Content area
Full Text
The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women's Medicine, ed. and trans. Monica H. Green, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). xvii + 301 pp. ISBN 0-8122-3589-4. $55.00/ pound 33.50.
Monica H. Green's detailed study of the text and context of the medieval gynaecological treatise known as The Trotula has reached one point of culmination (she promises others) in the present masterful edition. It consists of an introduction (detailing the place of Salerno in the Mediterranean and as a centre for both traditional and Arabic medicine, the nature of earlier gynaecological texts, the nature of the medical doctrine in the three texts that eventually comprised The Trotula, and an explanation of the rationale and conventions of this edition and translation); the text and translation of the standardized Trotula ensemble, based on readings from nine manuscripts (with textual notes); an appendix giving recipes for compound medicines mentioned in The Trotula - these are the editor's...