Peretta Peronne (fl. 1410–1411) was an unlicensed female surgeon operating in Paris in the early fifteenth century. Her legacy is known exclusively through her prosecution by the Parisian medical faculty in 1411.
Background
Peronne practiced surgery in Paris without formal licensure or guild approval. During this period, the Parisian medical faculty sought to increase the status of university-trained physicians and to emphasize the necessity of formal training and licensing for medical professionals. This was part of a broader movement in early modern Europe to denounce non-university-trained medical practitioners, including surgeons, barbers, and apothecaries, as either inferior or illegitimate.
Women had participated in medical practice throughout the Middle Ages across a variety of disciplines. However, by the late medieval period, increased regulation and legal repercussions against their practice had become significant enough that the profession of women physicians began to disappear from the historical record. The prosecution of Jacoba Felicie in 1322 was an early example of this trend in France.
Prosecution
Peronne was brought before the Master Surgeons of the University of Paris in 1411. She had been pursued by the St. Damien and St. Cosme surgeon's confraternity, which consisted of approximately eleven members. They approached the Paris medical faculty for assistance in prosecuting Peronne because she had been displaying a sign outside her home advertising herself in the "manner of a public surgeon."
The surgeon's guild and the university viewed Peronne's work as a threat to their professional standing and to the distinct separation between physicians and surgeons. She is the only documented case of a female surgical practitioner being prosecuted by the Parisian medical faculty during this time. By the fourteenth century, surgeons, barbers, and apothecaries were typically free from prosecution if they were members of a guild supervised and regulated by the medical faculty. Women were not permitted to be members of surgeons' guilds and were generally excluded from guild participation outside of the textile industry or as widows. Additionally, women were not prosecuted if they worked exclusively as midwives, with the dying elderly, or with the very young. Peronne's surgical practice catered to both sexes and advertised procedures for which she had not received ordained training or licensing.
Once formally prosecuted, Peronne was required to remove her advertisement from her home and cease her surgical practice until she had been examined. Some historical sources suggest she was imprisoned during the examination process. University records indicate she had to surrender her surgical textbooks for examination by physicians and the criminal clerk, and she was to be interviewed by physicians in the presence of practicing surgeons.
During her defense, Peronne asserted that she was a proven practitioner doing work for God and stressed that she needed to continue her work "because she has many sick persons or patients under her care, who required essential remedies and visitation."
Trial Outcome
The physicians at the Parisian medical faculty concluded that Peronne was not knowledgeable about the content of the surgical books she possessed and that she could not differentiate between the letter "A from a faggot." The university faculty ordered that she permanently remove the public surgeon sign from her house; however, records indicate that she continued to work. Peronne's ability to continue her practice after trial and possible imprisonment suggests that the attempts of male physicians to bar women and non-licensed practitioners from medical work were not completely successful. The requirements of formal training limited the number of "legitimate" physicians available in Paris, yet the need for medical assistance remained, particularly in surgery, which was considered an inferior branch of medicine. The public continued to seek the assistance of women surgeons such as Peronne if they were perceived as skillful and effective.
