s in Italy, so that there has not been a
single century since the twelfth in which there have not been one or
more distinguished women teachers at the Italian universities.
University life gradually spread westward, and Paris came into existence
as an organized institution of learning after Bologna, and, doubtless,
with some of the traditions of Salerno in the minds of its founders.
Feminine education, however, did not spread to the West. This is a
little bit difficult to understand, considering the reverence that the
Teutonic peoples have always had for their women folk and the privileges
accorded them. A single unfortunate incident, that of Abelard and
Heloise, seems to have been sufficient to discourage efforts in the
direction of opportunities for feminine education in connection with the
Western universities. Perhaps, in the less sophisticated countries of
the North and West of Europe, women did not so ardently desire
educational opportunities as in Italy, for whenever they have really
wanted them, as, indeed, anything else, they have always obtained them.

In spite of the absence of formal opportunities for feminine education
in medicine at the Western universities, a certain amount of scientific
knowledge of diseases, as well as valuable practical training in the
care of the ailing, was not wanting for women outside of Italy. The
medical knowledge of the women of northern France and Germany and
England, however, though it did not receive the stamp of a formal degree
from the university and the distinction of a license to practise, was
none the less thorough and extensive. It came in connection with certain
offices in their own communities, held by members of religious orders.
Genuine information with regard to what the religious were doing during
the Middle Ages was so much obscured by the tradition of laziness and
immorality, created at the time of the so-called reformation in order
to justify the confiscation of their property by those whose one object
was to enrich themselves, that we have only come to know the reality of
their life and accomplishments in comparatively recent years. We now
know that, besides being the home of most of the book knowledge of the
earlier Middle Ages, the monasteries were the constant patrons of such
practical subjects as architecture, agriculture in all its phases,
especially irrigation, draining, and the improvement of land and crops;
of art, and even what we now know as physical