Du
Bouley, in his 'History of the University of Paris,' gives
another edict by the same King, also published in the year
1352, as a result of the complaints of the faculties at Paris,
in which there is also question of women physicians. This
responded to the petition: 'Having heard the petition of the
Dean and the Masters of the Faculty of Medicine at the
University of Paris, who declare that there are very many of
both sexes, some of the women with legal title to practise and
some of them merely old pretenders to a knowledge of medicine,
who come to Paris in order to practise, be it enacted,' etc.
(The edict then proceeds to repeat the terms of previous
legislation in this matter.)

"Guy de Chauliac speaks also of women who practised surgery.
They formed the fifth and last class of operators in his time.
He complains that they are accustomed to too great an extent
to give over patients suffering from all kinds of maladies to
the will of Heaven, founding their practice on the maxim 'The
Lord has given as he has pleased; the Lord will take away when
he pleases; may the name of the Lord be blessed.'

"In the sixteenth century, according to Pasquier, the practice
of medicine by women almost entirely disappeared. The number
of women physicians becomes more and more rare in the
following centuries just in proportion as we approach our own
time. Pasquier says that we find a certain number of them
anxious for knowledge and with a special penchant for the
study of the natural sciences and even of medicine, but very
few of them take up practice."

Just how the lack of interest in medical education for women gradually
deepened, until there was almost a negative phase of it, only a few
women in Italy devoting themselves to medicine, is hard to say. It is
one of the mysteries of the vicissitudes of human affairs that ups and
downs of interest in things practical as well as intellectual keep
constantly occurring. The number of discoveries and inventions in
medicine and surgery that we have neglected until they were forgotten,
and then had to make again, is so well illustrated in chapters of this
book, that I need only recall them here in general. It may seem a little
harder to understand that so important a manifestation of interest in
human affairs as the education and licensure of women physic