This chapter provides an overview of women's medicine as it is represented in Greco-Roman evidence from the fifth century BCE to second century CE. First, the theories and prescriptions of practitioners of “rational” medicine are addressed; next, religion and magic are considered. Taken together, this evidence demonstrates the diversity of Greek and Roman thinking about the topic of women's health, but it also affirms that there was a unified understanding of the female body's primary function as reproductive. Female patients, meanwhile, sought information about and cures for acute and chronic ailments from a variety of figures and sources.
...MoreBook Georgia L. Irby-Massie (2016) A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome.
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