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Article ID: CBB601333866

Do no harm: Phanostrate’s midwifery practice (2020)

Technai, An International Journal for Ancient Science and Technology
Volume: 11
Pages: 129-144
Publication date: 2020
Language: English

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Linguistics; philology Ecdotics; source study (methodology) Midwifery Hippocratic medicine Women in medicine Physicians; doctors Ethics, Medical Phanostrate Medicine Ancient

The funerary stele of Phanostrate is the earliest known monument commemorating a woman who was a midwife (maia) and physician (iatros); it dates to the mid-fourth century b.c. In this paper, I examine Phanostrate’s assertion that she ‘caused pain to no-one’ in the context of medical ethics found in the Hippocratic Corpus. This statement is reminiscent of one of the clauses of the Hippocratic Oath, where the student of medicine swears to keep patients from ‘harm and injustice’. It also brings to mind the famous ‘do no harm’ principle, which is expressed in the Hippocratic Epidemics. The phrasing of Phanostrate’s stele, however, is somewhat unusual. She claims that she has been lupēra, painful to no-one. The adjective lupēros is not used frequently in the Hippocratic Corpus, but it does appear in the opening section of On Winds, where the author states that the art of medicine can be painful to those who practice it. I reflect on the nature of the ‘pain’ that medicine and its practitioners could cause and alleviate. I ask whether Phanostrate might have been responding to some of the principles outlined in the Oath, where the use of abortive pessaries is famously proscribed. I also present another inscription, from the sanctuary of Asclepius on the slope of the Athenian Acropolis, ig ii3 4.700, which might also be honouring Phanostrate.

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