Why Don’t We Stock Pepper in L&D?

“When God the creator of the universe in the first establishment of the world differentiated the individual natures of things each according to its kind, He endowed human nature above all other things with a singular dignity, giving to it above the condition of all other animals freedom of reason and intellect. And wishing to sustain its generation in perpetuity, He created the male and the female with provident, dispensing deliberation, laying out in the separate sexes the foundation for the propagation of future offspring. And so that from there there might emerge fertile offspring, he endowed their complexions with a certain pleasing commixtion, constituting the nature of the male hot and dry. But lest the male overflow with either one of these qualities, He wished by the opposing frigidity and humidity of the woman to rein him in from too much excess, so that the stronger qualities, that is the heat and the dryness, should rule the weaker, that is the woman. And so that by his stronger quality the male  might pour out his duty in the woman just as seed is sown in its designated field, and so that the woman by her weaker quality, as if made subject to the function of the man, might receive the seed poured forth in the lap of Nature.”

Thus begins the Trotula, that massive collection of medieval obstetrics and gynecology that ruled women’s therapy for 500 years.

The first volume, “The Book on the Diseases of Women According to Trotula,” claims to be a compendium of medical knowledge, including the “more worthy parts of the books of Hippocrates and Galen.”

Women are cold and wet. The menses are nature’s purge, allowing her to lose some of that wet stuff. If she doesn’t, bad things happen. In fact, the menses are solely responsible for just about anything that can possibly happen to a woman.

If she doesn’t menstruate enough, she is bled. If she menstruates too much (and this is really rare, because the only good menses is a LOT of menses), she is bled. If she doesn’t menstruate at all–she is bled.

A woman who does not have access to sperm, which helps dry her out, is in a bad way. She is  usually advised to find a decent sperm donor. A widow should be remarried; a virgin should get married. Failing that, one can make a hollow, penis shaped pessary with which one can deliver medicine.

The Trotula does not actually mention wandering womb syndrome, that most intriguing of Hippocratic conditions, but it does discuss uterine “suffocation” and the necessary treatments, which consist, unsurprisingly, of 1) intercourse, and 2) the usual foul smells to the nose and pretty smells to the vagina.

A test to determine whether failure to conceive is due to the woman’s fault or the man’s is laid out: Put wheat bran into each of two pots. Add the man’s urine to one and the woman’s urine in the other. Let them stand for ten days; the responsible party’s pot will be loaded with worms and the bran will stink.

(I’m guessing they both stunk after ten days without refrigeration.)

Many of the remedies given are sympathetic magic: to prevent conception, a woman can carry against her stomach the womb of a goat which has never had offspring, or wear the testicles of a male weasel against her breasts. I’m not an expert on either method, but I’m guessing they might actually have worked, especially after a few weeks. But no one bathed back then, so maybe not.

For difficult childbirth, sneezing should be induced, with the mouth and nose covered to direct the forces downward. The woman should be encircled with a snake skin and the root of a gourd tied between her loins (you had to be careful with the last one–if it was left in place after the baby was born, the uterus might prolapse!). The woman should drink ivory shavings, a potion made of the white stuff of the excrement of a hawk (GAK!), or the water in which “the stone of the firstborn found in the belly of a swallow or in its nest is washed.”

The first book of the Trotula is so loaded with wisdom that I have only begun to scratch the surface. If anyone has any specific requests, I’m happy to look them up for you. Just be aware that it might require you to hunt down a hare and powder its uterus.

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