Women, Writing and Medicine in the Classical World

Abstract

It is now a well-established fact that women practised medicine in the ancient world. The medica or iatrine-the specifically female version of the physician, the medicus or iatros-as well as the obstetrix or maia-the midwife-along with a number of linguistic variants on these terms, all appear regularly in a range of literary, epigraphical and papyrological sources, as scholars have repeatedly observed. 1 How these appearances should be interpreted, on the other hand, remains more contentious. In particular, two alternative understandings of the figure of the medica or iatrine have emerged, and continue to be variously elaborated. For some she is the professional colleague of the male medicus or iatros, perhaps not his exact equal, but certainly operating on roughly the same terms, and illustrative, therefore, of a more inclusive, less sexually segregated, approach to the practice of medicine in antiquity than was to emerge in later times. 2 Others hold her to be synonymous, not with the medicus but the midwife, and so to illustrate a rather different historical principle: 'that women's health is women's business', and to demonstrate a clear sexual division of labour in the classical world rather than any blurring. 3 This is a discussion, moreover, that extends beyond medical practice into the literary field, into the formation of classical medical culture more broadly. For, not only are various recipes and remedies attributed to women contained within the extant pharmacological compilations of several male writers of the Roman empire, with female authored works cited in a similar context, but a set of Latin medical texts survives attached to the name of Cleopatra, and a single Greek manuscript preserves what it describes as extracts 'from the works of Metrodora'. 4 Again scholarly opinion is divided on the authenticity and significance of this material. Holt Parker is the most optimistic, assuming that, as a general rule, these female names represent real women who at least practised medicine, and often wrote about it too. 5 Others are more sceptical, particularly about the likelihood of female authorship. This scepticism is 257

When foods become remedies in ancient Greece: The curious case of garlic and other substances

“…That is not to say that there were no female practitioners in the ancient world – there were midwives ( maiai ); female midwife-doctors ( iatromaiai ); and female doctors ( iatrinai ) (see e.g. Parker, 1997; Flemming, 2007 ; Muir and Totelin, 2012 ) – but they are mentioned far less often than men in the ancient literature, and are often presented in a negative light. Ancient literature gives us a sense that the ‘medical market-place’ was dominated by men ( Nutton, 1992 ).…”

History and Overview of the Menopause Experience

“…What is striking from early concepts of menopause, menstruation, and of women as a gender, is the absence of the voices of women themselves [17]. The ancient record is based on observation shared from the male perspective exclusively.…”

Galen and the Girls: Sources for Women Medical Writers Revisited

“…2 Yet considerable progress has been made in finding and interpreting these fragmentary sources (as my somewhat question-begging first question shows), for Rebecca Flemming can begin a recent and important contribution in these pages with the sentence, 'It is now a well-established fact that women practised medicine in the ancient world'. 3 It was not always thus, and perhaps is not thus in all quarters. Despite some early acknowledgement that woman doctors were part of daily life in antiquity, 4 it was not until Sarah B. Pomeroy's groundbreaking article of 1978, 'Plato and the female physician (Republic 454d2)', that the fact entered into the mainstream of classics.…”