Talk:Women of Salerno

Improving this article

I have made some minor copyedits to fix errors or awkward/unnatural-sounding parts, but I find myself unable to deal with the worst part, the last sentence of the section 'Women in medieval southern Italy and Salerno'. I will quote it below:

"Matteo Plateario (1140-1180) mentioned the women of Salerno and their remedies, in the article “Bernix” is reported a cosmetic; in the article “Cyclamen” two recipes for haemorrhoids and for splenic diseases; in the article “Calamentum” an astringent for the uterus; in the article “Papaver” a sedative; in the article “Parietaria” a remedy for abdominal pain; in the article “Terra Sigillata” a recipe to overcome hair dryness; in the article “Tetrahit” a recipe for urination disorders."

The sentence is extremely repetitive, and unclear to the point that I don't know whether the words in quotation marks are supposed to be names or ingredients of the remedies (my first thought based on the fact that cyclamen is definitely a plant, which could well have medicinal properties) or perhaps references to the creators of the remedies. I attempted an edit, just taking out the repeated uses of "in the article" but, if anything, that made it more unclear, so I have left it as it is.

There is also no inline citation for the origin of the information that I could refer to, in order to work out the meaning. There is only, in the bibliography, the single line "Plateario M., Liber De Semplici Medicina ", which is presumably just Plateario's original text rather than any later/published edition, and I definitely do not have the skills or the knowledge to find and read a medical text in medieval Latin in order to correct one sentence of this article.

I would therefore welcome either that other editors, who may have a better knowledge of the subject or understanding of the intended meaning of the sentence than I do, simply edit the article to correct it, or else that we can perhaps start a discussion on what the sentence means and how it can best be edited to be both less repetitive and more clear.

(I have already checked the versions of this article in other languages to see if they could be helpful in clearing up the confusion, and to my knowledge none of them even mention Plateario, as they are all arguably shorter than the English version, even the Italian one).

I would also welcome discussion about editing other parts of the article to improve the readability and quality, if my own recent copyedits did not go far enough in improving it. Cordelia1898 (talk) 23:34, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cordelia1898, I would either remove the sentence as unsourced, or simplify it to "Matteo Plateario (1140-1180) mentioned the women of Salerno and their remedies in his Liber De Semplici Medicina." There's no real value to specifying every instance of Plateario mentioning them in his book. Schazjmd (talk) 00:07, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@Schazjmd Thank you for your reply and advice. I was actually considering deleting it altogether, as unsourced and because Plateario's name is a red link, but I am now inclined just to simplify it as you suggest, given I have just discovered that Plateario does in fact have a Wikipedia page, under the Latinised version of his name, Matthaeus Platearius (and his page includes the information that he was in fact the son of one of the women of Salerno, most likely the famous Trota), which, I believe, means that the mention has sufficient relevance and value to the article to be worth keeping, but in the shortened form you suggest (and, of course, with a corrected wiklink). Cordelia1898 (talk) 00:29, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cordelia1898, good catch finding his article! Schazjmd (talk) 12:53, 4 July 2023 (UTC)