Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen (review)

Given the scope of this book and the depth of its analysis, it will be difficult—if not impossible—to do it justice. Within, one will find seriatim strands of examination which are carefully woven together, and which brilliantly reveal and elucidate what Roman medicine recognized as women: from the standpoint of what we call obstetrics and gynecology, how a physician or midwife ensured health in pregnancy, birthing, suckling, and care of the newborn; from the view of basic anatomy, how Roman medical professionals did or did not note the differences between male and female; from the outlook of physiology, how women and men displayed different characteristics according to the theoretical notions of krasis as they existed in both (a contrast owing much to Peripatetic, Hippocratic, and later concepts of heat and the activities of the soul); from the position of humoral pathology, why Roman medicine believed that women were subject to greater passions than men, and why such "predispositions" (a modernism) engendered specifically female ailments, ranging from prolapsed uterus to the then-classic hysteria in all of its physical and emotional forms; and from the broad perspectives of pharmacology, the dependence by the physician (of whatever plane or philosophical stripe) upon drugs (botanical, animal, and mineral) that answered the fundamental assumptions of the qualitative nature of the female (and male) fluids that restored health.

All the authorities are here: Celsus, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, Rufus of Ephesus, Soranus of Ephesus (whose "Methodism" stands in marked contrast to the rest), and of course Galen in his polymathic depth and breadth. One also gains a rather perceptive picture of Caelius Aurelianus and his presumed rendering into Latin of Soranus's lost writings, especially on acute and chronic diseases. Peeping through at appropriate moments are Dioscorides of Anazarbus, Criton (physician to Trajan), the constant insistence of varying approaches of Themison, Thessalus, and medical astrology. And one is rewarded with a rare and incisive acknowledgment of how and why folk medicine and magic were continual influences on all levels of medicine, both coming up into the literate and philosophical planes; and contrarily, how medical theory descended into the subterranean shadows of spell-casting, horoscopes, magical presumptions, and sayings of "wise women" throughout the two centuries under consideration. The early Byzantines are here too: Oribasius, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, and Paul of Aegina, albeit more often than not used as quarries for quotations from "lost" classical texts. This volume is an enormous achievement, a work that will repay repeated reading and consultation. Too few studies of ancient medicine attempting a broad sweep control the primary sources as does this book; moreover, Rebecca Flemming's net is both extensive and fine: unusually, Scribonius Largus receives his due, along with Heras, the odd metrics of Damocrates (embedded in Galen's drug books), Andromachus the Younger, and—yes—Pliny the Elder with his female sources on matters medical and pharmacological.

Flemming's Medicine is so chock full of substance, so comprehensive in its command of the texts, and so meticulous in the careful conclusions reached, that one cannot label this volume as "feminist" by any definition. To be sure, Flemming gives higher marks to Galen than she does to Soranus, but her judgment is gained from close and cautious explication of the Greek, not according to any modern and faddish school of medical history. As a whole, she has accomplished a huge and largely successful investigation into Roman medicine in toto, with women as a series of subsets. Read this book with care, savor its delicious phrases, ruminate on its more than tasty chunks of meat, challenge the wit and learning and conclusions, dig into the sources provided in extenso, and keep this tome prominently on your shelf. Someone, somewhere should...