The previous two chapters are largely based on the Greco-Roman tradition of theoretical medicine, featuring texts outlining the practice of theoretical medicine with a focus on individual dietetics. While one can look at the recommendations in these texts and see the line of reasoning stretching from Hippocrates to the Regimina sanitatis, it is a much more difficult proposition to separate theoretical medicine – both physica and medicina – from practical medicine. By practical medicine, I mean both medicine as actually practiced by professional doctors, and practiced by midwives, wise women, and traditional health specialists, both male and female. This practical medicine could be highly influenced by the privileged Greco-Roman tradition, or not. How much did theoretical medicine affect the way people were treated? Was there a large difference between the way the different social classes sought medical care and the way those with money and prestige sought medical care?

Some of these questions are tackled by significant scholars on medicine and health in the Middle Ages, people like Monica Green, Bruno Laurioux, Madeleine Nicoud, Ken Albala, Faith Wallis and Melitta Weiss-Amer. While it's certainly possible to trace the textual tradition through the medieval West, and there is some surviving evidence of medicine as practiced, this evidence usually comes from the literate classes, and is therefore more likely to be in the theoretical tradition. This chapter summarizes some of that material (much of it already mentioned in Chapter Two and Chapter Three), and introduces some of the major works that deal with medicine in the Middle Ages, particularly as it pertained to the treatment of women.