"Nicolette searched his hurt, and perceived that his shoulder was out of joint. She handled it so deftly with her white hands, and used such skillful surgery that, by the grace of God, who loveth all true lovers, the shoulder came back to its place. Then she plucked flowers and fresh grasses and green leafage, and bound them tightly about the setting with the hem torn from her shift, and he was altogether healed." And in the mediaeval Latin poem, _Waltharius_, written by a German monk, Ekkehard, reference is made to a sanguinary contest in which one of the combatants falls to the earth seriously wounded. Seeing this, Alpharides, in a loud voice, summons a young girl, who timidly comes forward and dresses the unfortunate man's wound.[186] Still more to our purpose is a passage from the famous epic poem, _Tristan and Isolde_, written by _Godfrey of Strasburg_, in which Isolde, accompanied by her mother and cousin, is represented as administering restoratives to Tristan, who had fallen exhausted after his combat with the dragon. It shows that women, in accompanying an army to the field of battle, always went provided with bandages and medicaments for dressing wounds and fractured limbs. Similarly Angelica, in _Orlando Furioso_, and Ermina, in _Jerusalem Delivered_, are portrayed as surgeons with deftness of hand and leeches with rare knowledge and skill. The frequent introduction of women doctors into the poems and romances of the Middle Ages would of itself, if other evidence were wanting, suffice to show what an important role women played in medicine and surgery at a time when, in many parts of Europe, women were far better educated and far more cultured than men--"when the knights and barons of France and Germany were inclined to look upon reading and writing as unmanly and almost degrading accomplishments, fit only for priests or monks, and especially for priests or monks not too well born."[187] In the instances just quoted, as well as those mentioned by Homer and Euripides, the writers do no more than faithfully reflect conditions which then obtained, and truthfully report what were the occupations of women when their status was so different from what it is to-day. But, fortunately, we do not have to rely on works of the imagination for our knowledge respecting the women practitioners of the healing art, either during the Homeric period or during that which intervened between the downfall of Rome and the dawn of the Renaissance. For the history of medicine during mediaeval times affords too many examples of women who became famous for their knowledge of medicine, as well as for their success in surgical and medical practice, to leave any doubt about the matter. Besides this, we have still the writings of many of these women, and are thus able to judge of their competency in those branches of knowledge on which they shed so great luster.