Gynecological Theory and Practice in Ancient Greece

What makes such content sound differently in the scientific as opposed to the prescientific mount is that it has often been attached to public-policy advocacy regarding technological attributes of medicine. The moral metric weight unit of such advocacy, non infrequently translated into policy implementation, has proceeded from its supposed certainty--even (or peradventure especially) when the weight of scientific evidence interrogates such certainty. Consider the well-known and vexed news report of witch hunting among midwives in the knightly period or the even more than vexed (and more recent) history of conflict over birth control and abortion.

or so other example of the way moral certainties crowd out the technical achievements of medicine has to do with identifying the authoritative voice of science. Consider the history of resistance to innovative theories, even when experimentally verifiable. Pasteur's theory of the linkage between bacteria and infection emerged in the mid-19th century, but it did not find practical application until 1867. Controversy still surrounds the come on of who truly discovered the surgical application of ether, the surgeon who in 1849 revealed that he had been using it since 1842 or the mere dentist who in 1846 went public with his discovery (Bloom). As for the 1847 question of whether women such as Elizabeth Blackwell either were competent enough or should be all

Soranus. Gynecology [Gyn. in text]. Trans. Owsei Temkin. Ed. Owsei Temkin, Nicolson J. Eastman, Ludwig Edelstein, and Alan F. Guttmacher. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U P, 1991.

Soranus acknowledges (Gyn. 3.1) the populace of painful menstruation, which he attributes to fluid retention.

Leaving aside whether that goal was completely accurate, the attention Soranus pays to the phenomenon can be profitably manipulate beside the skepticism with which generations of (male) OB-GYN practitioners greeted claims for the "reality" of menstrual pain (Greer 45). Additional observations do by Soranus include recognition that premature births occurring at heptad months need not be fatal for all newborns, the podalic version, the mention given to a "footling breech" birth (California), and pica, the happen upon given to abnormal food cravings during pregnancy (Gyn. 1; Hanson).

cosmos eclipsed by general history did not prevent Soranus from importantly influencing Western medical practice. That is because of his masterwork, variously titled Gynecology (Gynaikeia in Greek) or On Midwifery and the Diseases of Women. The text was in constant use as a standard medical rootage work for some 1,500 years. Indeed, correlates have been found between some of Soranus's theories and contemporary best medical practices.

Miller, Jonathan. The Body in Question. impertinent York: Random House, 1978.

"Soranus of Ephesus." Britannica 2001 Deluxe Edition CD-ROM. 2000 ed.

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