Among the rather startling surprises that have developed, as the growth of our knowledge of medieval history, through consultation of the documents in recent years, is constantly contradicting traditions founded on lack of information, perhaps the greatest has been to learn that women were given opportunities for the higher education at practically all of the Italian universities, and that they became not only students, but professors, at many of these institutions. No century from the twelfth down to the nineteenth was without some distinguished women professors at Italian universities, and in the later Middle Ages there was a particularly active period of feminine education. The most interesting feature of this development for us is that the application of women to medical studies from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries was not only not discouraged, but was distinctly encouraged, and we find evidence that a number of women studied and taught medicine, wrote books on medical subjects, were consulted with regard to medico-legal questions, and in general were looked upon as medical colleagues in practically every sense of the word. The very first medical school that developed in modern times, that of Salerno, which came into European prominence in the eleventh century, was quite early in its history opened to women students, and a number of women professors were on its faculty. Considering the modern idea that ours is the first time when women have ever had any real opportunity for the higher education, and above all professional education, it is a source of no little astonishment to find that at Salerno not only an opportunity was afforded to women to study medicine, but the department of women's diseases was handed over entirely to them, and as a consequence we have a Salernitan School of Women Physicians, some of whom wrote textbooks on the subject relating to this speciality. De Renzi, in his "Storia della Scuola di Salerno," has brought to light many details of the history of this phase of medical education for women at the first important medical school that developed in modern Europe. The best known of these medieval women physicians was Trotula, to whom is attributed a series of books on medical subjects--though doubtless some of these were due rather to disciples, but became identified with the more famous master, as so often happened with medieval books. Trotula's most important book bears two sub-titles: "Trotula's Unique Book for the Curing of Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labour," and the other sub-title, "Trotula's Wonderful Book of Experiences (_experimentalis_) in the Diseases of Women, Before, During, and After Labour, with Other Details Likewise Relating to Labour."