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Agnodike and the profession of medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Helen King
Helen King
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

Hyginus, Fabula 274.10-13:

antiqui obstetrices non habuerunt, unde mulieres uerecundia ductae interierant. nam Athenienses cauerunt ne quis seruus aut femina artem medicinam disceret. Agnodice quaedam puella uirgo concupiuit medicinam discere, quae cum concupisset, demptis capillis habitu uirili se Herophilo cuidam tradidit in disciplinam. quae cum artem didicisset, et feminam laborantem audisset ab inferiore parte, ueniebat ad eam, quae cum credere se noluisset, aestimans uirum esse, illa tunica sublata ostendit se feminam esse, et ita eas curabat. quod cum uidissent medici se ad feminas non admitti, Agnodicen accusare coeperunt, quod dicerent eum glabrum esse et corruptorem earum, et illas simulare imbecillitatem. quod cum Areopagitae consedissent, Agnodicen damnare coeperunt; quibus Agnodice tunicam alleuauit et se ostendit feminam esse. et ualidius medici accusare coeperunt, quare tum feminae principes ad iudicium uenerunt et dixerunt, Vos coniuges non estis sed hostes, quia quae salutem nobis inuenit eam damnatis. tunc Athenienses legem emendarunt, ut ingenuae artem medicinam discerent. (ed. Rose)

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 32 , 1986 , pp. 53 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

NOTES

The following are cited by author's name only in the notes:

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This is a revised version of a paper read to the Cambridge Philological Society and to Nicole Loraux's seminar at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. Many thanks to those who explored with me these uncharted regions, and in particular to Michael Reeve, for his many comments and references; Shirley Ardener, for letting me see her forthcoming paper ‘A note on gender iconography: the vagina’; and Paul Cartledge, Geoffrey Lloyd, Vivian Nutton and Robin Osborne, for less easily quantified contributions.

1. Lloyd 70 n.47; 78 n.76 for the parallel between this inhibition on the part of women and Gynaikeia 1.62 (‘women are ashamed to speak (of their diseases) even when they know, for they think the disease to be shameful’), Eur., Hipp. 293–6Google Scholar, etc.

2. Contra Pomeroy 59: ‘although (surely) Herophilus would have been the ideal teacher for the would-be obstetrician’. According to Soranus 3.3.4 and 4.1.4 (CMG 4.95.17; 4.130.9) he wrote a Maiōtikon; Galen (IV 596 Kuhn) says that he discovered the ovaries (orcheis). See further H. von Staden, The art of medicine in Ptolemaic Alexandria: Herophilus and his school (forthcoming); Potter, P., ‘Herophilus of Chalcedon: an assessment of his place in the history of anatomy’, Bull. Hist. Med. 50 (1976) 45–60Google ScholarPubMed. Agnodike occurs in some histories of medicine as the pupil of Herophilus, padding out what would otherwise be a short paragraph on her ‘master’; for example, Baas, J. H., Grundriss der Geschichte der Medicin (1876) 90Google Scholar. The English translation of Baas goes further than the German, saying that Agnodike ‘practised midwifery in Athens under the same difficulties at the hands of her male colleagues as those which meet our doctresses at the present day’ (Outlines of the history of medicine (1889), tr. Handerson, H. E.Google Scholar). Delacoux 26, while regarding Agnodike as a historical figure, claims that the Herophilus of her story is nevertheless not the historical Herophilus; the latter is not known to have practised at Athens. The problem is discussed by Nickel 171-2.

3. Discussions of these points are provided by Matakiewicz, H., ‘De Hygino Mythographo’, Eos 34 (1932/1933) 93–110Google Scholar; Lienard, E., ‘Pro Hygini Argonautarum Catalogo’, Latomus 2 (1938) 240–55Google Scholar; Holzworth, J., ‘Light from a medieval commentary on the text of the Fabulae and Astronomica of Hyginus’, CP 37 (1943) 126–31Google Scholar; Schwartz, J., ‘Une source papyrologique d'Hygin le mythographe’, Studi in onore de A. Calderini e R. Paribeni II (1957) 151–6Google Scholar; Nickel 170.

4. Grant, M., The myths of Hyginus (1960) 20Google Scholar follows Rose in suggesting that the story of Agnodike is ‘a novella type’.

5. E.g. Delacoux 25.

6. Some idea of the popularity of the story of Agnodike in history can be gained from the number of times it is retold over a long period of time, by writers on a wide range of subjects; for example, Tiraquellus, A., De nobilitate (1566) 314 no. 357Google Scholar and De legibus connubialibus et iure maritali (1576) III no. 69Google Scholar; Augenius, H., Epistolarum et consultationum medicinalium Vol. II, Bk 1 ch. 6 (1597) 331Google Scholar; Heywood, T., Gynaikeion: or, nine bookes of various history concerning women (1624) 203–4Google Scholar; Leclerc, D., Histoire de la médecine (1702) 2.3.13Google Scholar; Hecquet, P., De l'indécence aux hommes d'accoucher les femmes (1708) 25–7Google Scholar; Potter, J., Archaeologia Graeca II (1728) 324Google Scholar; Petitus, S., Leges Atticae (1741) 387Google Scholar; Nihell, E., A treatise on the art of midwifery (1760) 219Google Scholar.

7. Sermon, W., The ladies companion, or the English midwife (1671) 2Google Scholar.

8. McMaster, G. T., ‘The first woman practitioner of midwifery and the care of infants in Athens, 300 BC’, American Medicine 7 (1912) 202–5Google Scholar. Another organisational myth which derives from the story of Agnodike is that there were three ‘state midwives’ in Athens after her victory (e.g. Towler and Bramall (n. 12) 14). This originates in a typesetting error of Potter (n.6); the edition of 1764 has ‘permitted three women to undertake this employment’, when it should of course read ‘free women’.

9. Delacoux 26; Breakell, M. L., ‘Women in the medical profession: by an outsider’, Nineteenth Century 54 (1903) 819–20Google Scholar has Agnodike ‘sacrificing her long hair on the Altar of the Goddess of Health’.

10. Gilruth, J. D., ‘Medicine in early Greek mythology’, Edinburgh Medical Journal 42 (1935) 663Google ScholarPubMed.

11. Hurd-Mead 45. The origin of the abortion story may be Cellier, E.'s reference to ‘miscarriages happening to some noble women’, in ‘To Dr … an answer to his queries concerning the College of Midwives’ (1688)Google Scholar; rather than midwives performing abortions, this should probably be seen in relation to James II's difficulties in producing a male heir. Vivian Nutton (pers. comm.) suggests that this passage of Cellier derives from Tertullian De anima 25.5, a reference to doctors killing the child in utero to save the life of the mother.

12. Towler, J. and Bramall, J., Midwives in history and society (1986) 14Google Scholar; Alic, M., Hypatia's heritage (1986) 28Google Scholar. See also Marks, G. and Beatty, W. K., Women in white (1972) 45Google Scholar.

13. Delacoux 26; ‘La Luciniade ou l'art des accouchements, poéme didactique’ (1792) Chant 3, 26–7Google Scholar, on which see Dumont, M., ‘La délirante “Luciniade” de l'anticésarien Jean-François Sacombe’, Rev. Fr. Gynécol. Obst. 66 (1971) 199–204Google Scholar.

14. E.g. Alic 29: ‘Over 2000 years later feminists were still arguing that women doctors were essential to protect the modesty of female patients’.

15. Delacoux 42-3. I have not been able to trace the text of this poem.

16. Gardner, A. K., ‘A history of the art of midwifery’, lecture delivered 11 November 1851 (1852)Google Scholar.

17. ‘A scheme for the foundation of a royal hospital’ (1687) in Harleian Miscellany IV (1744) 136–40Google Scholar. There is very little published on Cellier, although a few vignettes can be found in midwifery literature: e.g. Gordon, J. E., ‘Mrs Elizabeth Cellier – ‘the Popish Midwife’ of the Restoration’, Midwife Health Visitor and Community Nurse 11.5 (1975) 139–42Google Scholar. The description in Aveling, J. H.'s English midwives: their history and prospects (1872) 63–85Google Scholar is almost entirely derogatory, and has been highly influential for subsequent writers; for example, Cellier's scheme is seen as being intended for her personal benefit, while she herself ‘had the energy of the wind, with its erratic courses, wilful ways and mischief working power’.

18. ‘Thomas Dangerfield's answer to “Malice Defeated”’ (1680).

19. ‘To the praise of Mrs Cellier the Popish Midwife: on her incomparable book’ (1680). It should be noted that textbooks of the period provide medical sanction for such activity. In a condition in which the female ‘sperm’ is retained, causing an immoderate desire for sexual activity, Riverius, L., The practice of physick (1655) 419Google Scholar recommends that ‘the genital parts should be by a cunning midwife so handled and rubbed, as to cause an evacuation of the over-abounding sperm’.

20. Cic. De orat. 2.18.

21. ‘The trial and sentence of Elizabeth Cellier for writing, printing and publishing a scandalous libel called “Malice Defeated”’ (1680).

22. Pomeroy 59, 58. Grant, M., The myths of Hyginus (1960) 176Google Scholar also translates obstetrices as ‘obstetricians’, while Bolton, H. Carrington, ‘The early practice of medicine by women’, Popular Science Monthly 18 (1880) 192Google Scholar uses a similar implicit distinction between midwives and medically educated practitioners; ‘the first female practitioner who received a medical education appears to be Agnodice’.

23. Nutton, V., ‘Murders and miracles: lay attitudes towards medicine in classical antiquity’, in Porter, R. (ed), Patients and practitioners (1985) 30–33 and n.32Google Scholar.

24. See further King, H., From parthenos to gynē: the dynamics of category (PhD thesis, University of London 1985)Google Scholar.

25. In the Hippocratic corpus, women known as the akestrides (Flesh 19/L 8.614), the iatreousa (G 1.68/L 8.145) and the omphalētomos (G 1.46/L 8.106) appear. On terminology for women healers, see the detailed summary by Robert, L. in Firatli, N. and Robert, L., Les stèles funéraires de Byzance grécoromaine (1964) 175–8Google Scholar (including iatrinē and iatromaia); also Nickel, F., ‘Berufsvorstellungen über weibliche Medizinalpersonen in der Antike’, Klio 61 (1979) 515–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (including a woman ‘experienced in the medical technē’, in the first century BC).

26. Davies, C., Rewriting nursing history (1980) 11Google Scholar; in the same volume, W. Connor Versluysen 179-80.

27. Cellier (n.11); cf. Delacoux 27.

28. Pomeroy 60.

29. For example, Rouyer, J., Etudes médicales sur l'ancienne Rome (1859) 151Google Scholar; Lipinska, M., Histoire des femmes-médecins depuis l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours (1900) 52–3Google Scholar; Baudouin, M., Les femmes medecins (1901) 10–14Google Scholar. The quotation is from Witkowski, G.-J., Accoucheurs et sages-femmes célèbres: esquisses biographiques (1891) 2Google Scholar.

30. Or anasyrma. Heywood (n.6) 204 changes both gestures; before her woman patient Agnodike ‘was forced to strip herself’, while later she protested her innocence by ‘opening her breast to the Senate’. On the gesture of revealing the breasts, see further Moreau, and n.65 below.

31. Characters 11.2 and 6.2. This view of male anasyrmos is particularly noteworthy in a culture in which male nudity is so common, and should probably be explained by the composition of the audience. Olender 50-1 emphasises the asymmetry between the Greek perception of male and female anasyrmos, using as an additional comparison the displays of Baubo and Priapus.

32. The theme of disguise in the clothes of the opposite sex is common in folk-tales (Thompson, S., Motif-index of folk literature (1955–1958) K1837, K521.4.1Google Scholar), as is the girl disguised as a doctor (K1825.1.1) and the girl in male dress who is accused of seducing a woman (K2113).

33. Olender 24.

34. Mor. 247f-248d.

35. The most famous interpretation of this story is probably the ‘primitive matriarchy’ one given by Bachofen, J., Das Mutterrecht (1861)Google Scholar and taken up by Kornemann, E., ‘Zur Geschwisterche im Altertum’, Klio 19 (1925) 355–61Google Scholar; Vorwahl, H., ‘Ein apotropaischer Kriegsbrauch’, ARW 30 (1933) 395–7Google Scholar.

36. Hdt 2.60. Wiedemann, A., Herodots zweites Buch (1890) 256Google Scholar; Sourdille, C., Hérodote et la religion de l'Egypte (1910) 118Google Scholar; Henderson, J., The maculate muse (1975) 15Google Scholar. I have only been able to trace one classical source, scholiast to Lucian, Peregr. 13Google Scholar (Rabe 219.18), in which anasyrmos is an erotic invitation.

37. Bonner 260.

38. DS 1.85.3.

39. Bonner 260. Zeitlin 145 sees public anasyrmos to men or enemies as apotropaic, private anasyrmos to women as ‘prostropaic’. In analysing anasyrmos, I prefer to abandon the category of ‘the apotropaic’ altogether. On whether ‘fertility’ is a useful category, see Olender 28.

40. Clement Protr. 2.20-21 = Kern OF 52; Arnobius Adv. nat. 5.25 = Kern OF 52. The other, mostly fragmentary, sources for Baubo, going back to the fourth century BC, are discussed most recently by Olender 13-15.

41 Diels, H., ‘Arcana cerealia’, Miscellanea dedicata al Prof. A. Salinas (1907) 3–14Google Scholar shows that the iakchos which Baubo uncovers in Clement's Orphic quotation is not a proper name (Iakchos/the child Dionysos) but a term for the female genitalia (using Athenaeus 98d, iakchos: khoiros), and extends the meaning to ‘lower abdomen’ to support the suggestion that Baubo paints a face on her belly. Graf, F., Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (1974) 194–9Google Scholar gives a detailed comparison of Clement and Arnobius, concluding that Arnobius' version is the better grounded in Orphic tradition. See also Burkert, W., Homo necans (1972) 286Google Scholar. Geoffrey Hooker, in an unpublished paper entitled ‘Baubo and the baubon: evidence of an unrecognised ritual object’ suggests that Baubo is wearing a set of male genitalia in order to imitate Iakchos. The most recent study of Baubo is the detailed article by Olender.

42. Laughter is also the response to anasyrmos in the story of Hathor, who does it to make Ra-Harakhti return to the scene of the dispute between Seth and Horus (Gardiner, A. H., Late Egyptian stories (1932) 37Google Scholar). Lévy, I., ‘Autour d'un roman mythologique égyptien’, Mélanges F. Cumont (1936) 819–45Google Scholar suggests that the twelfth century Hathor legend is the distant origin of the story of Baubo. Richardson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (1974) 216–7Google Scholar links the Bubastis gesture to ‘Hathor's gesture’.

43. Illustrated by Olender. Reinach 117 hails these as ‘the true Baubo’. Zeitlin 145 links them to Baubo and also to the Gorgon's ‘gaping mouth and … outspread legs’; however, Olender 53 points out that the figures of the Priene terracottas keep their legs firmly together.

44. See Zeitlin 144 on the Thesmophoria and, in general, Olender 34-8 with references.

45. An illustrated survey of those from the middle ages is provided by Andersen, J., The witch on the wall (1977)Google Scholar. For terracottas of this form, see Weber, W., Die ägyptisch-griechischen Terrakotten (1914) 119–20 and 165Google Scholar; Perdrizet II plates 82, 84, 85. A comparable ethnographic illustration is given in Fehling, D., Ethnologische Uberlegungen (1974) 36 fig. 10Google Scholar.

46. Olender 53 correctly emphasises the immobility of the ancient visual representations.

47. Bonner 259; Perdrizet I 56 suggests the same.

48. Plut. Mor. 241b; Teles, in Stob. Flor. 108.83. See Cartledge, P., ‘Spartan wives: liberation or licence?’, CQ 31 (1981) 91 n.45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49. Teles would push the story of the Spartan mother and her sons back to the late third century BC (ed. Hense 19092, 58.8-59.1); Hense suggests taking it further back, to Bion. I have not been able to trace the story of the Persian women beyond Nik. Damasc, i.e. the first century BC.

50. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the value aidōs, on which see von Erffa, C., Aidōs (1937)Google Scholar. Important texts are Eur., Hipp. 385–6Google Scholar (the good and the bad aidōs), and Hdt 1.8-12 (the wife who takes off her clothes takes off her aidōs) with its reworking by Plut., Mor. 139cGoogle Scholar.

51. Reinach 117 n.2. Moreau 286 and 290 gives a variation on this idea; the gesture is the ‘primitive’ element, and the words only enter the story when the meaning of the gesture has almost been forgotten. See further the discussion in Olender 26-8 of the evolutionary assumptions embedded in describing the gesture as primitive or archaic.

52. Bonner 261, following Reinach.

53. Nilsson, M., Geschichte der griechischen Religion I3 (1967) 118Google Scholar, quoted by Henderson, , The maculate muse 13 n.50Google Scholar.

54. Hdt 1.127; Plut., Mor. 246aGoogle Scholar; Polyaenus 7.45.2. On the connection with Ctesias, see also Moreau 290 n.l.

55. Pomp. Trog. Hist. Phil. (Justin 1.6.13-14).

56. Call., H. Art. 21–2Google Scholar.

57. Nik. Damasc. FGrH 90A66, Jacoby 368-70.

58. Moreau 290 n.2 sees a gradation in our sources in the degree of ‘rationalisation’, moving from gesture, to gesture and words, to words alone as having the effect.

59. Nik. Damasc. 90A66.43; Plut., Mor. 241b, 246aGoogle Scholar.

60. See Adkins, A. W. H., From the many to the one (1970) 31Google Scholar on this meaning of kakos. Vernant, J.-P. ‘La belle mort et le cadavre outragé’ in Gnoli, G. and Vernant, J.-P. (eds) La mort, les morts dans les sociétés anciennes (1982) 45Google Scholar discusses the anēr agathos in war. See also Dover 282-4 on the use of agathos and kakos in battle, and 82 and n.18 on kakia and inadequacy. Homer Il. 5.529-32 and 16.422 link running away from the battlefield with loss of male aidōs; see also Hdt 1.55, where running away and being kakos are for once not thought to produce the normal aidōs.

61. Hdt 2.102, 2.106; Malaise, M., ‘Sésostris, Pharaon de légend et d'histoire’, Chronique d'Egypte 41 (1966) 250 and n.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; West, S., ‘Herodotus’ epigraphical interests’, CQ 35 (1985) 298–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Armayor, O.K., ‘Sesostris and Herodotus’ autopsy of Thrace, Colchis, inland Asia Minor, and the Levant’, HSCP 34 (1980) 65–7Google Scholar.

62. Loraux, N., L'invention d'Athènes: histoire de l'oraison funébre dans la ‘cité classique’ (1981) 390 n.104Google Scholar; ‘Hēbē et andreia: deux versions de la mort du combattant athénien’, Ancient Society 6 (1975) 4–5Google Scholar.

63. See Dover 282-4: usage of anēr/anthrōpos as free/slave. Anthrōpos is also used in Mor. 246a. See also Adkins, A. W. H., Moral values and political behaviour in ancient Greece (1972) 129–30Google Scholar on kakos/agathos as free/slave. The free/slave division is of course also important in the story of Agnodike, where neither slaves nor women may learn medicine. The medici accuse Agnodike of being glaber and a corruptor; glaber is understandable, since her skin is too smooth for a normal man, but it is also particularly used of slaves, and may suggest depravity of the kind associated with a corruptor. An instructive passage, brought to my attention by Hunter, Richard, is Menander Sicyonios 200–210Google Scholar, where Moschion is thought to have evil intentions towards a young girl because of certain aspects of his appearance; he is ‘white-skinned’ (cf. Eur., Bacchae 457Google Scholar of Dionysos), ‘rather smooth-skinned’ and ‘beardless’. [Ar.] 808a24-36 links having smooth white skin with being ‘fond of women’.

64. In Artemidorus Onir. 4.44, a man dreams that his wife performs anasyrmos at him. Tile gesture is explicitly one of contempt, but in the case of the war stories the precise sort of contempt can be shown.

65. Plut., Mor. 246aGoogle Scholar. Civilis, in Tacitus Histories 4.18, puts his mother and sisters, and the wives and children of his soldiers, behind his line of battle, to encourage them to victory or shame them in defeat (pulsis pudorem). Moreau gives a number of similar cases from Tacitus, especially Germ. 8.1, in which the breasts are revealed. He suggests that Tacitus is bowdlerising the original gesture (291). In the war stories, the children of the soldiers are not present; but where anasyrmos is performed by wives, I would suggest that it evokes the unborn children of the next generation. Eubulus fr.140 = Pollux 3.21 (‘E. calls a child born in secret the “proanasyrma of a parthenos”’) could perhaps be used in support of an anasyrmos/childbirth connection.

66. Loraux, N., ‘Le lit, la guerre’, L'Homme 21 (1981) 37–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67. In certain African societies there is a pattern of behaviour which seems directly comparable. Here women, when feeling threatened as a sex by the behaviour or words of men, perform a corporate display of their genitalia accompanied by songs which mock the men. The effect produced in the men is supposed to be shame or disgrace; the mood of the performance of gesture and song is solemn and serious. Ifeka-Moller, C., ‘Female militancy and colonial revolt: the women's war of 1929, Eastern Nigeria’, in Ardener, S. (ed) Perceiving women (1975) 142Google Scholar, has studied one case of this kind, the Igbo ‘women's war’ of 1929, in which economic changes particularly affecting women led to a revolt against the government. Some of her remarks on this case could equally well be applied to the war stories. For example: ‘The sexual values of Igbo and Ibibio cultures reaffirmed through rituals, marriage, and child-rearing practices, the unique biological functions of the female sex and, therefore, their different but complementary nature to the male sex. Sexual ideology thus turned women in on themselves, …[their] main legitimate weapon [being] the body, and emphasized the social significance to women of their powers of reproduction.’ See also Ardener, S., ‘Sexual insult and female militancy’, 29–53Google Scholar of the same volume; Fehling, D., Ethnologische Uberlegungen (1974) 35–7Google Scholar.

68. Robin Osborne and Simon Goldhill have suggested to me that the ‘Hill of Ares’ ( = war) is a particularly appropriate place for this confrontation, since it evokes the battlefield where the women of the war stories display their reproductive identity. Nicole Loraux has suggested to me that the location of the Erinyes/Eumenides beneath the Areopagus (Aesch. Eum.) may be another reason why it is thought appropriate for a confrontation concerning childbirth. A possible model for women coming en masse to plead, in this case with the Senate, may be found in Cato fr.127 = Aul. Gell. NA 1.23.10. Attempts to use the Areopagus to ‘date’ the story are misplaced; it may merely represent ‘constitutional power’, as Pecere, O., Petronio: la novella della matrona di Efeso (1975) 64Google Scholar suggests for the expression imperator provinciae in another context.

69. Bonner 258; revealing one's breasts counts as ‘an act involving a momentary abandonment of modesty, but not flagrantly indecent’, whereas Agnodike's gesture is ‘an unnecessarily immodest act’.

70. Some support for this suggestion may again come from Loraux, L'invention d'Athènes; confrontation in battle between Amazons and andres agathoi returns the former to their proper sexual identity as women (149), while aischynē and aidōs, the values evoked in Bellerophon and the war stories, are seen as inherently conservative (188 and 421 n.94).