Among the financiers of the Duomo factory at the time of Robert Guiscad, there were also the noblemen De Ruggiero.
And the famous Trotula belonged to that Norman family and during the reign of Gisulfo, thanks to the conditions of the De Ruggieros, had not only been able to study, but to obtain a degree in medicine, becoming the first female doctor in history. She remained in her city to work as an obstetrician and also as a magistra (teacher) of the School. The De mulierum passionibus ante in e post partum is attributed to her. It is the birth certificate of obstetrics and gynecology as a medicine branch, but she also wrote the De ornatu mulierum, a short treaty about cosmetics, which she also dealt with. Trotula is certainly the most famous, but there were also many other graduated in Salerno, known as mulieres Salernitanae, including Abella Salernitana, author of De natura seminis humani, Costanza Calenda, Rebecca Guarna, Mercuriade and Sichelgaita, Robert Guiscard’s wife. The Medical School, also in line with the Lombard culture which didn’t exclude women from the possibility of studying or from the exercising power or taking up arms, didn’t make gender differences between its students. Instead, if Trotula and her colleagues specialised themselves in some branches rather than others, it was only because women could heal other women in Middle-Ages. And Trotula, then, married to the doctor Giovanni Plateario, started a dynasty of doctors with their sons Giovanni il Giovane and Matteo.
