Comparing Galen's On The Natural Faculties And The Trotula

There is a certain amount of irony in this new world of scholasticism. For a tradition that continuous to this day, began in these universities; that is, the tradition of academics arguing with one another through the publication of their work. The faculty of the university had, in addition to a degree of control over who was practicing medicine, control of the material taught, and the method of its instruction. As a result, the Greek teachings being studied were adhered to unbendingly, interpreted literally, and held as the absolute authority. This strict accordance to the teachings of antiquity undoubtedly slowed the progress of science in the thirteenth century. As another stroke of irony, Galen himself had disdainful words about bickering academics.
Almost assuredly, Galen was not aware that it would be the strict adherence to …show more content…
They have seen transitions in practitioners and patients, the balance of power move between one group and another. The Trotula, however, has seen and experienced more than most. It empowered a group of women, giving them the tools to give themselves the care they needed, the care that male physicians simply were not interested in. Like any work of literature, its words were reinterpreted, repurposed, for a new audience; this time the male physicians who sought to monitor these female healers and midwives. It was repurposed again, for men studying the female anatomy, when women were no longer permitted to practice. And finally, in the far future, it was cast away, as the advancement of science rendered its teachings obsolete. While their teachings may never again be a part of ‘modern science,’ On the Natural Faculties and The Trotula are invaluable markers in the path that science has taken, bridges ad road signs that historians can follow and trace all the way to the present, and as far back into the past as we can