ABSTRACT
There are several Middle English translations of texts associated with the name of Trotula, three of which are represented here. Although her existence has sometimes been questioned, Trota, or Trotula, did indeed exist. She was a woman physician who practised in Salerno, Italy, which was a great centre of medieval medicine, in the late eleventh or twelfth century. (‘Trota’ is a genuine name found in records of the period and is probably a diminutive of Gertrude, rather like ‘Trudy’.) But the only genuine work that can be attributed to her is the very rare Practica secundum Trotam (The Practice according to Trotula), which was never translated out of Latin (see Green 2001: xvi; Benton 1985: 30–53).
