Constance Calenda

Constance Calenda, also written Costanza or Constanza Calenda, was an Italian surgeon who specialized in diseases of the eye and is recorded as active around 1415. She studied at the University of Salerno and is counted among the women known as the ladies of Salerno. Her father, Salvator Calenda, was dean of the faculty of medicine at Salerno around 1415 and afterwards dean of the faculty at Naples, and she seems to have been instructed by him and to have obtained special honors at her medical examination. Whether she took the degree of doctor of medicine at the University of Naples is possible but unconfirmed, so her formal qualification remains an open question rather than a settled fact.