Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen

• Published in: Bulletin of the history of medicine Vol. 77; no. 4; pp. 941 - 942
• Main Author: Scarborough, John
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2003; Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subjects: Aretaeus of Cappadocia; Medicine; Pliny the Elder (23-79); Soranus of Ephesus; Womens health; Cappadocia; Wisconsin
• ISSN: 0007-5140; 1086-3176; 1086-3176; 1896-3176
• DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2003.0192

Within, one will find seriatim strands of examination which are carefully woven together, and which brilliantly reveal and elucidate what Roman medicine recognized as women: from the standpoint of what we call obstetrics and gynecology, how a physician or midwife ensured health in pregnancy, birthing, suckling, and care of the newborn; from the view of basic anatomy, how Roman medical professionals did or did not note the differences between male and female; from the outlook of physiology, how women and men displayed different characteristics according to the theoretical notions of krasisas they existed in both (a contrast owing much to Peripatetic, Hippocratic, and later concepts of heat and the activities of the soul); from the position of humoral pathology, why Roman medicine believed that women were subject to greater passions than men, and why such "predispositions" (a modernism) engendered specifically female ailments, ranging from prolapsed uterus to the then-classic hysteria in all of its physical and emotional forms; and from the broad perspectives of pharmacology, the dependence by the physician (of whatever plane or philosophical stripe) upon drugs (botanical, animal, and mineral) that answered the fundamental assumptions of the qualitative nature of the female (and male) fluids that restored health. [...]one is rewarded with a rare and incisive acknowledgment of how and why folk medicine and magic were continual influences on all levels of medicine, both coming up into the literate and philosophical planes; and contrarily, how medical theory descended into the subterranean shadows of spell-casting, horoscopes, magical presumptions, and sayings of "wise women" throughout the two centuries under consideration. Too few studies of ancient medicine attempting a broad sweep control the primary sources as does this book; moreover, Rebecca Flemming's net is both extensive and fine: unusually, Scribonius Largus receives his due, along with Heras, the odd metrics of Damocrates (embedded in Galen's drug books), Andromachus the Younger, and-yes-Pliny the Elder with his female sources on matters medical and pharmacological. Read this book with care, savor its delicious phrases, ruminate on its more than tasty chunks of meat, challenge the wit and learning and conclusions, dig into the sources provided in extenso, and keep this tome prominently on your shelf.