Autopsia, Historia and What Women Know: The Authority of Women in Hippocratic Gynaecology

KNOWLEDGE AND THE SCHOLARLY MEDICAL TRADITIONS, Don Bates, ed., Cambridge University Press, pp. 41-59, 1995

11 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2007

Abstract

There is a debate among scholars about how much access to female bodies ancient Greek doctors had (autopsia) and how much of their knowledge of female bodies derived solely from the reports of women (historia). There is not the same concern either among modern scholars or the ancient doctors themselves about the contribution of reports from male patients. Consideration of the evidence suggests that this is because the Greeks perceived a cognitive break between experiencing life in a female body and experiencing it in a male's. A doctor did not have to have suffered all possible diseases to be able to understand the experiences of a male patient, but in order to validate his competency to treat female patients he had to show that he had consulted women, even if they had not had medical training themselves.

Keywords: Ancient gynecology, ancient medicine, ancient epistemology, sexuality, Hippocratics, midwives

Suggested Citation

Dean-Jones, Lesley, Autopsia, Historia and What Women Know: The Authority of Women in Hippocratic Gynaecology. KNOWLEDGE AND THE SCHOLARLY MEDICAL TRADITIONS, Don Bates, ed., Cambridge University Press, pp. 41-59, 1995, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1010252

Lesley Dean-Jones (Contact Author)

The University of Texas at Austin ( email )

1 University Station, C3400
Austin, TX 78712
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
224
Abstract Views
1,546
Rank
247,469
PlumX Metrics