ABSTRACT
Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, an orphan raised by an atheist Jewish doctor, is a medical student but not an unusual one, as women students and teachers were regularly admitted to the Salerno Medical School. She has mastered the art of death, which today people call forensic medicine, making her, historically, the earliest fictional female coroner likely to turn up in any novel. Athenian lawmakers learned that women were performing abortions and banned them from practicing medicine, imposing the death penalty for violators. The acquired medical theoretical knowledge and practical skill of the woman is not a coincidence. The chapter describes the struggle of women for recognition and equality in the field of medicine and rise and fall of witchcraft trials. It is clear that the society of the Middle Ages came to believe in the reality of witches as much as modern society believes in the reality of atoms.
