Roy Porter

Sander L. Gilman

Elaine Showalter

Sander Lawrence Gilman

Helen King

G. S. Rousseau

"Encyclopedically learned, up-to-date, authoritative, and altogether the best introduction to the subject that exists in any language."--Thomas Laqueur, author of Making Sex

Hysteria Beyond Freud

The Gynaeciorum libri, the 'Books on [the diseases of] women,' a compendium of ancient and contemporary texts on gynaecology, is the inspiration for this intensive exploration of the origins of a subfield of medicine. This collection was first published in 1566, with a second edition in 1586/8 and a third, running to 1097 folio pages, in 1597. While examining the origins of the compendium, Helen King here concentrates on its reception, looking at a range of different uses of the book in the history of medicine from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Looking at the competition and collaboration among different groups of men involved in childbirth, and between men and women, she demonstrates that arguments about history were as important as arguments about the merits of different designs of forceps. She focuses on the eighteenth century, when the 'man-midwife' William Smellie found his competence to practise challenged on the grounds of his allegedly inadequate grasp of the history of medicine. In his lectures, Smellie remade the 'father of medicine', Hippocrates, as the 'father of midwifery'. The close study of these texts results in a fresh perspective on Thomas Laqueur's model of the defeat of the one-sex body in the eighteenth century, and on the origins of gynaecology more generally. King argues that there were three occasions in the history of western medicine on which it was claimed that women's difference from men was so extensive that they required a separate branch of medicine: the fifth century BC, and the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. By looking at all three occasions together, and by tracing the links not only between ancient Greek ideas and their Renaissance rediscovery, but also between the Renaissance compendium and its later owners, King analyzes how the claim of female 'difference' was shaped by specific social and cultural conditions. Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology makes a genuine contribution not only to the history of medicine and its subfield of gynaecology, but also to gender and cultural studies.

The Uses of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium

Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology

Hippocrates' Woman demonstrates the role of Hippocratic ideas about the female body in the subsequent history of western gynaecology. It examines these ideas not only in the social and cultural context in which they were first produced, but also the ways in which writers up to the Victorian period have appealed to the material in support of their own theories. Among the conflicting tange of images of women given in the Hippocratic corpus existed one tradition of the female body which says it is radically unlike the male body, behaving in different ways and requiring a different set of therapies. This book sets this model within the context of Greek mythology, especially the myth of Pandora and her difference from men, to explore the image of the body as something to be read. Hippocrates' Woman presents an arresting study of the origins of gynaecology, an exploration of how the interior workings of the female body were understood and the influence of Hippocrates' theories on the gynaecology of subsequent ages.

Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece

Hippocrates' Woman

By far the most influential work on the history of the body, across a wide range of academic disciplines, remains that of Thomas Laqueur. This book puts on trial the one-sex/two-sex model of Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud through a detailed exploration of the ways in which two classical stories of sexual difference were told, retold and remade from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Agnodike, the 'first midwife' who disguises herself as a man and then exposes herself to her potential patients, and Phaethousa, who grows a beard after her husband leaves her, are stories from the ancient world that resonated in the early modern period in particular. Tracing the reception of these tales shows how they provided continuity despite considerable change in medicine, being the common property of those on different sides of professional disputes about women's roles in both medicine and midwifery. The study reveals how different genres used these stories, changing their characters and plots, but always invoking the authority of the classics in discussions of sexual identity. The study raises important questions about the nature of medical knowledge, the relationship between texts and observation, and the understanding of sexual difference in the early modern world beyond the one-sex model.

The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence

This book challenges widespread assumptions about Hippocrates (and, in the process, about ancient Greek medicine) and will also explore the creation of modern myths about the ancient world. Through the lens of reception studies Helen King considers what 'Hippocrates' means today. He features powerfully in our assumptions about ancient medicine, and our beliefs about what medicine - and the physician himself - should be. In ethics, as well as in actual treatments recommended by both orthodox and alternative medicine, 'Hippocrates' still features as a model to be emulated. Why do we continue to use him in this way, and how are new myths constructed around his name? And what can this tell us about popular engagements with the classical world today?

The ‘Father of Medicine’ in the Internet Age

Hippocrates Now

What happened if you fell sick in the classical world? This book looks at beliefs about the inside of the body and its functioning held in Greek and Roman society. It looks at the precarious position of the doctor in a culture where there was no set training and no form of qualification to prove the value of his treatments, and asks how a patient would respond to the different types of healing on offer. It discusses the medical practitioners, their ethical codes, and relationships with other areas of healing, such as religion. As well as covering the ‘big names' of ancient medicine, such as Galen, the book considers the patients' experience, asking whether the drugs used would have worked, and explains how the theories doctors put forward were part of an attempt to account for symptoms and encourage a cure. The final chapters explore the later influence of ancient medicine, and the challenges to its authority posed by modern medicine.This is the first concise yet comprehensive and up-to-date study of Greek and Roman medicine, aimed at the non-specialist and written in a lively, engaging style. (8 illustrations)

Greek and Roman Medicine

From an acclaimed author in the field, this is a compelling study of the origins and history of the disease commonly seen as afflicting young unmarried girls. Understanding of the condition turned puberty and virginity into medical conditions, and Helen King stresses the continuity of this disease through history,depsite enormous shifts in medical understanding and technonologies, and drawing parallels with the modern illness of anorexia. Examining its roots in the classical tradition all the way through to its extraordinary survival into the 1920s, this study asks a number of questions about the nature of the disease itself and the relationship between illness, body images and what we should call‘normal’ behaviour. This is a fascinating and clear account which will prove invaluable not just to students of classical studies, but will be of interest to medical professionals also.

Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems of Puberty

The Disease of Virgins

How healthy were people in ancient Greece and Rome, and how did they think about maintaining and restoring their health? For students of classics, history or the history of medicine, answers to these and many previously untouched questions are dealt with by renowned ancient historians, classical scholars and archaeologists. Using a multidisciplined approach, the contributors assess the issues surrounding health in the Greco-Roman world from prehistory to Christian late antiquity. Sources range from palaeodemography to patristic and from archaeology to architecture and using these, this book considers what health meant, how it was thought to be achieved, and addresses how the ancient world can be perceived as an ideal in subsequent periods of history.

Helen King

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