Note 52 — Chapter I

L'École de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as on other medical subjects. Compare the attitude of the school of Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight hundred years later. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they were informed, as H. Rashdall writes in The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that "the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such degrees." Cf. also Hæser's Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, Band I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment!