the
"Embryo." The school of Salernitan women came to have a definite place
in medical literature.

While, as teachers, they had charge of the department of women's
diseases, their writings would seem to indicate that they studied all
branches of medicine. Besides, there are a number of licenses preserved
in the archives of Naples in which women are accorded the privilege of
practising medicine. Apparently these licenses were without limitation.
In many of these mention is made of the fact that it seems especially
fitting that women should be allowed to practise in women's diseases,
since they are by constitution likely to know more an