Monica H Green
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monicamedhist.bsky.social
Monica H Green
@monicamedhist.bsky.social
10K followers 1.4K following 3.5K posts
Medhist = medieval + medical history (https://hcommons.org/members/mhgreen2/). Daughter #2 of Marlon & Eleanor Green. Focusing on Global Health. Latest: https://www.history21.com/owit-module/the-black-death-the-medieval-plague-pandemic/
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monicamedhist.bsky.social
Just posted: the bibliography for the talk I'll be giving (virtually) at the University of Bonn in a few minutes. "Trota of Salerno and the “Flower” of Menstruation: The European Tradition on Female Physiology Takes Shape." doi.org/10.17613/ftb... #histmed #MedievalSky #WomensHistory
The title slide for Monica H. Green, "Trota of Salerno and the “Flower” of Menstruation: The European Tradition on Female Physiology Takes Shape," a talk being presented today at the University of Bonn. The image on the left is an idealized "portrait" of the female healer Trota (or here, "Trotila") of Salerno. She is dressed in a green dress with a red cloak, and she holds what seems to be an orb in her left hand.
November 17, 2025 at 2:54 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Just reminded of this bit I had in my notes, where Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani's (d. 1449) Merits of the Plague says this about Ibn al-Wardi's plague treatise.

These chains of transmission are how we will show how Ibn al-Wardi's maqama came to have the influence it did. #histmed #MedievalSky
Some notes on the transmission of Ibn al-Wardi's 1348 maqama on the plague: I was just re-reading Blecher and Syed's new translation of Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani's Merits of the Plague today (Penguin, 2023), and was reminded that Ibn Hajar says this about Ibn al-Wardi's plague treatise: "Most of the depictions of the plague concern the Great Plague of the year 749 (1348). The best and most expert of those depictions is what my teacher Abū al-Yusr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Ṣāʾigh told me. He said that Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn Muẓaffar ibn al-Wardī gave him permission in person to transmit this work of rhyming prose called “Tidings of the Plague.”"
November 7, 2025 at 6:01 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Well worth your time for a quick read: Maria A. Nieves-Colón, "Commentary on Special Issue: “Towards a Biocultural Synthesis of the Peopling of the Americas”, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... A field transformed!
Opening page of Commentary on Special Issue: “Towards a Biocultural Synthesis of the Peopling of the Americas.” Available open-access at the link in post.
November 6, 2025 at 3:06 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
You guessed it! From Ibn Taghribirdi's (and al-Maqrizi's) inflected 15th-century readings of Ibn al-Wardi's 14th-century maqama. Here's the summary from Omar & Fancy:
From Omar and Fancy 2025, p. 169. The full text is available open-access at this link: https://journals.uio.no/JAIS/article/view/12790.
November 6, 2025 at 12:12 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Hecker (so far as we know) didn't know Arabic. But he did know French, and had read Joseph de Guignes' 1756 history of the Turks and Mongols, which picked up from Ibn Taghribirdi the claim that the pandemic originated "in the lands of the great khan of Tartary." And where did that idea come from?
A quotation from de Guignes "General History of the Huns, Turks, and Mongols" (1756), which claims that he has relied on an "Arabic author" for the information that the Black Death pandemic began "in the lands of the great Khan of Tartary."
November 6, 2025 at 12:06 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Here's the passage from Rosemary Horrox's absolutely invaluable collection of primary sources on the Black Death. She only includes European sources (mostly from England in fact). But she does draw on broader scholarship for her general introduction. Why has she changed Hecker's "1333" to "1331-32"?
On the right, the titled page of the original German edition of Hecker, Justus Friedrich Carl. Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert. Nach den Quellen für Ärzte und gebildete Nichtärzte bearbeitet (Berlin: F. A. Herbig, 1832). The text quoted on the upper left is an English translation, where Hecker says "The series of these great events began in the year 1333, fifteen years before the plague broke out in Europe: they first appeared in China." Below is a quote from Horrox's 1994 Black Death text, where she says: "The plague was probably active in central Asia in 1331-32. Thence it spread south, to China and India, and west through Transoxiana and Persia. It had reached southern Russia by 1345-46, when it attacked the cities of the Golden Horde, including Astrakhan. By this time it was moving fast down the main trading arteries and, as far as Europe is concerned, the crucial line of transmission seems to have been overland to the Crimea and then by sea from the Genoese trading centres in the Black Sea to Italy. This is the route described by de’ Mussis [1], whose version can be supported by eastern accounts."
November 5, 2025 at 11:42 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
But back to Martin's map. It was, like all maps, drawn from indications culled from various sources. Martin lists the ones he's used. Note, for example, his citation of "de Mussis". That's a 14thC source (written betw. 1350 & 1356) by a northern Italian. It was discovered in 1842 & made a splash.
The opening page of the sole copy to have survived of Gabriele de Mussis' Historia de morbo, a history of the Black Death, written between 1350 and 1356. It was only rediscovered and incorporated into Black Death historiography in 1842.
November 5, 2025 at 11:27 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
The date 1346 is also well established in plague historiography, & is usually tied to the outbreaks of plague in the Golden Horde, that is, the Ulus of Jochi, the Mongol realm north of the Caucasus. Here's an 1879 source, which pub'd 1 of the first maps of the Black Death, giving 1346 as its origin.
Martin, Carl. “Versuch einer geographischen Darstellung einiger Pestepidemie,” Dr. A. Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt 25 (1879), 257-269, plus maps on Plate (Tafel) 14. An 1879 map of the Black Death, suggesting its presumed original manifestation in 1346 in the Black Sea, but with arrows suggesting its earlier passage through areas both north and south of the Caspian Sea. Martin, Carl. “Versuch einer geographischen Darstellung einiger Pestepidemie,” Dr. A. Petermann’s Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt 25 (1879), 257-269, plus maps on Plate (Tafel) 14.
November 5, 2025 at 11:19 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
And we have *lots* of sources to document this. Here's one: a letter from the "mayor of Narbonne, in southern France, to the town council of Girona. Sources cited in the Omar & Fancy essay document plague's spread at the same time in the eastern Mediterranen. But what happened before 1347/48?
A slide documenting awareness of the spread of the "mortality of people" in the western Mediterranean, documented by a letter from the viguier (sort of the mayor) of Narbonne to the town council of Girona, as translated by Horrox, Rosemary, ed. and trans. The Black Death (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1994). The map of the Mediterranean (here shown with west-to-east running from top-to-bottom) is the work of Sabine Réthoré (2011).
November 5, 2025 at 11:08 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
New York Times headline, 6:50pm (Pacific Time): MAMDANI'S IMPROBABLE RUN ENDS IN VICTORY
November 5, 2025 at 2:51 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Oh wow, major work of interest to #MedievalSky #GlobalMiddleAges #EnvironmentalHistory. A new special issue devoted to "Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Mediterranean Narratives": journals.uio.no/JAIS/article.... Kudos to the editors for bringing this work so quickly into print!
The titlepage for a special issue of the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies. The title of the collection is "Environmental Challenges in Premodern Eurasian and Medi-terranean Narratives." Cover image: Illuminated Manuscript, Book of kings (Shāhnāma), Rustam kills a dragon (the third feat), Walters Art Museum Ms. W.602, fol. 76b,by Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts.
November 3, 2025 at 5:13 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
A marigold for Dia de los Muertos. In memory of all we have lost, but who are never forgotten.
An image of a single French marigold (Tagetes patula). Marigolds are, of course, from the New World.
November 1, 2025 at 6:50 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
"chimpanzees can tell the difference between new and old information, as well as recognize unreliable evidence."

We should all take a cue from our primate cousins!
News of a new scientific study on chimpanzees' ability to revise their prior thinking. Link to original study in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq5229. Link to popular write-up: https://www.sciencealert.com/chimps-can-revise-their-beliefs-when-shown-new-evidence-study-finds. Image on the left: photo of a chimpanzee. Text on the right: notice of study in Sigma Xi SmartBrief: "Chimpanzees have demonstrated the ability to revise their beliefs based on new evidence, a level of rational thinking previously considered unique to humans, according to a study in Science. The research involved experiments where chimpanzees chose boxes with hidden apples based on varying strengths of evidence, showing that chimpanzees can tell the difference between new and old information, as well as recognize unreliable evidence."
October 31, 2025 at 7:40 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
M. baibacina is the principal host for the Yersinia pestis (plague bacterium) lineages that gave rise to the 1st Pandemic; the neighboring species, M. caudata, was likely the host of the lineage that gave rise to the 2nd Pandemic. In other words, continued monitoring is important. #histmed #EpiSky
An image of a grey marmot (Marmota baibacina), native to the Tian Shan range. Image source: Wikimedia. Image of two long-tailed marmots (Marmota caudata), a species native to the southwestern Tian Shan mountains. Image source: Wikipedia.
October 31, 2025 at 10:53 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Latest addition to the 2nd Plague Pandemic bibliography (w/ implications for 1st Pandemic, too): Shao et al. “Integrating machine learning and species distribution models for predicting the potential hazard areas of Marmota baibacina in Xinjiang, China,” www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...
Shao et al. 2025, fig. 1A: Point locations of Marmota baibacina on the north and south slopes of the Tianshan Mountain [Xinyiang].
October 31, 2025 at 10:43 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
The design and reconstructible history of the Mayan eclipse table of the Dresden Codex, www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪 #Astronomy #GlobalMiddleAges
The Dresden Codex.
October 28, 2025 at 12:48 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Still thinking about the implications of this method of hormonal detection of pregnancy in archaeol. remains. In 2006, I opened my article on medieval gynecology w/ the sole kind of physical evidence then available: a ♀️ w/ a calcified growth in her uterus. This new study opens up a whole new world!
The opening paragraph of Monica H. Green, “Gynecology,” in Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Schaus (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 339-43. The Granada study referred to is: Sylvia A. Jiménez Brobeil, “A Contribution to Medieval Pathological Gynaecology,” Journal of Paleopathology 4, no. 3 (1992), 155-61.
October 24, 2025 at 1:14 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
These age-at-death estimates are really painful to read. #MaternalMortality
Barlow et al. 2025, Table 1. Study assemblage. The age-at-death estimation for the women studied range from 15-25 years to 35-45 years.
October 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
This was written to meet Science's 300-word limit, so a little unpacking here might help. As I said when I introduced my talk at Bordeaux last week (doi.org/10.17613/01p...), the biggest issue in plague studies right now is Dating, Dating, Dating. For historical work, we need annual resolution.
The title slide for a talk presented 14 October 2025 at the colloquium, Les Hommes et la peste: 50 ans plus tard, que sait-on? Hommage à Jean-Noël Biraben [“Humankind and the Plague: Fifty Years On, What Do We Know? A Colloquium in Honor of Jean-Noël Biraben”], 14-16 October, Bordeaux. In the middle of the lower register is a chart showing to date ranges of mass graves at a burial site in the Austrian city of Sankt Pölten; several pre-date the Black Death pandemic horizon by several decades. The title of the talk was "Taking ‘Prodrome’ Seriously: A Decade of Rethinking Black Death Narratives in the Age of Evolutionary Genetics.”
October 23, 2025 at 10:32 AM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Still sad that the discussion of Jankyn's Book of Wicked Wives includes no explanation of why two female authors are included: Heloise & "Trotula". There's always been lots of scholarship on the former. But for the latter, the explanation is quite new. #MedievalSky
A paragraph excerpted from Emma Lipton's chapter on the Wife of Bath's Prologue: "By contrast to her account of her first three marriages, the Wife claims that she married her last husband, Jankyn "for love, and no richesse" (WBP 526), and she celebrates the sexual element of their marriage ("in oure bed he was so fressh and gay" [WBP 508]). At first Jankyn seems to have the upper hand in their marriage as he subjects her to readings from his misogynist book featuring villainous wives from history. In this passage, the Wife articulates theory of authorial gender bias, arguing that "if wommen hadde writen stories, / As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, / They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse / Than al the mark of Adam may redresse" (WBP 693-96). Her logic in this passage is similar to the one that shapes curriculum in many English departments with classes by female authors: the idea that the gender of authors plays a fundamental role in the stories they tell. Just as the Knight in her tale must reject misogynist answers to the question of what women want, such as riches and pleasure in bed (WBP 925), the Wife's act of tearing of pages out of Jankyn's Book of Wikked Wives is a symbolic rejection of misogynist stereotypes, invoked earlier in the Prologue in the repetition of "thou seist."" An excerpt from Monica H. Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine (Oxford UP, 2008), p. 205: "Much of this interest narrowed into questions about women’s physical nature or women’s ‘secrets’, which in turn produced two parallel phenomena. On the one hand, gynaecological texts (particularly the Trotula) were adapted to make them focus less on women’s diseases in their entirety and more on making the female body a properly functioning locus of reproduction. Both within the universities and outside them, both in Latin and in the vernaculars, gynaecological texts were excerpted, rearranged, abbreviated and in other ways manipulated to serve new purposes.³ The second phenomenon was the creation of a distinct natural-philosophical tradition of the ‘secrets of women’, most prominently represented by a late thirteenth-century work of that title commonly, if falsely, attributed to the Dominican preacher Albertus Magnus (d. 1280). Although the therapeutic character of gynaecological texts was very different from the speculative character of the pseudo-Albertan text, their common focus on issues of generation allowed them to be seen as virtually interchangeable, sometimes being paired with one another, sometimes circulating in identical codicological contexts as if it didn’t matter which particular text was included. Some of these new readings of gynaecological literature were more localized, some more peculiar than others. But all reflect new habits of thinking about the female body."
October 22, 2025 at 7:44 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
In addition to the individual teaching files posted on the History for the 21st Century site, a PDF of the compiled student readings for "The Black Death: The Medieval Plague Pandemic Through the Eyes of Ibn Battuta" can be found at this DOI: doi.org/10.17613/qez.... #histmed #MedievalSky #Pandemics
Cover page for the open-access teaching module: "The Black Death: The Medieval Plague Pandemic Through the Eyes of Ibn Battuta," by Monica H. Green (2025). The image at the top is a cemetery scene from a later 14th-century religious encyclopedia.
October 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Link to President Suresh V. Garimella's letter: president.arizona.edu/sites/defaul.... Here's the latter part of it:
Latter half of Suresh V. Garimella's letter to Trump administration, rejecting 'Compact' with universities. "At the same time, a federal research funding system based on anything other than merit would weaken the world’s preeminent engine for innovation, advancement of technology, and solutions to many of our nation’s most profound challenges. We seek no special treatment and believe in our ability to compete for federally funded research strictly on merit. As a demonstration of our commitment to collaboration with the federal government, I have included below the University of Arizona’s Statement of Principles. These principles are not just an expression of philosophy; they are a commitment to strengthen or continue reforms that benefit our students, advance our shared national interests, and protect the taxpayers. Our principles affirm that our university community remains rooted in the pursuit of excellence with clear standards, transparency, and accountability. We welcome the opportunity to engage other universities, higher education associations, members of Congress, and your administration to advance and implement our principles in alignment with the national interest. I look forward to further discussion and a continued partnership with the federal government, which has helped to produce the strongest and most competitive higher education system in the world. Sincerely, Suresh Garimella"
October 21, 2025 at 3:50 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
More public talks coming up in a couple of weeks. Here's the notice for my talk at UC-Merced on 6 Nov: "Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics." Further info here: centerforhumanities.ucmerced.edu/events/where... #histmed #MedievalSky #EpiSky
Announcement for a talk sponsored by the University of California-Merced Seminar in the Humanities, to be given by Monica H. Green on Nov. 6: Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics. The image includes a photograph of the speaker at the center. The text of the abstract for “Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives to Rethink the Origin of Pandemics” a talk to be presented to the Center for the Humanities, University of California, Merced, 6 November 2025 Monica H. Green monica.h.green@gmail.com https://hcommons.org/members/mhgreen2/ Abstract: Where do pandemics come from? The question has never been more urgently on our minds than in the past five years. Yet while the force of pandemics has been recognized for centuries, aside from being seen as acts of God, there has been little understanding of their genesis. Those questions began to be answered in the early 20th century with increasing understanding of how major infectious diseases can move between animal populations and humans, that is, as zoonotics, often with insects as vectors. The advent of advanced genetics in the late 20th century has now allowed the precise tracking of strains of pathogens across species. And the rise of paleogenetics in the 21st century now allows us to track such diseases into the past. Pandemics are unique in that they manage to exploit human networks to spread globally and, more often than not, sustain themselves. Whether the diseases are carried by humans themselves or by human-created ecologies or means of transport, pandemics always have an anthropogenic element. How does that knowledge help us think comparatively about pandemics past, present, and future? And do the traditional humanities-based methods of History help us tell these stories anew? This talk will draw on new findings about the late medieval plague pandemic, the Black Death, to explain what we know about its genesis, spread, and perpetuation for the next 500 years. And it will compare it in broad outlines with other, more recent pandemics to show their commonalities.
October 20, 2025 at 10:41 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
Thanks, as always, to @aaronm.bsky.social for these updates on the Vatican's digitization project. Three new medical MSS this week, including this (later 13th-cent.?) copy of the *Antidotarium Nicolai*, another product of 12th-century Salerno. #histmed
The opening page of a possibly later 13th-century manuscript copy of the pharmaceutical text from 12th-century Salerno, the Antidotarium Nicolai.
October 20, 2025 at 8:14 PM
monicamedhist.bsky.social
The Rise of RFK Jr. premieres this Tuesday, 19 October, on Frontline.
Photo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., followed by this text: The Rise of RFK Jr. Premieres This Tuesday On Oct. 21, FRONTLINE traces the dramatic and controversial rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., examining how the scion of a storied dynasty endured tragedy and scandal, broke with the Democratic Party and his family, stoked conspiracy theories, and is reshaping government and public health. The Rise of RFK Jr. premieres Tuesday, October 21, at 10/9c on PBS stations and YouTube, and at 7/6c at PBS.org/frontline and in the PBS App.
October 19, 2025 at 3:12 PM