Christian Works : Two medical tracts on the diseases of women

Christian Works

<p style='text-align: justify;'>CUL Ii. vi. 33 can be described as an <i>ad hoc</i> manuscript in which the information seems to have been gathered in the interest of a particular discourse community. This manuscript consists of two texts that, whilst being codicological and paleographically distinct, seem to have shared a common intended readership. <i>The Boke of Rota</i> and <i>The Knowing of Woman's Kind in Childing </i> are two gynaecological treatises that belong to the vernacular tradition of circulation of the Trotula ensemble in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Drawing most of its content from the thirteenth-century French translation of the <i>Liber de Sinthomatibus Mulierum</i>, the sixth-century <i>Non omnes quidem</i> (mostly derived from Muscio’s<i>Gynaecia</i>), and the <i>Gynaecia Cleopatrae</i>, these texts enclose the tenets of Hippocratic gynaecology such as the recognition of the benefits of sexual activity and menstruation or the theory of the ‘wandering womb’. </p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Laura Rodriguez</p>