How different it was in Italy, which, since the fall of the Roman Empire, has ever been in the van of civilization, and which has always continued the best traditions of Graeco-Roman learning and culture--Italy, which has been the home of such supreme masters of literature, science, art as Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Brunelleschi--Italy, the mother of universities, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the recognized leader of intellectual progress among the nations of the world. Here in the favored land of the Muses and the Graces, women enjoyed all the rights and privileges accorded to men; here the doors of schools and universities were open to all regardless of sex; and art, science, literature, law, medicine, jurisprudence counted its votaries among women as well as among men; here, far from encountering jealousy and opposition in the pursuit of knowledge or in the practice of the professions, women never found aught but generous emulation and sympathetic cooperation. For a thousand years women were welcomed into the arena of learning and culture on the same footing as men. In Salerno, Bologna, Padua, Pavia, they competed for the same honors and were contestants for the same prizes that stimulated the exertions of the sterner sex. Position and emolument were the guerdons of merit and ability, and the victor, whether man or woman, was equally acclaimed and showered with equal honor. Women asked for no favors in the intellectual arena and expected none. All they desired were the same opportunities and the same privileges as were granted the men, and these were never denied them. From the time when Trotula taught in Salerno to the present, when Giuseppina Catani is professor of general pathology in the medical faculty of Bologna, the women of Italy always had access to the universities and were at liberty to follow any course of study they might elect. We thus find them achieving distinction in civil and canon law, in medicine, in theology even, as well as in art, science, literature, philosophy and linguistics. No department of knowledge had any terrors for them, and there was none in which some of them did not win undying fame. They held chairs of language, jurisprudence, philosophy, physics, mathematics, medicine and anatomy, and filled these positions with such marked ability that they commanded the admiration and applause of all who heard them. This is not the place to tell of the triumphs of the women professors in the Italian universities, or to recount the achievements of those who were honored with degrees within their classic walls. Let it suffice to recall the names of a few of those who won renown in medicine and surgery and whose names are still in their own land pronounced with respect and veneration.