Women, writing and medicine in the classical world

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 257-279

  Flemming, Rebecca ^a  

^a JESUS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 51249159033     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0009838807000225     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. The observation goes back to J. Marquardt, Das Privatleben der Römer (Leipzig, 1886), 1.779
2. and see also J. Oehler, 'Epigraphische Beitrage zur Geschichte des Aerztestandes', Janus 14 (1909), 4-20
3. and H. Gummerus, Der Ärztestand im römischen Reiche nach Jem Inschriften (Helsinki, 1932)
4. more recent and explicit advocates include L. Robert, 'L'index commenté des épitaphes', in N. Firatli, Les stèles funeraires de Byzanee gréco-romaine (Paris, 1954), 175-8
5. H. Parker, 'Women doctors in Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine empire', in L. R. Furst (ed.), Women Healers and Physicians: Climbing a Long Hill (Lexington, KY, 1997), 131-50
6. R. Flemming, Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (Oxford, 2000), 35-7
7. and (a little more hesitantly) E. Samama, Les médecins dans le monde Grec (Geneva, 2003), 15-16
8. Argued by e.g. J. Korpela, Das Medizinpersonal im antiken Rom: Eine sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Helsinki, 1987), 18-20, following Marquardt (n. 1)
9. For doubts see e.g. L. Dean-Jones, Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford, 1994), 33
10. See e.g. Parker (n. 2), 140-4
11. See Flemming (n. 2), 35-7
12. See e.g. H. King, 'Agnodike and the profession of medicine', PCPhS n.s. 32 (1986), 53-77, for discussion of the midwife's purview
13. On Crateuas see E. Kind, 'Krateuas (2)', RE 11.2 (Stuttgart, 1922), 1644-6; laymen such as Celsus also wrote medical works in antiquity
14. E. Pfuhl and H. Möbius, Die ostgriechischen Grabreliefs (Mainz am Rhein, 1977), 1.151 (no. 467): (Samama [n. 2], no. 310)
15. for visual depictions of physicians more broadly see A. Hillert, Antike Ärztedarstellungen (Frankfurt am Main, 1990)
16. On Soranus see A. Ellis Hanson and M. H. Green, 'Soranus: methodicorum princeps', ANRW 2.37.2 (Berlin, 1994), 968-1075
17. Muscio, Genecia pr.: muliebribus verbis usus sum, ut etiam inperitae obstetrices licet ab altera sibi lectam rationem facile intellegere possint (Rose, 3)
18. A. Ellis Hanson, 'Ancient illiteracy', in M. Beard et al. (edd.), Literacy in the Ancient World (Ann Arbor, MI, 1991), 159-98
19. On ancient female literacy see e.g. S. Cole, 'Could Greek women read and write?', in H. Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity (Philadelphia, PA, 1981), 219-45
20. E. Hemelrijk, Matrona Docta: Educated Women in the Roman Elite (London, 1999), as well as Harris (n. 28)
21. On female scribes more particularly see also K. Haines-Eitzen, ' "Girls trained in beautiful writing": female scribes in Roman antiquity and early Christianity', JECS 6 (1998), 629-46
22. POxy. 12.1463 is the one counter example to this principle, illustrating the case of a literate wife with an illiterate husband
23. see also V. Nutton, 'Galen ad multos annos, Dynamis 15 (1995), 25-39 for discussion of Galen's later years
24. This is clearly established and discussed in C. Fabricius, Galens Excerpte aus älteren Pharmakologen (Berlin, 1972)
25. see also J.-M. Jacques, 'La méthode de Galien pharmacologue dans les traits sur les médicaments composés', in A. Debru (ed.), Galen on Pharmacology (Leiden, 1997), 103-28
26. As printed in F. Hultsch, Metrologicorum Scriptorum Reliquiae I: Scriptures Graeci (Leipzig, 1864), 233-6; following various earlier medical printings, but with what palaeographic authority is less clear
27. It is, in fact, not clear to me that the rich pseudepigraphical traditions of antiquity - Hippocratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, or whatever - were ever really intended to deceive; that was not their main purpose anyway. A more precise example of the invocation of authority without identity is [Thessalus] On the Power of Herbs, as argued by A. Scott, 'Ps.-Thessalus of Tralles and Galen's De Methodo Medendi', Sudhoffs Archiv 75 (1991), 106-10
28. M. Berthelot (ed.), Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (Paris, 1888), 1.132 and 2.289-99
29. F. Sherwood-Taylor, 'A survey of Greek alchemy', JHS 50 (1930), 117
30. M. Wellmann, 'Xenokrates aus Aphrodisias', Hermes 42 (1907), 614-29
31. and see also id., 'Beiträge zur Quellenanalyse des Älteres Plinius', Hermes 59 (1924), 129-56
32. For more general discussion of the classical sex manual see e.g. H. Parker, 'Love's body anatomized', in A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992), 90-111
33. J. Davidson, 'Don't try this at home: Pliny's Salpe, Salpe's Paignia and magic', CQ 45 (1995), 590-2
34. D. Bain, 'Salpe's Athenaeus 322A and Pliny N.H. 28.38', CQ 48 (1998), 262-8
35. On this 'representation' see e.g. Lloyd (n. 76), 202
36. R. Gordon, 'Quaedam veritatis umbrae: Hellenistic magic and astrology' in F. Bilde et al. (edd.), Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks (Aarhus, 1997), 128-58
37. and R. Flemming, 'Empires of knowledge', in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 2003), 449-63
38. So, Soranus illustrates the opposite, idealising, extreme, and the epigraphy is more moderate than either; for the persistence of the contrasting historical stereotypes of the 'ignorant' and 'excellent' midwife see e.g. H. King, 'Imaginary midwives' in her Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London, 1998), 172-87