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Women Physicians in Ancient Rome Copyright © 2022 by Elizabeth LeggePublished by Elizabeth Legge © 2022 Elizabeth LeggeCover image by Freepik, 2023 Women Physicians in Ancient RomeByElizabeth Legge Until recently, it has generally been assumed that ancient Roman women did not figure prominently as medical doctors. Much of the reason for this view derives from the extreme obstacles and difficulties women experienced in becoming qualified as physicians in the West during the Victorian Era and the twentieth century. It is now becoming apparent among scholars that women in ancient Rome did not encounter impediments to their medical practice to the same degree as pre-modern and early modern women. Although there are few references to women doctors in Rome, those mentions treat these physicians with the same respect and honour as that accorded to their similarly deserving male colleagues (Retief, 2006). <img class="img-responsive" src="https://api.novelo.com/uploads/Cover_ancient_roman_woman_doctor2_Designed_by_Freepik_8f23f0ce50.jpg"> (Freepik, 2024) Some of the information which we are able to glean on Roman woman physicians is briefly discussed below. This essay will first outline the nature of the sources detailing woman physicians and their practices in ancient Rome. One of these sources is that written by an outstanding woman physician herself. It will then go on to discuss the two types of healing professions Roman women could practice with a focus on the medical profession. It will continue by mentioning Roman physicians’ training, and the status and privilege of respected and recognized physicians, including woman physicians, in Roman society. To begin with, the sources mentioning ancient Roman woman physicians include references to them and their written materials by other Roman and early post-Roman physicians and writers including Galen, the prominent second century AD physician to Marcus Aurelius; Soranus of Ephesus, from the first Century AD; Pliny the Elder (first century AD); Pseudo-Galenus; Aetius (ca. AD 600); Paul Aegineta (seventh century AD); and others. These prominent writers make no distinction between the opinions of either male or female physicians, but cite materials from either gender indiscriminately. Retief finds the minimal number of references to women to be positively significant, in that they are not referred to by contemporaries as being remarkable or unique, but are considered a normally acceptable occurrence. What is more, a large number of source material written by Roman era physicians has since been lost, so the remaining records need not necessarily be exemplary of the true situation (Retief, 2006; Parker, 2015). Greco-Roman female physicians are also discussed with respect by male Roman physician writers. For example, Galen refers to Antiochis, the daughter of Diodotos in Asia Minor, as the one who discovered an analgesic to treat spleen pain, as well as medicines for gout in the hip and rheumatism. The renowned physician Herakleides of Tarentum (1st Century AD) dedicated his treatise on nasal hemorrhage to her. And the city of Tlos in Lydia gave her permission to erect a statue to herself there (Reteif, 2006). Women physicians are also mentioned on funerary reliefs. Another reason in fact for the small amount of evidence for Roman woman physicians is the fact that Greco-Roman funerary steles generally only mention the deceased’s name and do not include details of their occupations. This does not of course mean that they did not possess the latter but merely leaves the scholar in the dark about this information. However, some outstanding funerary references do remain. Among these is that of the woman physician Pantheia of second century AD Pergamum, whose physician widower husband, Glykon, erected a funerary plaque to her praising her temperament and wisdom and stating that she was famous as a physician since she was equally qualified with himself. Another moving inscription from second to third century AD Neoclaudiopolis, erected to the physician Domnina by her grieving husband, states that, “’People will say that you did not die, but that the gods snatched you up since you delivered your country from disease’”; it is possible that she passed away while struggling to save her patients from the Plague of the second century. A plaque from Merida, Spain written by her husband, Cassius Philippus, states that his doctor wife Iulia Saturnina is “’the best medica’” (Retief, 2006). There are many other similar inscriptions to woman physicians, some but not all of whom were married to physicians or from medical families (Retief, 2006; Parker, 2015). As well, the outline of a collection of works dated roughly between the second and fourth centuries AD, From the Works of Metrodora, comprises material from the only remaining text by a Roman era woman physician, Metrodora, derived from at least two books written by her. The only book of hers which remains in full, however, is her On the Feminine Diseases of the Womb, containing sixty-three chapters divided into seven well-organized sections which are much more clearly arranged than the chapters of the works of Hippocrates. She appears to historians to have been highly educated, scholarly and to have employed some original medical treatments. She supports her theories with her own extensive experience in the field. She writes on diseases of the uterus (including inflammation, suppuration, cancer, hemorrhage and prolapse), abdomen, breasts, and kidneys as well as on fertility and contraceptive techniques. While she includes some references to magic, this was the norm for medical writers of this era. She focuses on pathology rather than obstetrics, as was the practice for most Greco-Roman physician writers except for Soranus, since obstetrics was considered the field of midwives rather than physicians. She covers all areas of medical practice except surgery. As with Galen but unlike later Roman physicians, Metrodora quotes directly from Hippocrates. She looks for symptoms omitted by other physicians, and contributes towards ongoing debates on disease symptoms and etiology, including a topic under contemporary debate on vaginal discharge; she also contributes original etiological theories of her own. Her examinations include use of the vaginal speculum as well as digital methods (Retief, 2006; Parker, 2015). We know from the sources of three names for female medical personnel in ancient Rome. Nurses were unknown and did not arise until a later period. One of the most esteemed professions for a Greek woman was that of the midwife, which the Romans called the obstetrix. She did not only deal with childbirth but was also often a general practitioner for women’s ailments. Roman women with this profession normally came from the slave or freedwoman class rather than from among women who had been born free. However, a fourth century BC Greek funerary stele mentions a woman who is both a midwife and a physician; there is also mention from an Ostian stele of a Roman woman who was a midwife married to a physician (Retief, 2006). The Roman woman physician was, in Latin, a medica/ae, sometimes also called an iatreia/ae. Medicae/iatreiae were from a wide range of social classes, from the highest to the lowest, through Imperial freedwomen and slaves. Although not formally a physician, the empress Livia, the wife of Augustus, practiced healing (Barrett, 2002), as did the wife of Marcus Antonius. While many of them focused on women’s problems, they could also treat men and a variety of diseases in general. For instance, in the epitaph to Domnina, mentioned above, her husband states that people in general will say that she had not died but had been taken by the gods for saving her country from disease, which alludes to a wider practice during her profession. In the Western Empire, woman doctors increasingly became regarded as the equals to their male colleagues. One law passed by Justinian in AD 530 accords male and female doctors equal status (Retief, 2006; Parker, 2016). Woman patients did understandably tend to favour woman physicians, just as many do even in today’s less conservative Western societies, and male doctors often used woman doctors as go-betweens with woman patients for vaginal examinations, as described by Leo the Physician (fourth century AD), or referred woman doctors to woman patients suffering “women’s” emotional or physical ailments, as Galen mentions (Parker, 2016). As mentioned above, male medical writers of ancient Rome accord women physicians equal status with men when mentioning their treatments or citing their sources. Woman doctors are described as treating a very wide range of ailments, including anal and spleen diseases, dropsy, suppuration, sciatica, arthritis, stomachache, impetigo, mange, ulcers, and gynecological problems. They are mentioned as employing panaceas, hematogogues, and abortion inducing drugs. The doctor Olympias may have used medical drawings in her records. Kleopatra used some cosmetic treatments, which was normal for doctors of that era. While woman physicians treated gynecological problems, they rarely dealt with obstetrics, as mentioned above, since this was the field of the midwife. Aspasia, often quoted by Aetius in his book on gynecology, performed gynecological surgery along with her other extensive gynecological treatments. Her surgical techniques included venesection, as well as surgery for uterine hemorrhoids, and both varicose hernias and edemous tumours of the labia (Parker, 2016). Ancient Rome did not possess formal medical schools, standardized prospectuses or licensing programs for physicians. Thus, physicians normally learned their practice in apprenticeships, and this practice was often passed down through families. Free women would have learned from their fathers, husbands, or independently, and slaves not already qualified in their town of origin would often have learned from their doctor owners. Over time, however, universities teaching Medicine grew up in proximity to great libraries with tremendous sources of knowledge from which these universities’ scholars could study. These included such university centres as Alexandria, Kos, Cnidus, Pergamum, Ephesus, Smyrna, and Rome. It is unclear whether women would have trained at these universities, or from those men who had themselves trained there, including fathers and tutors (Parker, 2016). However, the fourth century AD woman astronomer, Hypatia, was a woman professor at the University of Alexandria who had managed to acquire her position both through her talents as well as by virtue of her being the daughter of the university’s dean. It is possible that well-connected woman may also have sometimes had the opportunity to study at these universities. Once trained, doctors were those who called themselves by that name, but their practices grew from their ability and growing renown in their communities, as Domnina’s husband mentions of hers on her stele (Parker, 2016). Under the Roman Empire, certain civic responsibilities and rights were accorded physicians. G. Julius Caesar extended Roman citizenship to all physicians practicing in Rome, and Vespasian made them exempt from taxation. Thus, it is assumed that someone’s status of physician was accorded to them by their local governor or town council who then decided which physician was taxation immune. The highest honour was that of arch-iatriae, or “chief doctor”. This title was extended to the physician Auguste and correspondingly to her physician husband, Aurelius Gaius as arch-iatros, since it was said that she had, “’Cured many who were sick in their bodies.’” Under the later Byzantine rule, some women were recorded as having been given clearer status privileges and responsibilities, such as over hospital wards, although at a lower ranking than their male colleagues (Parker, 2016). As mentioned above, although few women physicians were mentioned in Roman society, the exact proportion of women physicians in the culture is unclear. Despite this, women did not appear to face the same obstacles in becoming qualified as doctors as they have done in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. They were afforded respect by men and their societies for their achievements and were cited indiscriminately in medical sources along with their male colleagues. Many were honoured for high achievements both civically and by those close to them. Some came from medical families and may have been trained by male family members, while others may not have and may have achieved their training independently. Woman doctors in Rome came from all strata of society and were awarded the same legal privileges as their male colleagues. ReferencesBarrett, Anthony. Livia: First Lady of Rome. Yale University Press, 2002. <a href="http://www.ancient-origins.net/users/aprilholloway" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Holloway,</a> April. “Women and Medicine in Rome”. In Ancient Origins. August 27, 2014 Parker, Holt N. “Women Doctors in Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire” In Women Healers and Physicians: Climbing a Long Hill. Lilian R. Furst, editor., 2015. Retief, FP, L. Cilliers. “The Healing Hand: the Role of Women in Graeco-Roman Medicine”. In ACTA Theologica, 2010, 26(2):165–88. ###About the AuthorElizabeth Legge is a Doctor of Medicine candidate at a European university. She achieved her Master’s degree in Classical Archaeology at the University of Pisa, Italy and will be pursuing a PhD in the field. She was awarded her Bachelor of Arts in Classical Studies and Bachelor of Sciences in Integrated Sciences at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has travelled extensively to all continents since childhood and lived in many countries. She is Australian, Canadian and half English.

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