CONCEPTION, GESTATION, AND TIlE ORIGIN OF FEMALE

30
123. Hp. Morb. Sacr.1.1-46 (VI:352-64 = pp. 60-66 Grensemann); see Lloyd, Magic (above,
60) 15-27. But cf. ]. louanna, "Hippocrate de Cos et Ie sacre," JS (1989) 3-22.
124. The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Anciem Greek
(Sather Classical Lectures 52. 1987). See esp. chap. 2 on the Kuhnian 'essential tension'
tradition and innovation in Greek science.
HELlOS, vol. 19 nos. 1 and 2,1992
CONCEPTION, GESTATION, AND TIlE ORIGIN OF FEMALE
NATURE IN THE CORPUS HIPPOCRATICUM
Ann Ellis Hanson
Two writers in the Hippocratic Corpus claim to have inspected with their
own eyes an aborted fetus that was six or seven days old. I What each author
described in his treatise (Nature of the Child and Fleshes) was larger and more
developed than the undifferentiated speck about a half millimeter in diameter
that a modern embryologist expects to see with the aid of magnification. 2 Both
authors probably underestimated the age of the abortus, because they were
relying on the testimony of the women as to when they conceived. 3 Even so,
the two ancient descriptions differ significantly from one another. The writer
of Nature of the Child observed the growth of chicks in their shells and he
considered the embryonic development of the chick a useful analogy for
thinking about the development of the human fetus that was hidden from his
eyes. 4 His description of the six-day-old fetus centered on the round and red
membrane he saw on the inner surface with its thick white fibers and the clots
of blood on the outer surface (13.3 [VII:490-92J). And his description resembles
nothing so much as a six-day-old chicken embryo. Elsewhere in his monograph
this author said he expected the male fetus to articulate its parts within 30 days,
but the female only at 42 days or later (18 [VII:500]).s In the six-day-old fetus
he did not expect to see differentiation of parts or sexual organs and he saw
none. Another medical writer, the author of Eight Months' Child, never claimed
to have seen an abortus; yet, like the writer of Nature of the Child, he also
expected formation of the fetus to take place after the first week, with the male
forming by 40 days and the female fetus only later, since at 40 days she still had
only "fleshy offshoots" (9 [VII:450]).6 By contrast, the writer of Fleshes
assumed that the formation of the fetus took place during its first seven days in
the uterus. He endorsed the widespread Greek notion that human life developed
~cording to sevens, as well as the oft-repeated medical doctrine that seven days
In utero marked the point when the generating seed had so solidified and so
attached itself that it could no longer flow out. 7 When this author submerged a
seVen-day_old abortus in water,S he found fetal parts already formed--eyes and
ecu:s, fingers and toes, and sexual organs. Gender distinctions are absent at this
POtnt in Fleshes and also from the rest of his brief embryological monograph.
f For Over a century it has been fashionable to doubt the veracity of the writer
~t:leshes, for there is a glibness to his writing that invites cynicism, and
c O~gh the author of Nature of the Child has struck some readers as "a more
I~nsclentious scientist," he too has been accused of fabricating his evidence.9
th J>ortant here, however, is not what the authors were actually looking at, but
rnanner in which they wrote up what they claimed to see. First, each author's
theservations cohere thematically to the monographs in which their authors set
rn, that is, fetal expectations clearly influenced the doctor's fetal observa­
0:
31
32
tions.1O The medical writers ofthe Corpus were in the habit of visualizing
happenings inside the human body by juxtaposing everyday phenomena
processes that shared common elements with the invisible phenomena
wanted to see with theirmind'seye. lI Conception and gestation in its frrst
were hidden events, taking place inside the unseen space of the female
The writer of Nature ofthe Child used fertilized eggs of a chicken to think
fetal development in humans (29 lVII:530D, but the writer of Fleshes
numerological speculation about the number seven carry the burden ofhis
that a fetus completed its first important change from wet to articulated
first seven days.
Second, when describing the unseen fetal world in the interior of the
body where lay the origins of male and female nature, Hippocratics
drew on what they knew about adults in this world and retrojected the
back into the uterus. Thus the female fetus was often made in the image
mother-sluggish and fleshy--and the male fetus in the image of his
and strong father. The womb was frequently genderized and, like
household, had separate expectations for male and female. The author
of the Child, who was certainly a doctor with a clinical practice, 12
distinguish female fetal experiences from male fetal experiences and
embryological monographers, such as the authors of Eight Months'
Regimen I. Hippocratics borrowed analogs and metaphors for women
current in their society and with the images came the society's stereotvriM
the sexually mature woman. Greek literature from the fifth and fourth
B.C.E. has furnished us with many examples of a sexual asymmf'!tI
disadvantaged the female. That literature also employed imagistic
set male and female into binary opposition and genderized neutral
space so that those of lesser value were associcated with female. 13
dichotomies punctuated Hippocratic imaginings about male and
in mature life, as well as Hippocratic imaginings about fetal days in the
and frequently their imaginings about conception and gestation
nature more decisively and more directly than did their gynecology.
Finally, the Hippocratic view of female nature, whether perceived in
woman or imagined in a female fetus, represented a medical interprel
cultural phenomena. Medical writers intended to interject the doctor
field of health care for women in their womanly conditions and they
these intentions into an anatomy, a physiology, and a nosology that
doctors' interventions. Hippocratic speculation about female nature
close ties with doctors' clinical practice, and as medical writers systern81
and elaborated what their gynecology borrowed from folk practices,
"specially medical priorities" become apparent in the manner in
pursued and embellished some implications of their metaphors and
yet eschewed or curtailed others. To investigate conception, gestation,
origin of female nature in the Hippocratic Corpus is to see the minds of
men at work, manipUlating metaphors and analogies that enabled
understand the mechanisms of female nature and to intervene in the
that brought female health to individual women.
HANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
33
As I have argued elsewhere, the therapies and recipes that formed the
backbone of the gynecological catalogs provide a glimpse of more traditional
theories and practices which were known in the Greek world before they
chieved their written formulations in the COrpUS. 14 It is my intention here to
~ocus on the origins of female nature and to argue that medical writers pursued
those views about female nature that facilitated their interventions in
gynecological practice. In section I below, I contrast the embryological
monograph and the gynecological catalog, for while the latter were repositories
of traditional theories and practices and the former were doctors' intellectual
constructions, it is the interfacing between the two that highlights the interven­
tionist aspects of Hippocratic gynecology. Hippocratics' interest in intervening
in the sicknesses of mature women influenced their imaginings about female
nature, even in the womb, and led them to emphasize in embryology what
proved medically and/or socially useful in clinical practice. In section II, I set
out the analogs and metaphors that dominated the Hippocratic picture of the
mature female, and in section III, I follow the "specially medical priorities" that
shaped and determined doctors' manipulations of these analogies and
metaphors that helped them imagine the female fetus and her fetal life. In section
IV, I give special consideration to wetness. This is partly because domination
the wet was a prime characteristic of both mature and fetal female nature; it
is also because in the Corpus wetness has become the source of weakness for
women, in spite of the fact that manipUlations of humoral physiology and
pathology in the Iliad had made domination by a single humor into a source of
strength for heroes. In section V, I investigate the Hippocratic construction that
required females to dry out twice--once by the cooking in the oven of the womb
in order to achieve birth, and again in the drying out of menopause. This "double
desiccation," in tum, suggests that the innate heat in the females of the Corpus
varied in its intensity. The conflicting statements in the Corpus about who was
hotter-men or women-are easily reconciled once one assumes that females
were hotter and colder at various times. In section VI, I close with a brief
consideration of some historical implications inherent in the Hippocratics' close
linking of woman's health to her reproduction, in contrast to the Hippocratic
separation of male health from male sexuality. Here, as elsewhere in the paper,
I stress that in treating female patients in their womanly conditions Hippocratic
doctors were serving a multitude of interests beyond the women themselves­
fathers, husbands, oikos, and polis. The Hippocratic equation between female
health and reproduction bolstered with scientific arguments the traditional
harneSSing offemale fecundity to the service of the family and the community.
1. Monographs, Catalogs, and Interventionist Gynecology
U.terine stories are told in the Hippocratic Corpus in two, quite different
tnedlcal gemes-the monograph and the catalog. 15 The writers of embryologi­
ca~ monographs consciously placed themselves within the philosophic and
SCientific intellectualism of the Presocratics and the rhetorical iconoclasm of
the SoPh'iStS. Medical writers too were challengmg
. trad"itlonaI exp IanatlOns
.
C
lor
llatural phenomena and were beginning to replace less sophisticated etiologies
34
for diseases with discussions of cause that appealed to mechanical
In their catalogs Hippocratics maintained more overt ties to popular
traditions through constant reference to the medicaments administered
dividual women in their suffering. 16 I draw attention to these distinct
for uterine information because embryological monographs make a
effort to enunciate how female nature functioned and to present unified!\!
integrated accounts. 17 That choice of form and stance for telling the
uterine life was a conscious one for Hippocratics is made clear by the
the author of the embryological monograph Nature of the Child
physiological monograph Diseases IV also compiled a gynecological
and marked his authorship throughout with a series of cross-referenc~
one composition to the next. 18 At one point he notes that discussion of
diseases of women did not belong in his embryology, but in his catalog:
not speak about diseases from suppressed menses here, since you will
in my Diseases ofWomen " (15.6 [VII:496)). As author of monographs,
a literary sophisticate when he began his embryological treatise Naturtd.
Child with the pretentious "Law governs all things ... "19 He was an
sophisticate in the body of that same monograph when he describes
and conception through a combination of pangenetic and
theories for production of seed with the notion that the seed of both
sexually bivalenced. 2o Sometimes he crossed genres. He prefaced
with a physiological introduction in which he spelled out the general
of women's bodies (I.l [VIII: 12-14]).21 In his monograph Nature of
he was also a "doctor of women" and a cataloger of women's diseases
narrated the story of his being summoned by a kinswoman to induce
in her pregnant slave (13 [VII:488-92J).22 In this episode the author
access to the oral tradition among women, for he says he knew what
said to each other: "that when they conceive, the seed remains inside
not fallout." The Hippocratic author of Fleshes prefaced his descri
newly-formed fetus and of fruitful intercourse with the playful rematK~JJ
may wonder how I know these things." By such a remark he, too, was
fully drawing attention to the quality of his sources and his access to
traditions through public prostitutes, "the women who know." The
the medical writer of Nature of the Child also surfaces in the
statements of his gynecological catalog,23 yet the conservative and
format for gynecological catalogs overpowered these occasional
personality.
Catalog descriptions of women's diseases tended to begin with a
ing, aphoristic formulation: "If a woman is pregnant, she becomes
green, because each day the pure part of her blood always trickles
her body and goes to the embryo as its nourishment."24 Next followed
etiologies: "Since there is less blood present in her body, it is necessary
be yellowish green, that she constantly desire strange foods, and that
materials arrive at her belly"; or specific prognoses about the future
the woman's suffering: "I say that a woman at the point of giving birth
out frequently." The description of the sickness was often capped with
f:lANSON---':'THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
35
herapies: "If breathing becomes difficult for her, grind up the following ... and
~ave her drink it frequently on an empty stomach." Catalog format was in­
lus ive , not integrative, and the catalogs unfolded their story of conception and
cwine life from the perspective of the medical writer, a concerned professional,
~, he faced women patients, offering advice and therapies for female health. 25
BY contrast, the idiosyncratic and sophisticated monographs told their uterine
tales from the perspective ofthe scientist who charted unseen fetal development
in the mother's womb.
was not a new skill, and doctors were not "new boys on the street"
at the end of the fifth century B.C.E.26 The writing down of medicine, however,
was new, as was written prose in general. Conception and pregnancy may be
female experiences, yet societies reconstruct these experiences ac­
to their own gender perspectives. 27 Hippocratic writers afford a glimpse
of Greek habits for thinking about female nature at that point in time when health
care for women in their womanly conditions was being drawn within the
compass of Greek medical prose. 28 The newness of Hippocratic efforts to insert
the doctor into the field of health care for women is occasionally apparent in
the Corpus. For example, the writer of Diseases of Women I claimed to have
seen many women destroyed, because doctors treated women's ailments as
though they were dealing with men's diseases (1.62 [VIII: 126])-and this
physician was certain that his own punctiliousness saved women's lives. He
distinguished himself from other practitioners, for example, when he employed
surgery for swellings caused by a violent blow, but eschewed surgery when
swellings were caused by an accumulation of menstrual blood that was seeking
a new path of exit for itself.29 By cutting an apparent tumor in a woman which
was actually accumulated menstrual blood, the unskillful doctor ran the risk of
creating a second path of exit through which menses would leave the body
thereafter, instead of down the vagina. The author of Diseases I considered
doctors lucky, if suppressed menses broke through for their women patients,
even though their original purpose in administering the therapy was to draw
down bile or phlegm (1.8 [VI: 154]). In their efforts to insert the doctor into the
field of health care for women, medical writers borrowed traditional
gynecological therapies, familiar to women, and recorded the recipes in their
catalogs. They also rewrote traditional concepts, so as to move them closer to
Hippocratic norms. Techniques useful in other areas of Hippocratic medicine,
SUch as mechanical etiologies for disease, received fuller play, because
mechanical explanations facilitated a doctor's ability to predict who was liable
to COntract a disease; they enabled him to tell beforehand what the disease's
course had already been and where it was likely to go in the future, thus inspiring
the nllfi"n"~ confidence-the much vaunted medical skill ofprognosis;3o and
u'5 uaIlt:d to the doctor how and when he should intervene. The usefulness
echanical etiology can be seen in Sacred Disease, where the writer argues
ldden seizures are caused not by attacks of the gods, but by the descent
~ phlegm from the brain that incapacitates the sensitive areas of cognition at
t e center of the body (3-7 [VI:366-74]),31 An explanation that appealed to
process Was socially useful in the confrontation with the patient, since the doctor
36
flANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
could explain the progress of the disease, and medically useful in
mechanical explanations told the doctor how and when to intervene
illness.
Gender stereotypes current in archaic and classical Greek society
Hippocratic writers with a variety of opposing qualities with which to
terize male and female natures, including the contrast between dry and
That Hippocratics fastened upon wetness as the prime characteristic of
nature was facilitated, first of all, by the enduring popUlarity of the
human bodies were made up of constituent bodily humors and that organs
containers for these liquids and, second, by the observation that fluids
the body of the mature female in excess of those produced by the
body. Female wetness turned Hippocratics to analogies drawn
hydraulics that drained fields for planting and from the chemical
removed moisture in baking or curdled milk to make cheese, so that
visualize for themselves, and could demonstrate to others, the
processes taking place inside the mature female. These same analogie
plained how doctoring manipulated the interior wetness of female
For example, when Hippocratics treated uterine displacement or
suffocation, they pictured themselves as intervening in a pathological
dryness that resulted from insufficient irrigation by sperm, from heat
untimely and unseemly exercises, and from an emptiness that re--· 1._.. ,
insufficient diet. Although the Hippocratic uterus was no longer a
peevish animal, it continued to wander-but it did so predictably
and cool areas, in order to restore the equilibrium it lost when a
regimen made it empty and overheated. Hippocratic uterine infusi
tened, cooled, and filled; the doctor's hand pushed the uterus downwaJI
external binders confined the uterus to its place. Hippocratics also
traditional therapies, the most widespread of which was the application .
odors to the nose and sweet smells to the vagina in order to lure the
to its properplace. 33 Such therapies would have developed in a gynecolol
saw the uterus as autodirected in its wanderings about the female body,
it was described by Timaeus in the Platonic dialog that bears his
Hippocratics did not dispense with odor therapies, but they did suppleme..
with medicaments more in keeping with their mechanical etiologies. 3s
ing mechanical causes enabled a Hippocratic physician to predict which
were likely to be affected (in the case of uterine displacement, the old
and the childless woman, because of their dryness, and women who
active, because their overexertions dried out their wombs) and signal"'....
doctor when and how to intervene in uterine displacements.
the circulation wat~r in underground channels of earth supplied the author of
ofthe Child With a test he could recommend to readers ofhis gynecologi­
cal catalog, should they want to understand how a mature woman's body differs
from the body of a mature man and why adult women menstruate:
II. Analogs for the Adult Female: Mother Earth and the Upside Down
Prominent analogs for the mature woman in the Hippocratic Corpus and the upside down jar. These analogs appear in the mythopoetic archaic Greece and were available to Hippocratics for exploitation in contexts. 36 Earth--often Mother earth-was useful to Hippocratics thought about the interior workings of the mature female's body. For 37
0:
I say that a woman has more spongy flesh and is softer than a man. Because this is so, the body of a
woman draws moisture from her belly more quickly and in greater quantity than does the body of a
man. It is, in fact, as if someone would set an equal amount of clean fleece and clean. tightly woven
doth over water, or over a water jug,37 for two days and two nights. When he takes them down and
weighs them, he will discover that the fleece is much heavier than the cloth. This is because moisture
goes up from the water in a wide-mouth jar, and because the fleece is spongy and soft, it receives more
of the evaporation. Because the cloth is fuI! and tightly woven, it becomes mted without receiving
much of the evaporation. Thus it is that a woman, because she is spongier, draws more moisture from
her belly to her body and she does so more quicldy than a man; because her flesh is soft, there is pain
when that flesh is filled by blood which is retained in her body and heated ... But if the surplus which
is prescnt goes off, no pain is caused from blood. Because a man has firmer flesh than a woman, he
never becomes over-filled with blood to the extent that, if some does not exit his body each month, he
experiences pain; he draws off whatever blood there is for the nourishment of his body. Because his
body is not soft, it never gets over-extended nor is it heated up by fulness as is the case with a woman.
The fact that a man works more strenuously than a woman contributes greatly to this result-for hard
work draws off moisture. (Morb. mul. 1.1 [VlIJ: 10])
Parallels from Greek and Roman agricultural manuals show that this medical
writer was thinking of Mother earth as he shaped his test. 38 The soft and feminine
fleece, not the fInn and male cloth, was the original item in farmers' tests that
searched for water beneath earth's surface. In agricultural hydroscopy fleece
was placed under a cover oflead or terra cotta and left overnight. If it was sodden
at dawn, the farmer knew that there was water not far below the surface of the
earth, The earth that dampened the fleece could also nourish the crops the farmer
planted, and this prognostic test pronounced a field fertile. As G. E. R. Lloyd
observed, the test did not confirm a theory that women's flesh was more spongy
and softer than a man's,39 but it did point the way toward a more overarching
principle-that texture and absorbency were interrelated. General principles
were important to this Hippocratic, who introduced scales and cloth into the
familiar test so that a degree of difference could be established between fleece
and cloth-and between female and male flesh. The writer manipulated the
agricultural test so that for him it functioned as an heuristic analog by which to
expand his thinking about women and their fertility with what he knew about
the circulation of water in earth. 40 He encouraged his audience, however, to
think in terms of the contrast between the sexes and to view the test as ill ustrative
of how a mature man's body differed from that of a mature woman.
Fleece too was a metaphor for the mature female in both scientific and
POpular discourse. Hesychius reports that although the Athenians announced
the birth of a male child by placing an olive crown before the door, in the case
of ~ girl child, they set out wool because of her spinning. 41 The Hippocratic
WHter of Glands contrasted compact and solid male bodies with porous and
Spongy female bodies in a manner similar to that in Diseases of Women I,
capping his description with the observation that women's bodies were "like
fleece in appearance and touch" (16 [VIII:572]). The association between
female fertility and fleece appears as well in those versions of Erichthonios'
38
conception that appealed to an etymological pun on his name as
thy."42 The earliest version ofthe pun we have was that told by Kall1mach~
the Hekale, where Athena wiped Poseidon's semen from her leg with
The fleece housed the god's seed as an intermediary between Athena,
virgin body will not bear Poseidon's child, and Mother earth whose body
The analogy between women and fleece also makes the joke in Aristopba
Clouds. Aristophanes has Strepsiades trying to discern how the distant
of Clouds were like the women their female voices had proclaimed the
At first these Oouds and women seemed very different to Strepsiades
but at Socrates' urging he described the Clouds: "I don't know for
they're like spread out fleece, and not women-by Zeus, not at all! Thes~
of yours have noses!" (343-44). Already the scholiast had lost the
posits masks for the chorus with large noses "that are otherwise laugnalJl
grotesque," and he went on to observe that "Strepsiades plausibly
not seen them because they have faces not of clouds, but of women.''44
Dover rightly objected that the device of masks was hardly funny, but
considered Aristophanes' joke "mysterious."45 Contrary to the scholiast
pretation, Strepsiades' difficulty lay not in seeing women as clouds"l
seeing these Clouds as women ("But if they are really Clouds, what
look like women?," 340-41; cf. 355). Once the simple-minded
described the Clouds as like "spread out fleece," the joke was
Aristophanes' aUdience, even though Strepsiades himself needed furthe....
ing from Socrates (and another joke for the audience) to understand
Clouds were women and should be addressed as "noble ladies"
Aristophanes' humor in lines 343-44 lies not in the chorus' masks.
humor relied on the popular equation between the amorphous shapelesll!
women's bodies and fleece, coupled with Strepsiades' objection that
and rain-bearing Clouds, which looked like fleece, differed from
Socrates' Clouds had visible noses. Aristophanes assumed that his
more sophisticated than Strepsiades, since he launchs a new joke
345.
The popular equation between woman and fleece--above all, unstructured and amorphous--finds resonances in recent scholarship of women in Greek literature, for this formlessness underscores marginalized position at the edge of the ordered and civilized city-state. was an ill-defined and unruly creature, incapable of self-mastery, and upon male guidance and direction.46 Fleece was raw material, and the process of weaving made it into cloth for men to wear, and women's when mastered by the civilizing influence of a husband, produced male children for the household and the city-state. The upside down jar provided medical writers with a convenient for a mature woman's uterus, and by metonymy the part stood for the woman. The uterus was called ajar in Epidemics VI (5.11 [V:318]). . we are told that the uterus functions like a jar in pregnancy, for the
shape of the uterus was said to influence the way the baby developed
the same way a jar determined the size and shape of a gourd growing
HANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
39
(GenJNat. pueri 9.3 [VII:482]). It also functions like ajar in breech delivery,
because in order to shake a large fruit pit out of a narrow necked jar, one had to
the pit exactly right, if its delivery were to proceed smoothly, even as
a baby who was proceeding feet first needed to be turned to head first position
(Morh. mul. 1.33 [VIII:78]). The fact that the uterus was a jar, positioned in
women upside down, is still reflected in medical terminology-the uterus'
bOttomJundus or pythmen, was on top, and its mouth, os or stoma, was at the
bottom and opened in a downward direction. The uterus was also said to be like
the doctor's cupping vessel.47 This analogy appealed both to shape and to
function, in that the cupping vessel attracted blood to the surface of the skin by
the action of heat. The Hippocratic uterus was a container that sucked up blood
from the body and, when emptied of blood, attracted the generating seed. 48
Hippocratics had little accurate knowledge about the interior parts of the human
body beyond the skeletal system, but they were keen observers of the clues
offered about the inner workings of the body by the materials which exited from
it. They examined the fluids which left the human body in an upward direction
from mouth and nostrils, and the fluids and solids which went in a downward
direction through urethra and anus. From these they learned about the unseen
happenings within.49 Woman's extra organ, her uterus, had its own evacuation
route for menstrual blood via the vagina-which became a two-way street for
male seed and babies. Movement up and down the path was facilitated by sexual
intercourse and birth, both of which widened and straightened it. Menstrual
blood was expected to flow from the body in a monthly cycle. When the woman
was pregnant, menses served as nourishment for a developing fetus or later were
transformed into milk for a nursling child, and the sweetest part of the blood
was pressed out and sent into passageways that joined uterus and breasts. If the
path out the vagina was blocked, menstrual blood might make an alternate path
of exit for itself, forging a path into the central tube that connected the upper
orifices-mouth and nostrils-with lower ones--urethra and anus-so that it
departed the body as nosebleeds or bloody hemorrhoids. 5O
Hippocratics took note of the extra liquids that left a mature woman's body
as a result of her reproductive capacities, and when she was healthy, they
expected her to evacuate two Attic kotyls of blood during a normal menstrual
period. This amount is about six or seven times greater than the average
projected by modern measurements. As Lesley Dean-Jones has nicely shown,
HiPpocratics fixed upon this amount because they believed it represented the
capacity of the nongravid womb. 51 No medical writer challenged the amount,
and it was repeated in gynecological texts throughout antiquity.52 Menstrual
blood that did not leave the nongravid woman's body as menses was seen as
trapped and hidden within, and amenorrhea was fatal after six months (Morb.
mul. 1.2 [VIII: 16-18]). Retained menstrual blood was less troublesome for the
ll1ultiparous woman than for the uniparous and the nulliparous, because each
sUccessive birthing broke down the compactness of the girl-child's masculinate
~esh and created both empty spaces for storage of blood and a network of
Inte~connecting passageways to encourage evacuation. 53 So opened, porous,
and IOterconnected was the body of the multiparous woman that if one inserted
40
f/ANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
a particular pessary into her vagina, by next morning the top of the
head would smell with the odor of the pessary (Steri/. 219 [VIII:424];
25 [VIII: 488-90]). The network of channels through which liquids and
circulated in the mature female body was more elaborate than the one in
bodies, for in women there was an additional organ to connect, the uterus.
positing of anatomical passageways or connectors that opened up at
was the Hippocratics' way of describing the responsive phenomena they
observing, as when young men produced semen and grew beards or
women began to menstruate and their breasts enlarged.54 The female uterus
connected with the central, alimentary tube, as well as with the breasts. 55
The body of the little girl was masculinate and resistant, but the
"opening her up" and "breaking her down" began at puberty when blood
forged its way to her uterus in anticipation of menarche. Next the accumul'
menses had to discover their path of exit. When they could not force their
down the vagina, they journeyed elsewhere in the body to lurk hidden,
evacuated. Suppressed menses might find a downward path of egress
the anus, a particularly common phenomenon in a young girl (Morb.
[VIII:22]); because her interconnecting channels had not yet been
opened up by childbirth, nosebleeds were for her a less common and
effective equivalent for menstruation. 56 When trapped within the young
unable to circulate freely, blood gathered in the sensitive regions at the
of her body, obstructing breathing and cognitive functions. 57 Hippocratici
agination saw first intercourse as one means to remove an impediment
exit of retained menses, should the menses prove unable to remove the
and break out of their own accord. 58
Intercourse ensured that the pathway to and from the uterus was
pregnancy and childbirth brought to completion the process of breaking
the young girl's body and opening up her passageways. The fullness of
nancy expanded the capacity of her body for holding excess fluids by
empty spaces, while the rambunctiousness of her child at the time of
distended her hips as it forced its way from her womb. 59 In the
woman, suppressed menstrual blood was less troublesome than for the
girl, for she had more room in which to store it, as well as a more
network of interconnecting passageways with which to evacuate excess
Each successive birth was said to go easier for a woman and to impr"'"
only her tolerance of surplus moistures, but also her ability to keep that
free-flowing. Medical writers urged virgins and widows to engage in
intercourse, and "if she becomes pregnant, she will be healthy" was a
conclusion to many oftheir descriptions of women's diseases. 60
Hesiodic farmers planted their fields in alternate years, com
practice with frequent plowing during the fallow year (Erg. 462-63),
farming manual Geoponika explained, plowing aerated the soil,
porous and spongy.61 The breaking down of earth's clods facilitated the
tion of moisture within. Hippocratic theorists and catalogers tied mature
health so closely to woman's reproductive activity that there was no
their analogy for a fallow year or for worry about the dangers of overcro01l
although Soranus appealed to that metaphor centuries later (Gyn. 1.35 [CMG
IV, p. 25 Ilberg]). It is the image of plowing that impressed Hippocratics, as the
coincidence between the vocabulary for the working of earth and for the
breaking down of the body of the young girl makes clear. 62 In order for her to
process her excess fluids pro~rly in adult life, the young girl's flesh had to
become porous and spongy, lIke earth that had been plowed for planting.
Circulation of interior moistures and drainage were crucial to fertility in earth
and in women, and Hippocratics adjusted the age-old analogy between women
and earth to accommodate their interventionist gynecology.63 Thus the analogy
to which the doctors were appealing validated the advice they offered the young
She should marry, conceive, and give birth for the sake of her health.
41
III. Doctors' Choices
Hippocratic theory endorsed the paradigm of the farmer and Mother earth
when advising the best time for conception. In simplistic terms spring was said
in two gynecological catalogs to be the best time for fruitful intercourse and
conception. 64 More sophisticated formulations took account of the monthly
recurrence of menstruation, not only in terminology that labeled menses
"monthlies" (katamenia, epimenia, emmenia),65 but in the advice that fruitful
intercourse took place when the menses were tapering off or were just finished. 66
The uterine mouth was then open for their release and the path to the outside
had just now been tested by their exit; as soon as menses forged their path to
the outside, seed from the husband could traverse the same path to the womb
without impediment. 67 Furthermore, elimination of surplus blood through men­
ses indicated that the uterus itself was suitably moist and the new emptiness in
uterine vessels drew the seed inside. At the time when menses were tapering
off or just ended, the wintery rains of the menses were over for the womb and
the spring of fertility and conception was at hand. Mother earth also supplied
the medical writer of Nature ofthe Child with an elaborate analogy between the
development of a seed in earth and fetal growth (22-27 [VII:514-28]).68
Medical writers of monographs and catalogs abandoned the farmer and the
analogy between woman and earth when the farmer went out to plant his seed.
Rather, Hippocratics endorsed the notion of female seed and turned away from
earth, the receptacle in which another plants his seed. 69 The catalogs emphasized
~he fact that the woman took up her man's seed, and mentioned a woman's seed
Itself largely in conjunction with the observation that when sick the woman had
none. 70 Monographs told more about woman's seed, with the author of Nature
of the Child arguing that women ejaculated during intercourse at the moment
of their greatest pleasure on analogy with the experience of the male partner
(4.1 [VIJ:474]). Female pleasure was but a pale reflection of man's experience,
eVen as the seed she produced was weaker and more watery.71
Hippocratics were not the only ones to endorse the existence offemale seed.
~ common Greek verb for intercourse was meignynai, "the mixing of liquids
In a ,Container," and the metaphor perhaps implied belief in the mixing of two
sernlOal fluids in the jar of the uterus.72 Doxographers credited various
Presocratics with a belief in female seed-Pythagoras, Demokritos,
42
tlANSON-T~ ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
Anaxagoras, Alkmaion, Pannenides, and Empedokles.73 The bonds that
a mother to her child became obvious during the later months of pregnancy
and Telemachos' observation that "no one knows his Own
underscored how momentary the father's contribution to his child might
by comparison (Od. 1.215-16). Aischylos' manipulation of the question
female seed in his Oresteia suggests that the issue of female seed continuect(j
interest Athenian audiences. In Eumenides, the final play of the
trilogy, Apollo casuistically denied the existence of female seed during the
of Orestes, claiming that the parent of the child was the father, "the one
mounts and plants" (658-66). The newly established jury court of
divided over the issue of Orestes' liability to punishment by the Erinyes
murder of his mother. Athene broke the tie and readily accepted
arguments, not only because, as she says, Zeus fathered her as a single
but because her action prevented further discussion and sped the
conclusion. Aischylos' strategies in the middle play, Choephoroi, howev~i
already undercut Apollo's position that the father is the parent of the
merely planting his seed in the mother. Here, Aischylos drew frequesd.i
pointed attention to the fact that Orestes inherited violence and murder
mother, culminating in Orestes' stance over the bodies of a pair of
mother and Aigisthos, in imitation of Klytaimestra's stance at the
first play, Agamemnon, when she stood astride the bodies of her
Kassandra. Allusions in the Choephoroi to the animal world had
beyond doubt that Orestes was the snake of Klytaimestra's dream that
breast as it nursed (32-42, 526-59, 928). He was more the child of
the water-snake, than he was the child of his eagle or lion father
(246-51).
Hippocratic endorsement of female seed by no means ended the
Aristotle considered the existence of female seed an integral part of pn_
that is, the notion that generating seed was drawn from all parts of
of the parents,74 and in his desire to discredit pangenesis, he made
female analog to male semen. This left no room for female seed in
scheme.15 The Alexandrian Herophilos returned to the earlier view
female also emitted seed in intercourse, and the Hippocratic assumDuoi
male and female generative parts were somehow analogous
look for "female testicles" (ovaries) and "spermatic ducts" ("Fallopian"t
in his dissections. The description Herophilos gave of ovaries and
Anatomy was influential throughout antiquity, including his extension
analogy between male and female reproductive parts so that female
ducts" even implanted into the neck of the bladder, as they did in males.
Roman Soranus accepted this configuration, for he credited women
producing seed in their seed-producing testicles (ovaries), yet argued
female seed played no role in the generation of infants, since it was
outside the uterus. Rufus and Galen corrected woman's anatomy on this
although Galen preserved enough of the Aristotelian construct so that
view female seed was scantier, colder, wetter, and imperfect.?7
The notion that a baby's sexual and psychic inheritance derived from
analogous contributions from both parents, and through the parents from their
respective families, was probably a more promising concept in the social
ambience of clinical practice than the counter-argument that womankind
produced no seed. As Aristotle made clear, denial of female seed was intellec­
tually satisfying in that it laid to rest the fear that a woman, possessed of a uterus
as the container for a child and able to produce menses for a child's nourishment,
could engender from her own seed without aid of a father. 78 Hippocratics were
apparently more confident about the role the father played in generation and
accustomed themselves to look for the father's contribution to his child, even
as Odysseus' friends were able to see the father in his son Telemachos. In the
Hippocratics' world, fathers, as heads of households, were conspicuous and
omnipresent figures, for the father introduced the doctor into his oikos and
provided the name under which he recorded the sicknesses of his female
patients-"the wife of X," "the daughter of X," "the slave ofX."79
By endorsing female seed, Hippocratics were also following those
Presocratics who made the womb the site of a primordial struggle between male
and female seed, as seeds battled to confer upon the fetus its gender and its
and physical inheritance. If pangenesis of seed was assumed, a struggle
ensued between father's and mother's seeds over the right to determine each
and everyone ofa fetus' bodily parts. Determination of the infant's gender was
settled without struggle only if the parental seed was thought to be exclusively
male-producing or exclusively female-producing at each act of coitus. For the
writer of Regimen I, then, the most desirable babies, the "manly boy" and the
"feminine girl," were formed without struggle (1.28 [VI:500-02]). But when
parents' seed differed in gender potency, seed battled seed to result in four, less
desirable infants in whom latent characteristics of the seed which was mastered
remained: (1) should the father's male-producing seed master the mother's
female-producing seed, the result was a "mannish boy" whose intelligence was
dimmed from that of the lustrous "manly boy"; (2) when the father's female­
producing seed was defeated by the mother's male-producing seed, the result
was a "wimpy boy"; (3) when the father's female-producing seed defeated the
mother's male-producing seed, the result was a more "manlike girl," who was
nonetheless attractive; (4) when the father's male-producing seed was defeated
by the mother's female-producing seed, the result was a "manly girl."
The writer of Nature of the Child imagined that parents' seed was sexually
bivalenced and that both parents contributed male-producing and female­
prodUCing seed. His scheme required a struggle after each coition, as the
sexually bivalenced seeds from father and mother vied for mastery within the
Womb to result either in the "masculine boy" and the "feminine girl," or in the
"wimpy boy" and the "manly girl."80
. Warfare among seeds at the time of conception appealed to the Hippocratics'
Interventionism, because they felt their medical knowledge of regimen and
qUalities of food stuffs equipped them to advise parents about diet and daily
conduct prior to fruitful intercourse. In the medical view, sex determination of
infant could be influenced by what the parents ate and drank, or by the
43
44
HANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
temperature and frequency of the baths the parents took. Doctors Proposed
intervene in parents' behavior in order to influence the struggle among the
that mixed together in the mother's womb. 8l Babies produced from
mixed seed" also offered opportunities for Hippocratic interventions,
doctors knew that the latent characteristics of that gender which was "'~~.---"
at conception lingered on to trouble the bodies of mature adults.
catalogs forecast health problems for the "manly girl," since she was dry
compact like a man. She produced little or no menstrual blood and hence
prone to sterility and all the health problems that barrenness brought in its
In adulthood "feminized boys" were wet and resembled women in their
ness, in their tendency to be weak and avoid strenuous work, and to suffer
excess bodily fluids that gathered in their fleshy partS. 83 These were
anatomical hermaphrodites, but intersexuals whose inappropriate behavior
outward appearance drew medical attention to a humoral imbalance
Folk tradition held that the opposites right and left were operative in
womb, with boys to the right and girls to the left. 84 Doxographic
credited Anaxagoras, Parmenides, and Empedokles with manipulating
distinction in their theories of conception. 85 By contrast, the embryolon
monographs made no use of the popular association between the male and
side or the female and left to explain how gender was determined, for they
upon a principle of mastery among the seeds. Catalogs restricted the
distinction to the period of gestation and emphasized the fact that
where boys developed, was the stronger of the two sides. A propositioci
Aphorisms VII denied that a woman could be ambidextrous: gune amohidtt.
ou ginetai (43 [IV :588]). Hippocratic commentators were attracted by
phrasing. Glaukias, a successor to the first Hippocratic glossator
argued that the aphorism's intention was to state that females could not
into being on the right side of a woman's body.86 The majority
according to the Neronian glossator Erotian, held that this aphorism
the two sides of a woman's body could become equally strong and capaDJ»..~'
was the view of Bacchias, and Erotian endorsed it too, adding that woment)j
were unable to do things the majority of men could do. 87 Galen
aphorism as additional evidence for female weakness. 88 Woman's assoc~
with "left" and "left handedness" was so close, Galen claimed, that it
impossible for a woman to be "doubly right-handed." Galen appealed
Amazons' practice of excising their right breast as a means to strengtll
right arm as additional testimony to the fact that no woman was strong
to be "doubly right(-handed)."89 An aphorism in Epidemics II reaffinned
greater strength of the right side: "With regard to natural qualities, the
nipple and the right eye have the greatest force; the same is true with the
parts and the fact that males develop on the right" (6.15 [V:136]). The
Superfetation turned the same information into a test for determining the sell
the unborn: "One needs to know which breast is larger for the woman, for
lies her fetus; the same is true with her eye-for the part within the lid is
and brighter in the eye that is on the same side as the larger breast"
[VIII:486]). A similar sympathetic reaction between right breast and male,
breast and female, was noted in Aphorism V: "If in a woman who is carrying
twins one breast becomes thin, a miscarriage of one of the children will take
place; if the right breast, the male will be lost, but if the left, the female" (38
[IV:544]). The reason why th~ left side was w~aker than the right was d~bated:
did it happen by nature or did custom make It so? In Laws Plato demed the
natural inferiority of the left, and claimed instead that misguided training
foolishly made the two sides unequal in strength. Proper exercise of both right
and left sides made his Guardians equally adept with either hand (VII.7, 794d-e).
Aristotle agreed and considered the ability to use both hands particularly
important in soldiers (Pol. 11.9, 1274b13-15).
The right/left distinction was fashioned into an opportunity for medical
intervention in the catalog Superfetation, for that author counseled a prospective
father to influence the gender of his child at conception by tying off the right
testicle before copulation if he wanted a girl, but the left testicle, if he desired
a boy (31 [VIII:500]). Catalogs of aphorisms also appealed to the right/left
opposition for prognostic indications about the gender of the unborn: "If a man's
right testicle drops first, he will engender males; if the left, females," and "The
male fetus is on the right, and the female more on the left."9o
Aristotle dismissed the ability of the right/left distinction to be a factor in sex
determination with the same arguments he used to rebut the ability of hot/cold
to determine gender-namely, that male and female twins were often formed
together in the same part of the womb, as he had observed in his dissections of
vivipara (GA IV.I, 764a34-36). Soranus saw most Hippocratic tests to deter­
mine the gender of an unborn infant as furnishing information that was
plausible, but not necessarily true (Gyn. 1.45 [CMG IV, pp. 31-32 Ilberg]). His
personal experiences sometimes confirmed, sometimes denied the judgment
that a woman was pregnant with a boy when her color was good, or when she
moved with greater grace; what was plausible to Soranus was the grounding of
the mother's better health in the fact that her male fetus was usually more active
and his movements more violent. Soranus singled out the right/left distinction
for particular censure, claiming that" ... Hippokrates reached his conclusions
from the false assumption that a male was formed if the seed were taken up into
the right part of the uterus.'''}l Such a notion was, as we have seen above, largely
absent from the embryology and gynecology of the Corpus, where gender was
determined by a struggle between parents' seeds. This is, however, but one of
a number of instances in which Soranus refashioned Hippokrates in order to
bolster his own arguments with Hippocratic authority.92 Ultimately it was Galen
Who endowed the role of right/left in sex determination with medical serious­
ness. He linked the left testicle and the left side of the uterus with his theory
that the left side of the body was colder, because it was less animated by innate
heat and filled with impure blood. 93 Galen integrated the traditional polarities
male/right and female/left with those of hot/cold and clean/impure to enun­
Ciate his explanation for the origin of male and female nature. For the Hip­
Pocratics, however, the distinction right/left offered scant opportunity for
doctors' interventions beyon,d advice to potential fathers to tie off one testicle
Or the other, and they left the popular concept undeveloped in embryological
O!
45
46
monographs, content in the catalogs to do little more than repeat the polarity
it appeared in tests for determining the sex of the unborn.
Hippocratics also developed "Poseidon's law" in a selective manner.
"Poseidon's law," I mean Poseidon's words to Tyro in the Odyssey, when
god assured the maid that copulations of the immortals were not without
and that within the year she would bear glorious children (XI.248-50).
of both catalogs and monographs accepted that aspect of "Poseidon's
which required sexual intercourse to result in a baby-for mortal men as
as for gods. If there was no pregnancy after intercourse, it was assumed
woman had intervened to expel either the liquid seed or a more developed
later on94--or that her organs of generation were anatomically deficie.lil
nosologically impaired. While the gynecological catalogs, particularly
of Women I and Barren Women, listed myriad therapies and recipes to
faulty anatomy and to promote a healthy uterus in women, barrenness
was seldom mentioned. Impotence in men was often said to be
severing the spermal passageway that led from the brain, the source of
to the spinal marrow, and this cutting was thought to interrupt the
pathway to the testicles (e.g., Airs, Waters, Places 22 [II:76-781;
tion/Nature of the Child 2 [VII:472]; Places in Human Beings 3
Epidemics VI.5.15 [V:320]). Infertility in men was alluded to in RegImen
[VI:558-60]) and Eight Months' Child 13 (VII:458) and was discussed
fully in the gynecological section of Aphorisms V (62-63 [IV:5
it follows directly upon the discussion of sterility in women. Women
conceive easily when their uterine mouth was cold and dense, since
dance of wet or hot/dry destroyed semen: " ... women who are free
extremes are those who conceive best. It is much the same with
were sterile when their bodies lacked sufficient strength or breath to
or when their moisture and heat were either too little or too much
semen properly to the penis. In his commentary on the passage,
sidered this aphorism an inferior product, objecting to the fact that it
the same result to excessive cold and excessive heat (In Hipp. Aph.
tarium, XVIIb:869-72 KOhn). The complicated reproductive apparatlJ
Hippocratics posited for women was the more likely to become
diseased.
Hippocratics firmly rejected that aspect of"Poseidon's law" which
to intercourse with a god as an explanation of why two babies were born
of one. Tyro had borne Neleus and Pelias to Poseidon within the
XI.248-50). As the tale made clear, mythical explanations for twinning
the suspicion of illicit sex and, in the case of the married woman, sust
adultery, such as had happened in Zeus' couplings with Alkmene that
Herakles and Iphikles, or those with Leda that produced the Diosk
alternate theory for twinning, one that invoked a chambered uterus,
found mythic enunciation first in Pherekydes of Syros, who
Chronos/Kronos depositing his semen into five holes, or mychoi, to
five (?) offspring.95 Greek doxographies credited Empedokles with
mUltiple births through superabundance of sperm and its subsequent
}lANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
47
Demokritos with attributing multiple births in barnyard animals to their
96
artitioned uterus. Hippocratics endorsed the notion of a two-chambered
Pteros in women and a theory of twinning that did not require adultery. The
~onographs spoke of seed dividing into the two chambers of the womb,
stressing that twins were the product of a single act of intercourse and that both
were hom on the very same day.97 In the case histories of Epidemics, twins were
reported as born on the same day.98 In addition, monographers and catalogers
were fashioning a theory of superfetation, or the creation of a second and
suhsequent conception, engendered during a later coition, as a means of separat­
ing normal from abnormal twinning. Their theories of superfetation, as we have
them, were unanimous only with regard to the fact that in humans the super­
fetation never lived. They disagreed about the cause of superfetation-the
womh was too dry and hot to quench the extra seed in Regimen I (31 [VI:506]),
or the uterus failed to close properly after the first conception in Superfetation
(1 [VIII:476])-and about its prognosis (the second conception destroyed the
first in Regimen, but not in Superfetation).99
The Hippocratics' "specially medical priorities," therefore, looked to accom­
modate the doctor in the health care of women in their womanly problems and
to argue that doctors' interventions on behalf of their female patients were the
more effective interventions. Even as Hippocratics were pushing gods and their
priests from the treatment of sudden seizures and epilepsy, so they also were
claiming that women were mistaken and misguided, (1) when the women gave
gifts to Artemis in thanksgiving for her help in bridging the transition from
young girl to married woman and mother (Virg. I [VIII:468]) and (2) when the
women experienced harmful side effects after medicating themselves and other
women with strong abortive pessaries (Morb. mul. 1.67 [VIII:140J).100 The
medical writers' advice was superior. In the case of a young girl, that superiority
was spelled out: the doctor could give mechanical etiologies for her disease that
not only harmonized with his anatomical and physiological explanations for her
body, but also rationalized traditional cures:
Release from this comes whenever there is no longer an impediment to evacuation of blood. I say, then,
that whenever young girls suffer this kind of malady, they should sleep with a man as quickly as
possible. If they become pregnant, they become healthy. (Virg. I [VIII:468])
We have only occasional views of encounters between doctor and female
patient and must deduce the etiquette which governed such meetings. 1ol Hip­
p?cratics were in the habit of interrogating male patients in order to establish a
dialog that informed the doctor about a patient's illness and also enabled the
layman to understand the unseen happenings within his body that had caused
the, illness in the first place. 102 Hippocratics likewise interrogated female
pattents, as well as observing them, and at Prorrhetikon 11.24 the medical writer
Suggests how the questioning of a female patient might proceed:
You can tell which women are more likely to become pregnant in a short amount oftime in the following
Way. First, notice what type they are: small women are better at conceiving than the large; skinny ones
ratber than the fat; pale ones rather than the ruddy; dark ones rather than the livid; ones whose veins
are apparent rather than hidden. Well-nourished flesh is troublesome in an old woman, although
capaCious and large breasts are good. These things are apparent at frrst glance. 1llen you must also ask
48
J{ANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
about her menstrual periods: do they appear during all months? is the quantity sufficient? is the
good? are they equal in each appearance? do they occur on the same days of the month? (11.24
Interactions between doctor and patient were certainly affected by the
of the patient, and treating women in their womanly conditions was admittd
a difficult aspect of Hippocratic medicine. 104 Dialog between female patient
male doctor was seldom easy according to the writer of Diseases o/W, He laments: " ... for women do not know why they are sick, before the has been correctly taught by the sick woman why she is sick. For ashamed to tell, even ifthey know, and they suppose that it is a disgrace,
of their inexperience and lack ofknowledge" (1.62 [VIII: 126]). The Hin.............
doctor intervened as would a father, an uncle, a brother, but his "shaped like a penis," were readying the woman for fruitful intercourse her husband.105 Hippocratics lent their medical authority to the men
traditionally directed, and controlled, female fertility, and they reinforced,.j
control with their medical writings. Although the doctor was a
advocate in that he held out hope of pregnancy to the woman who
child, Hippocratics were also serving the interests of the woman's
community when they treated women in their womanly conditions. I06
IV. Manipulating the Wet
A conspicuous feature of female nature, a<; Hippocratics imagined it,
grounding in plethora and superabundance, rather than in the physical
psychic deprivations that characterized Aristotelian and other constru'"
female nature. I07 Manipulation and control of superabundant wetness
major concern for Hippocratic gynecology, and that same
noted whenever embryological monographs turned to consider the
External factors, such as geographical location, prevailing winds, and
patterns of a year, caused imbalance of bodily humors in adults; so did
factors, such as inopportune and unfortunate ingestions of food and
intemperate and immoderate elimination of bodily fluids. los Accordin2
medical doxography, Alkmaion, a physician from Croton in south
pressed men's health in fifth-century political terms: health was
equal rights (isonomia) among the potencies of a man's
coldlhot, bitter/sweet, and the rest-but disease was caused when one
dominated others in a monarchia.109 Although the political metaphor
explicit in Hippocratic writings, their medical doctrines were like
That is, the regimen prescribed for men in the Corpus was designed to
intake against expenditure in order to maintain an inner equilibrium among
humors in a man's body, for this preserved his health despite changes in
factors like the weather. 110 By contrast, a monarchy of wetness prevailed in
fetal and adult life Hippocratics assigned to the female, and this wetness
female nature weak and sickly. I II Sickness from dominance by blood
a young girl as she approached puberty and as surplus accumulated for the
time in anticipation of menarche. If her menses did not exit as expected,
The fragmentary Diseases
0/ Young
49
Girls describes the process as
folloWS:
From such a vision (i.e., the so-called sacred diseases and apoplexy, and terrors) many have already
hanged themselves, more women than men, for female nature is also weaker and more unstable. Further, of an age for marriage who do not have intercourse with a man suffer this especially at the time of the descent of their menses, although previously they suffered no ill effect. Later on. you see, blood is gathered into their uterus for evacuation. Yet when the mouth of exit is not opened and more blood flows in because of nourishment and growth in their body, blood that has not found a way to
flow oul leaps upward from its fulness to the heart and to the diaphragm. When these regions are full, the heart becomes numb. 112 Lethargy follows numbness and after lethargy madness seizes them. It is as if you sit for a long time and blood from your hips and thighs is pressed out into your calves and feel and they become numb. This latter numbness is easy to manage, because blood flows hack again rapidly, due to the straightness of the veins and the fact that this part of the body is not a crucial one. But blood flows back from the heart and tbe mid-section slowly, because the veins here proceed at right angles and the area is critical and prone to mental aberration and madness. When these parts are filled, both chills and fever occur. [The girl] turns murderous from putrefaction; she feels fears and terrors from darkness. Because of the pressure around these young girls' hearts, they long for nooses; their innermost feelings are distressed and upset by the foulness of their blood, and they reach out for
trouble. These maladies bespeak terrible things: they command ber to wander about, to cast herself
into wells, and to hang herself, as if such actions were preferable and completely useful. Even without
visions, a certain pleasure prevails, so that sbe longs for death, as if something good ... If they become
pregnant, they become healthy. If not, either at the same moment as puberty, or a little later, the young
girl will be caught by this sickness. And if not by this sickness, she will be overtaken by another, for
among women who have regular intercourse with a man, it is the barren who especially suffer these
things. (Virg. I [VIlI:466-10])1I3
This medical writer compresses the events of menarche, defloration and
intercourse, and pregnancy into a single moment, in order to transform the
young girl into wife and mother as quickly as possible. 1I4 A young girl, a
parthenos, who got stuck in the transition from girlhood to womanhood was a
troublesome creature in Greek myth and in Greek society. In terms of
Alkmaion's political metaphor, the transition from young girl to multiparous
woman entailed the transformation of the female body from a stable and masculinate democracy to an instable and feminized monarchia. To Hip­
pocratics this superabundant wetness was the source ofthe physical and psychic Weakness that characterized female nature from its origin. t 15 Iliadic heroes, however, derived strength and physical prowess from the monarchic domination of a single bodily juice, cholos. Their bodies functioned according to a primitive, humoral scheme that was ancestor to the Hippocratic one,116 and although cholos in the Iliad did not coincide in every detail with chote, the "bile" of later Greek humoral theory, it did function in a similar manner, as the older scholia were quick to point out. l17 That is, cholos in the Iliad entered the body with food; certain individuals not only absorbed cholos more readily from their nourishment (XVL203-04), but these same heroes also eXperienced greater difficulty in digesting cholos ([80-82: IV.513; IX.565-67) ~d in evacuating it from their bodies (1.283; II.241; XV.138). Thus Achilles Imagined the Myrmidons saying to him "Your mother nursed you on cholos" (XVI,203). Later medical theory required that liquid bile be stored in the liver, prOdUCing burning heat when it traveled elsewhere. 118 In the Iliad, cholos acCumulated in various receptacle-organs: in the unspecified cholades, "places 50
for cholos," which fell out on the ground when a man's body was pierced by a
spearatthe navel (IV.525-26; XXlISO-SI); and in the kradie, which accumulat_
ing cholos caused to swell (IX.645; XXIV.5S4). Cholos gnawed at the thymo$
(XX.253) and caused pain (IV.513; IX.260); it was bitter (XVIII.322) and
associated with heat, rising in the breast like vapor or smoke (XVIII. I I 0). When
cholos was blocked up inside, it so confused a hero that he thought it tasted
sweeter than honey (XVIII.I09). Accumulation of cholos could at first be
controlled (IX.675; XV.72), but ifnot mastered and evacuated, it filled the
with incurable sickness (XV.217).119 Achilles' body and the bodies of other Iliadic heroes functioned in a similar to the Hippocratic constructs for female bodies: dominance of
defined and separated the epic hero from the race of ordinary men,
domination by wetness defined and separated Hippocratic females from
pocratic males. The nosology of both Achilles and the Hippocratic was grounded in the blockage and overflow of their receptacle-organs important difference, however, was that Hippocratics were manipuladl monarchic domination into a source of weakness and inability for female whereas the epic manipulation turned superabundance into a preeminent physical strength. Cholos roused the heroes of the Iliad to of prowess on the battlefield to avenge the death of a friend (IV to attack an enemy with a violence deadly like the venom of a snake The Iliad is a tale ofmen's quarrels, most of all, those ofAchillesPo nature was dominated by the emotional juice chotos to an extent beyond his fellows, even the bilious Agamemnon. This monarchic dominance make Achilles physically weak, as monarchic domination by blood or fluids did for female nature in Hippocratic hands. Nonetheless, the cholos, accumulated in excess inside Achilles' body, created a havoc that paralleled the blocking up of excess of blood within the Hippocrati( girl. Both Hippocratic and I1iadic physiologies pressed the analogy circulation of water through earth and the movement of the liquid within the body; both nosologies assumed that overflooding of
organs, when coupled with blockage of conduits, befuddled and
cognitive organs at the center of the body. As a result, the Hippocratic
girl and Achilles of epic suffered pernicious desires for self-destruction.
Achilles' mother foretold that her son's death would follow the death
Achilles shouted, "Then let me die!" (XVIII.9S). Thus resolved, Achilles
out to kill Hektor, now dressed in Achilles' own armor that he had stripped
the body ofPatrokIos. Achilles' fight with the river Skamandros/Xanthos
as prelude to the single combat with Hektor. Critics have tended to
fight in book XXI of the Iliad cosmic proportions, as they appeal either
episode as a stage in transferring the struggle from a killing of Trojans on
to the conflict among immortals with which this book ends, or they
his fight with Near Eastern myths of the deluge that threatened destructi«
humankind.121 Achilles' fight with the river also exteriorized the interior
taking place within his body, analogizing the physical effects that a supe1
dance of chotos produced inside his body with the murderous effects ofthe .
flANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
51
in flood-tide in the world outside the body. Like the blood trapped in the body
of the young girl, chotos had gathered in excess, had overflowed its receptacles
to accumulate elsewhere in his body, clogging Achilles' vital organs and
befuddling his perceptions. The river's attack on Achilles thus explains the
action of cholos within, as the river overflowed the receptacle of its banks, in
response to the clogging of its formerly free-flowing channels. The chaos in the
physical world makes visible to the eye of the mind Achilles' inner madness
and the chaos within his body. 122
Hephaistos counters the flood with his fires. The simile of the boiling
cauldron near the end of the struggle between man and river likewise reminds
the audience how heat dissipates excess fluid, as the contrary qualities warred
with their opposites:
... and his lovely waters were seething. As a cauldron that is propped over a great rue boils up dancing on its whole circle with dry stick burning beneath it as it melts down the fat of swine made tender ... (II. XX1.361· 64) The Hippocratic young girl was overwhelmed at pUberty by an accumulation
of blood within, and a similar physiological model explains how Achilles was
maddened by chatos. Hippocratic manipulations turned superabundant mois­
tures into physical weakness, while epic saw superabundant moistures as a
source of strength. G. E. R. Lloyd has maintained that early Greek thought did
not view the qualities cold/hot and wet/dry as "good" or "bad" in themselves,
but saw in these opposites a continuum in which only the extremes were given
negative value.123 So, for example, in the Corpus "moist" described a healthy
condition in the lower belly, for it indicated that the intestines were relaxed and
evacuations proceeded normally; "too wet," however, meant diarrhoea, and "too
dry," constipation. 124 The prominence the Corpus afforded dry/wet and hot/cold
underscored the fact that Hippocratics felt themselves particularly capable of
intervening whenever the moisture or the temperature of the body seemed to be
other than what they thought it should be in health. The writer of Epidemics II
observed: " ... you can find many therapies for moistening and drying, heating
and cooling" (2.12 [V:S8]).
At the same time, Lloyd's view underestimates the extent to which writers
in the Corpus feminized wetness and came to equate dominance by a bodily
humor retained in excess with a feminine and sedentary lifestyle that resulted
in fleshiness, weakness, fevers from accumulation, and general ill health. In
Regimen II, athletic men were said to feel pains of fatigue only after unusual or
excessive exercize, while men out of training suffered them after even slight
exertions (66 [VI:582-S4]). The latter had flesh that was wet; strenuous activity
caused melting within the body as exercises warmed it; some of the melted
Substances passed out as sweat, and others were purged with breath. But the
fl,uids that remained gathered in fleshy parts, and because they could not
Circulate freely, grew hot, overpowering what was healthy within. Unathletic
men suffered from high fever and pain. Therapies to alleviate this condition
vapor baths to break up the collected humor, mild exercise, and
restricted diet, all so as to make these male bodies properly firm and lean. Men
52
HANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
who did not exercise were also subject to accumulation of one of the constitueq
bodily humors in Diseases IV, and the end result of their inactivity was a
produced by the heat of accumulation (45 [VII:568]). In Nature of Man,
who in their youth had been hard-workers and lovers of toil discovered,
they ceased from strenuous activities in old age, that their flesh became soft (
[VI:62]). If such men became ill, their bodies melted down and the surplus
that were trapped within gathered in the open space of lower belly,
bladder. If the superabundant moistures did not find a way out, they suppuratd
especially when blocked up in the chest, because climbing up and out from
chest was difficult for liquids. In Airs, Waters, Places those who dwelt on
Phasis river inhabited a land that was marshy, hot, wet, and covered
vegetation; their climate was dominated by violent rainstorms (15 [II
In this land the fruits of earth were unhealthy, immature, and femini.
(tethflysmenoi) by superabundant wetness, while the men themselves
thick of body that neither their joints nor veins were visible. These men
unable to work hard. The pervasive femininity of wetness reappeared in
Hippocratic's view of the far-off Scythians as well (17 [11:66-68]).
inhabited a northern land that was chilled by the north wind, ice, and snow,
made sodden by heavy rains. Scythians too had thick and fleshy bodies and
closely resembled their womenfolk. Because of their wetness and softness,
lacked the strength to manipulate a bow or javelin. Scythian men dried out
excess moisture with cauterization and once burned in their shoulders,
wrists, breasts, hips, and loins, their bodies acquired better muscle tone.
In the mind of these medical writers wet was unhealthy, and drying
wetness was the only way to restore moist men to health and strength ..
Aphorisms III paired men of a wet nature with women in charting their
to the varying winds and humidities of the seasons (l1-14 [lV:490-92J), I2S
Aphorisms VI noted that those men whose noses were runny and whose
was watery were sickly, while those who were the opposite were healthier
[IV:562]).126 And finally, the author of the small treatise Ulcers announced
the beginning of his treatise that" ... dryness is nearer to health, but
to what is unhealthy" (l [VI:400.2-3]).
V. "Double Desiccation" For Female Nature
Hippocratic interventions included prescribing a regimen for prospecthl
parents that was intended to influence the gender of the child they conceive(i
The catalog Barren Women advised the man who would father a child to
strong, unmixed wine, but to avoid becoming drunk; his wine should be red,
food potent and dry, and he was to avoid hot baths-all in an effort to strength1r41
his seed. 127 Presumably such a man desired a boy, but the catalog does not
so. Similar advice was given to parents by the writer of Regimen I, and
this author set his advice in a monograph, he integrated dietetic advice
fully with his theory. Not only did he make explicit the connection between
prospective father's regimen and his child-producing seed, but he extended
advice to the regimen of the mother and her child-producing seed:
53
Females incline more to water and so they grow from food and drinks and activities that are cool, moist.
and soft. Males incline more toward fire and so they grow from foods and regimen that are dry and
wann. If a man wants to engender a girl, he should use a regimen inclining toward water. But if he
wants a boy, he must use a regimen inclining toward fire. And not only the man must do this, but also
the woman, for growth comes not only from the secretion of the man, but also from that of the woman.
(Vin 1.27 [Vl:SOOJ)
As noted above, Hippocratics told parents that fruitful intercourse took place
while the menstrual flow was tapering off or was just over. 128 Superfetation
manipulated this advice so that it embraced sex determination: a girl is con­
ceived when menstrual blood is flowing, a boy when bleeding has stopped (31
lVHI:500]), 129 This underscored yet again the close connection between female
and wetness in medical writers' minds. After fruitful intercourse the mouth of
the mother's uterus closed to retain the seed, and then began the struggle among
the seeds to confer upon the child its physical and psychic inheritance. As their
descriptions of a week-old abortus indicated, Hippocratics allowed a week for
seed to congeal and for the uterus to "take up the seed."I30 If the seed came out
before the fIrst week was up, the mother felt its wetness. Gynecological catalogs
advised the woman to approach her man again and again, until she did ''take up
his seed." The male fetus developed more rapidly than the female, with the
monographs grounding the little girl's retardation in the fact that she came from
watery seed. The author of Eight Months' Child, for example, noted that in utero
the girl matured more slowly than the boy, but once born, she grew old more
quickly (9,6 [VII:450]). Female nature, conceived in superabundant wetness,
dried out a first time in order to be born; but because female nature became wet
a second time at puberty and remained so throughout the period of fertility,
women had to dry out a second time in menopause. The woman's fertility
shriveled before a man's; after menopause neither surplus blood nor generating
seed departed her body, while a man continued to produce generating seed and
to beget children. His was a wetter and a greener old age. 131
The author of Nature ofthe Child correlated the gender of the baby and the
time the fetus took to articulate its parts with the amount of lochial flow ex pected
from the mother after the baby's birth, Because greater wetness caused a female
to develop more slowly in utero, she consumed less of her mother's menses for
her nourishment than did her male counterpart (18,1-2 [Vll:498-500]). As a
result, more residues were left unconsumed at her birth, and so the lochial flows
of her mother extended for 42 days after her delivery, The male fetus articulated
his parts at 30 days and because he had begun to consume the residues in a more
vigorous manner at an earlier age, there was less left over at his birth, Lochial
tlows for the mother of a boy should extend for no more than 30 days, The same
author expected quickening of a male fetus to take place at three months, but
that of a female at four months (21.1 [Vll:510]),132 The male fetus was himself
drier in his origin from the drier seed, and he served as a drying agent for his
mother, absorbing and consuming greater amounts of her surplus blood, Thus
he made his own fetal space a more healthy place.
A primary aim of gestation in the Hippocratic scheme was to dry out a fetus
So that it could be born, on analogy with baking bread in an oven. 133 Drying out
54
i1ANSON-THE ORIGfN OF FEMALE NATURE
the girl was more difficult than drying out the boy. The wetness that
her growth penneated her fetal environment and adversely affected her
The woman who carried a girl was considered less healthy, and the
Barren Women made use of this difference in the mother's health to Dredi..,t~
gender of the unborn:
response to the amount of new blood that was accumulating (Steril. 213
[YIIl:41Ol).
The author of Nature of the Child likened a mother's gestation of her child
to the development of a plant in earth in such a way as to make woman's season
offertility cotenninous with earth's agricultural year (24-26 [VII:518-28]). The
rains of winter made earth moist, compressed, and dense, and this compactness
M"vented air from circulating underneath the earth's surface. As a result, the
of earth was wann in winter and kept the springs beneath the surface
as well. These springs were more abundant in winter, and the surplus
would burst out and flow wherever it could, making ever broader passageways
for itself through the earth. The author's vocabulary and imagery are the same
that he employed in describing the breaking down of the compact body of the
young girl at the first flows of menarche and again during the flows of
childbirth. 141 Earth in summer became spongy and light, because the sun struck
it more intensely and made earth porous by drawing moistures up through the
ground. The water contained in earth was cooled by the air that penneated the
pores the evaporations had created. Thus earth's underground moistures were
cooler in summer than was the water on earth's surface, because circulation of
air through the passageways in earth had aerated and cooled them. Earth moved
from inner heat to inner cold during the course of an agricultural or calendar
year; denseness preceded aerated sponginess, and the body of earth, together
with its inner moistures, responded to changing temperatures at earth's surface.
The weather cycles of the seasons repeated for both earth and for womankind,
but the springtime of the individual young girl was short. 142 Menopause repre­
sented the second desiccation of female nature and was a signal that an
individual woman's season offruitfulness was past. For the earth there was yet
another cycle, but for the postmenopausal woman, there was only old age.
Because she no longer menstruated, her nature was calorically stable, just as the
child had been before she arrived at puberty-but where the girl child was
dense and relatively warm, the old woman was flaccid and cool.
For the author of Nature of the Child/Diseases IV the mature woman's
interior moistures responded more readily and more forcefully to the climatic
changes that proceeded month by month through the calendar year, and in his
view women were more sensitive to the changes in weather than men (15.3
rVII:494 D. He based his explanation for production of menstrual blood on the
year's variations in temperature. 143 These changes agitated the fluids in the
woman's body and caused blood to separate off; once isolated, the blood filled
her veins, and, when the veins were filled to capacity, the accumulation
descended all at once to her womb for the menstrual evacuation. According to
author's explanation, menstrual flows apparently occurred in a monthly
CYcle in the healthy, nongravid woman, because that was the amount of time it
took for her veins to fill. For the gravid woman there was neither agitation nor
separation off of blood, because the growing fetus drew its nourishment from
the maternal body every day in proportion to its strength. There was no
aCcumulation in her for the same reason that a man did not menstruate-because
the surplus from their nourishment was expended elsewhere. This writer's
Women with spots on their faces are pregnant with a female child. but those who keep a
complexion are usually pregnant with a male child. If a woman's nipples turn upward. she bears a
child. but if they turn downward. a female. (Steril. 216 [VIII:4 I 6])
The negative effects of pregnancy with a girl apparently continued
Hippocratic mind through birthing, since among the cases of postpanu-'
fering recorded in the Epidemics the majority reported that the baby was a
Wetter and weaker from the outset, the female fetus never overtook
who came to his birthing more vigorous. Hippocratics attributed the
childbirth to the blows of the baby as it attempted to break free from the
and to stride into this world-much as a chicken hatched from its
Because the uterus was thought to be passive in childbirth and the baby
it was the strong baby that was better able to accomplish his birth. Even
the moment of birth, then, weakness in a fetus and the failure to quicken
months indicated to the mother that this might be an undesirable
a girl or an effeminate boy. Among Hippocratic therapies for early
were those directed specifically against the weak or dying fetus. 136
detennine the sex of the unborn infant likewise underscored the role that
played in the Hippocratics' charting of unseen fetal life:
Take some ofher milk and knead with flour into a cookie. baking over a gentle fire. If the
properly. she is pregnant with a male: but if it disintegrates. she is pregnant with a female. Or,
some of her milk and some flour in leaves and bake: if it congeals. she bears a male; but if it
liquid. a female. (Steril. 216 [VIIl:4l6])
The failure of the heat in the oven to cook the little girl cookie
womb's difficulties in overcoming the retardation that began with the,
conception from watery seed. Such a test also implied that her wetness
the female fetus colder than the male, since she required more cooking
her out and solidify heL I37 The wetness of the mature woman, howevet
based on a superabundance of blood, and blood, as well as other fluids.
associated with heat, especially when those fluids accumulated and
compressed. 138 At first glance the Corpus appears contradictory in the
heat in the mature female, since the author of Regimen I claimed that
were colder than men, while the author of Diseases of Women I said
hotter blood made her hotter than a man. 139 Both passages, however'l
discussion of women's heat in the context of menstruation-an accumulal
of blood that produced heat, followed by a loss of blood that squandered
The mature female was hotter when excess blood accumulated within
Societal views of women's passions, as they loved and hated with greater
than men, derived from this female heat. As the blood left her body each
however, she was colder than a man. l40 Even menstrual blood retained
the uterus was said to be sometimes hotter, sometimes colder, aooarf
55
56
fIANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
theory for menstruation was also a variation on his explanation for the
of fevers in mankind in Diseases IV.51-53 [VII:584-94]).144
At least one writer in the Corpus was sympathetic to the notion that all
menstruated at the same time of the month (Oct. 9 and 13 [VII:448
458_60]).145 He did not, however, seem to follow the popular placing
menstruation in the waning of the moon, when the moon was itself becomhi
less, but rather during the time of its waxing. In any case, explanations
menstruation which depended upon the waxing and waning of the moon
compress the agricultural year of the earth into a lunar month, as
observed: " ... the moon makes a summer and winter in the course of a
just as the sun does in the course of the whole year" (GA IV.2, 767a7-8).
Hippocratics saw the adult woman as characterized by an abundandi
wetness, and the therapies they offered in the Corpus manipulated that
in behalf of the woman's fertility and health. Furthermore, they retrojected)
wetness back into the womb and imagined the female fetus as also
weak. The heat of the womb dried out the girl as best it could, and at
was more like, but nevertheless weaker than, her male counterpart.
nature became wet again at puberty, only to yield a second time to
approximating male nature for a second time in old age. Variable and
was the mature woman's inner heat, because that heat represented rf'J'TV\t'Id
her body to forces beyond her control.
VI. Population Strategies in the Corpus
The medical writers of the Hippocratic Corpus crafted their
monographs and gynecological catalogs out of earlier medical and
traditions. The previous sections of this paper have tried to demonstrate
Hippocratics' "specially medical priorities" played an important role in
mining the material that medical writers pursued or eschewed, as they
the doctor's right to intervene in health care for women in their
conditions. The embryological monographs did not extend their interest
later days of pregnancy, although both Nature of the Child and Eight Mo.
Child had something to say about birth.146 Likewise, the catalogs .
gestation and childbirth when a pregnancy appeared to be in jeopardy, o~
the parturient and her family began to fear the prolonged labor of
Alternate paths to health care for women in their womanly condiuons
available, and the fact that Hippocratic writings paid little attention to
stages of pregnancy or normal childbirth implied that these acti vities were
care of by female attendants and female relatives. 147 The women's com):
that occupied the gynecological catalogs-sterility, difficult childbirth,
fluxes or flows l48-also dominated the testimonia set up to commemOi
healing of women visitors to the Asklepieion at Epidauros.1 49 In the
accounts the women asked for relief from their difficulties in pregn
childbirth, or with the superabundant moisture of their female nature. The
care systems for women in Greece looked to the production of healthy
hopefully male, because this was what Greek society asked of its sexually
womenfolk. Recent scholarship has often focused on this aspect of the
57
ogY in the Corpus, noting that woman was equated with her uterus and that her
role as breeder was paramount. lSO
Medical writers were following societal norms, then, not only when they set
a high premium on female fecundity and fertility, but also when they viewed
reproduction as the essential ingredient for health in the mature woman. In both
the embryological monographs and the gynecological catalogs, the unmarried,
barren, and uniparous women enjoyed a health that was far more precarious
than did the mother of many children. lSI Hippocratics repeatedly assured a
woman that virtually nothing was too much where her reproductive activity was
concerned. In amalgamating woman's health and her reproduction so closel y ,
the writers of the Corpus established norms for sexuality in women that
contrasted markedly with the Corpus' view of the role that reproductive ac­
tivities should play in men's health. The dietetic treatises of the Corpus treated
intercourse as a bodily function in men, not Unlike the evacuations of bodily
fluids as urine or their expenditure in the sweat of gymnastic exercises. Sexual
intercourse played a minor role in men's health-just one aspect of the effort
to balance expenditures with intake, in order to preserve an equilibrium among
inner bodily humors.152
That this asymmetric view of sexuality was a social construct of archaic and
classical Greece is apparent when the gynecology of the Corpus is contrasted
with Soranus' Gynecology, written at Rome at the end of the first century C.E.
In the latter text women's health was separated from her reproductive activity,
much as had happened in the Corpus for men. Soranus endorsed virginity as
healthful for both men and women (1.32 [CMG IV, pp. 21-22 Ilberg]), and he
judged menstruation unhealthy for all women, although he considered it neces­
sary for conception (1.27-29 [pp. 17-191). In his views on menstruation Soranus
was extending earlier attempts by the Alexandrian Herophilos in the third
century B.C.E. to question the healthfulness of monthly bleeding.
The gynecologies of the Corpus and of Soranus were pronatalist in that both
offered advice on how to enhance a woman's ability to conceive, and both
warned of the dangers to the mother in abortion. The two traditions differed
markedly, however, in their attitudes toward contraceptive and abortive
measures. The monographs of the Corpus spoke openly about abortive practices,
as was evident in the descriptions ofthe aborted fetus at the outset of this paper.
The writer of Nature of the Child began his story of the aborted fetus by noting
that the pregnant woman to whom he had come was a slave, a musician
employed as a prostitute, and the possession of a kinswoman. The girl would
have lost her value if she became pregnant (1 3 [VII:488-90J). The gynecological
Cat~logs of the Corpus listed many early abortives called ekbolia,153 and these
POhons, uterine klysters, and uterine pessaries claimed to clean out the uterus
and to draw down menses, the afterbirth, and an impaired, weakened, or dead
fetus. 154 Contraceptive measures are infrequently mentioned in the Corpus: one
monograph refers to coitus interruptus as a procedure practiced by women,155
and only one medicament, repeated twice in gynecological catalogs, is specifi­
cally labeled a contraceptive (atokion).156 The gynecologies give the impression
that from the doctor's point of view early abortives were the more important
59
58
flANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
line of defense against unwanted pregnancies. The active ingredients
strong (cantharid beetles, squirting cucumber), and the majority of the
were hemagogic. 157 Hippocratics claimed that doctors were more skillful
use of such remedies than were the women themselves. 158 On the other
the Roman Soranus strongly favored conception over abortion (Gyn.
[CMG IV, pp. 45-49 Ilberg]). In doing so, he was, as he makes clear, respond
to the Hippocratic Oath that forbade the use of abortive pessaries, for the
had become influential in medical circles in the days since the
Soranus also considered the early abortives prescribed in the Corpus
to a woman's health. Although he knew there were doctors in Rome
employed abortives indiscriminately, he himself prescribed them only
the life of the mother. He said he was unwilling to use abortives to
woman's youthful beauty or to hide her acts of adultery.
Bearing children was women's business, but manipulating population
households and city-states of archaic and classical Greece was men's
ness. l60 Political theory and social models contemporary with the COrpl""1'IJ
for a stable, not increasing, population and urged that the numbers in
families be limited, so that each new generation replaced the previous
did not exceed it. 161 Available landed property was perceived as
poverty that came as a result of too many heirs was viewed as a
heinous threat to political stability. The propertied householders who
policy in city-states perceived their families and their communities as
far greater danger from the likelihood of overproduction of
overpopulation, than from underproduction. 162 In the Laws Plato suggestej
the ideal state should consist of 5040 men, each man the owner of his
(V, 737c-38a). Aristotle faulted Plato for, among other things, his
that birthrates would remain steady without official regulation (Pol.
I 265a39-b 12). Aristotle allowed that the number of childless marriage'
offset those marriages that overproduced, but he preferred to restrict the
of children bom-doing it in such a way that account was taken not
childless marriages, but also of children who died before their parents.
disease, and premature death occasionally dimmed the propertied hous~
fears of imminent overpopulation and persuaded families and communkl
desire more children. 163 High mortality rates among infants and children
compelled individual mothers and fathers who had already filled their
need for an heir to do so again and perhaps, yet again, whenever the
unexpectedly, or was otherwise deemed unsuitable. 1M Nevertheless,
propertied and aristocratic family, the city-state aimed merely to replace
it had lost prematurely.
The embryology and gynecology of the Corpus responded to a socioool
model that subordinated women's fertility to the requirements of
families and small communities, as these changed over time. 16S In
reproduction as beneficial to women's health, medical writers were
ensure that each household would produce its wished-for heir through
help. In juxtaposing enhancements for a woman's fertility to abortive
doctors were also offering medical means to ensure that the number of
roduced were what the family and/or community perceived as desirable.
writers were comfortable with these juxtapositions and did not notice
hoW markedly different was the advice they gave to men regarding their sexual
activities and their health from the advice they gave women on the same topics.
When the medical writers of the Corpus intervened in health care for women,
they were serving the larger aggregates of oikos and polis as well as their female
patients.
~edical
NOTES
Earlier versions of Ihis paper. or portions of it. were delivered at CAAS in Seplember 1986; at Ihe APA in
January 1989; at University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, History of Medicine Seminar. in Fehruary 1990. and
Department of Classical Studies in April 1990. I am grateful to all who listened and made suggestions.
I. Hippok. Nat. pueri 13 (VII:488-90); Carn. J9 (VITI:61 0). Hippocratic treatises are cited in Ihe
text by English title and by abbreviated Latin title in footnotes and olher references (for which see
Works Cited); chapler number is followed by volume and page in Littre' s edition. A similar procedure
is followed for citations from olher Greek medical writers: Ihat is, chapter number is followed in
patentheses by volume (if pertinent) and page in the edition lisled in Ihe first section of Works Cited.
2. "It is obvious to us today that Ihe pregnancy was many times older than six days. A six day
ovum is a barely visible speck to Ihe naked eye of Ihe expert": Alan Guttmacher in Ellinger (1952)
116-17.
], A woman was Ihought to know when she conceived because she felt her Ulerus close on Ihe
seed. The notion is bolh false and frequently repeated throughout antiquity: see Llnie (1981) 160-62.
4. Hippok. Nat. pueri 22-27 (VII:514-28) and 29 (530); Llnie (1981) 158-68 and 240-44.
5, Cf. Arist. HA VIL3. 583bI4-23. who expected articulation of male parts to be visible in an
abortus of 40 days, but articulation of female parts only at 90 days.
6. A similar account appears in Arist. HA VII.3, 583b20-28. for which see below in text and note
131,
7. 11 was called a "flow-out": Hippok. Oct. 9.2 (Vll:446-48: ekrhysis); Arist. HA VII.3, 583a24­
25 and 583blO-ll, andGA II1.9. 758b5-6 (ekrhysis); Sor. Gyn. III.47 (CMG IV, p. 125lIberg: ekrhoia).
8, Arist. HA Vll.3, 583b 14-20 explains that ifyou put a 40- day-oJd male abortus into any liquid
other than cold water, it dissolved; but in cold water its limbs and genitals became distinct.
9. Littre (1839-61) VIII.578 on Carn. 19, and Lonie (1977) 122-35 on Carn. 19 and Nat. pueri
13; see Lonie (1981) 53-54 and 159-61 for earlier bibliography on both passages and for his subsequent
defense of Nat. pueri 13, Lloyd (1987. 259·64) accepts the two descriptions as being what Ihey claim
to be.
10, Por interactions between Iheory and observation in Ihe Corpus, see. e.g .• Lloyd (1979) 153-55
and Von Staden (1989) 165-69.
I, Por analogical thinking as characteristic of Ihe later decades of the fifth century B.C.E .• see.
e.g., Diller (1932) 39- 41; Lloyd (1966) 345-57; Llnie (1981) 71·86; Miller (1990) 11-40. While it is
Impossible to affix absolute dates to Hippocratic treatises, the futility Ihat King (1989, 18) saw in such
attempts seems to me extreme. Dating Hippocratic gynecology is not inlended as an enterprise of Ihis
paper; nonetheless. I reaffinn here my belief that certain aspects of the gynecology were particularly
Comfortable in Greece ofthe late fifth century RC.E.--and less so in Ihe Greece of Aristotle; Ihe laler
dating was assumed by, e.g .• Gos~ns (1913). I am in sympalhy wilh arguments Ihat set Ihe aulhor of
Nar, pUeri at Ihe end ofIhe fiflh century Rc'E. (Grensemann, Llnie) and Ihat picture Ihe gynecological
Catalogs as containing heterogeneous material, some of which antedates the Corpus (Grensemann),
even if I cannot accept every detail in the arguments.
12. I.onie (1981) 164-65. emphasizing Nat. pueri 13 (VII:488-90).
13. for the so-called Pythagorean table of opposileS, see Arist. Metaph_1.5, 985b23-86b26. and
00
(1966) 48-64; cf. below. nole 32. For sexual asymmetty as an analytic tool in recent scholarship
") gender, see, e.g., Connell (1987) 23-90; Conway. Bourque, and Scott (1989), esp. xxi-xxx in
ottroduction"; Moore (1988) 12-41. For its appropriateness in assessing men' s images of the women
G~eco-Roman antiquity, see, e.g., Blok and Mason (1987) I-58 (Blok's introductory essay).
4. See Hanson (1991) 79-95 and (forthcoming a).
60
tlANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
15. Earlier work on the embryology of the Corpus focused on it as intellectual and
midpoint between Presocratics and the comparative embryology of Aristotle: e.g.,
George (1982); for a sociohistorical approach, see Lloyd (1983) 86- 94. For relations
and content in medical genres, see, e.g., Van Groningan (1958) 247-55; more recently Smith
277- 84 and (I 989a and b); Manetti (1990) 143-58; and Roselli (1990) 159-70.
16. For gynecological therapies of the Corpus as evidence for dialog between folk
formal medical traditions, see Hanson (1990) 309-38; for Hippocratic therapies as encapsullll
specific items from folk theory and practice, see Hanson (1991) 79-95. For intellectual
of catalogs, see Smith (1983) 284 and Roselli (1990) 160.
17. For genre differences in regard to female seed and the rightlleft distinction, see below,
III and notes 69-70 and 84-90, respectively.
18. The writer may have compiled a second catalog, a Diseases afYoung Girls: cf. the
erence at Morb. mul. 1.2 (VIII:22), although the locus is missing from the fragmentary
Corpus. Lonie's insistence (198 I ,295) that Virg, 1 (VIII:466: surplus menstrual blood num"" .....
contradicts Morb. IV.38 and 40 (VII:556-60: the heart does not suffer either diseases or
36. The fundamental study is that by Dieterich (1913); among recent work, see esp. duBois (1988)
39-85 and 110-29; Henderson (1975) 108-86; cf. also Sissa (I99Ob) 147-56.
. 37. Followmg the suggestIOn of Grensemann (1982) 88 and 149- 50.
38. For the use of fleece in agricultural hydroscopy, see Geoponika II.44.2-4 and 11.6A2-45;
IX.8.S-7; Pliny, HN XXXI.46; and cf. Judges VI:37-39 (fleece of Gideon). The city- planner
performs a similar experiment for ground on which to layout his city: Vitro De arch. VIII.IA-5.
39. Lloyd (1966) 349.
40. See below, section V and notes 141-44.
41. Hesychius, sigma 1791, s. v. slephanon ekpherein. For the heuristic methods employed by the
writer of Nat. pueri, see Lonie (1981) 81-86. See also King (1987) 117-26 for Empedokles' name for
fetal sack: amnion ("sheepskin" or "Iamb" and "bowl") at DK 31 B 70.
42. Roscher (1884-86) cols. 1300-OS, esp. 1304; Escher (1907) cols. 439-46, esp. col. 441. The
story was told in a lost tragedy of Euripides, but it is unclear whether the name-pun appeared (Eur.
frag. 925 Nauck Eratosthenes, Catasl. 13).
43. Hekale, Crag. 260.19-20 Pfeiffer; Apollod. Bibl. III.I4.6.
44. Schol. ad Nub. 344 Diibner.
45. Dover (1968) 147.
46. See, in particular, Carson (1990), Murnaghan (1988), Zeitlin (1982, 1984, 1990), Arthur
(1983.1984), Humphreys (1983) 33-57, and also Dean-Jones in this voillme.
47. For the uterus as cupping vessel, Hippok. Prise. 22 (1:626-28); Sor. Gyn. 1.9 (CMG IV, p. 7
\Iberg).
48. Hippok. Morb. mul. 1.1 (VIII: 12) and 1.18 (58.3).
49. For exits from the human body, see, e.g., Hippok. Morb. IV.41 (VII:562); Morb. mul. 1.9
(V1Il:38); Aeut. App. IS (11:474); Pop. II.1.7 (V:76-78) and IVA6 (188). For "upward" and
"downward" routes of evacuation, see, e.g., Pop. V.6 (V:206) and VII.9 (380); Aph. IV.4 (lV:502);
Morb. 1.8 (VI: 154) and IV.56 (VII:606); Nat. mul. 13 (VII:330); Morb. mul.1.79 (VIII: 198) and 11.139
(312).
50. Jackson (1988, 89) and Jones (1987, 81-82) have endorsed the suggestion of King (1985,
137-39) that a central tube joins upper and lower orifices in women's bodies and that the uterus travels
above the diaphragm by means of that tube. Hippocratics did imagine a central tube, extending from
nose and mouth, by way of the throat, stomach, and intestines to the anus, but this passageway was
integral in both male and female bodies and served as conduit for breath and nourishment, as well as
for feces and misplaced fluids, such as menstrual blood: Hippok. Cam. 3A (VIII:586) and Lac. hom.
33 (VI:324-26). Uterus and breasts were joined to the central tube in women, but Hippocratics never
said that organs passed the barrier of the diaphragm in either sex. The juxtaposition of uterine
suffocations imagined as movement toward the head (Nat. mul. 48) and toward the feet (Nal. mul. 49
IVII:392J) speaks against King's supposition and so does Morb. mul. 11.201 (VIII:384), where the
uterus is said to be below the diaphragm during a suffocation. For fuller argumentation, see Hanson
(1991) 85.
51. Dean-Jones (1989) 181-83.
52. E.g., Hippok. Morb. mul. 1.6 (VIII:30); Sor. Gyn.1.20-21 (CMG IV, p. 1411berg); Ail. med.
XVI,4 (p. 8 Zervos).
53. Hippok. Nat. pueri 24A (VII:522); Morb. mul. 1.1 (VIII: 10); Steril. 213 (VIII:41O). Retained
menses also burst out and forced new paths for themselves: e.g., Morb. mul. 1.2 (VIII: 14 and 20), 3
(24),36 (86). The process of compressing a liquid, followed by its forceful breaking out was appealed
Infrequently in the Corpus: e.g.,Af'r 8 (II:34-36: cause of rain); Flat. 8 (VI: 102-04: cause of headache;
of. 10 [l04..()6: cause ofhemorrbage in the chest]); Prise. 10 (1:592: cause of diarrhoea).
1 54. Hippok. Gen.lNat. pueri 11.3 (VII:472-74); Morb. mul. 1.38 (VIII:94); Pop. 11.1.6 (V:76); cf.
a so }fum. 10 (V:490).
A 55. Hippok. Nat.pueri 21 (VIl:512); Morb. mul. 11.133 (VIII:280); cf. Pop. II.6.16 (V: 136) and
ph. V50 (!V:550).
56. King (1989) 24-29.
57. Virgo I (VIII:468), and King (1985) 170-80. See also below, section IV and notes 113-14.
01 5g. Sissa (1984, 199Oa, 1990b) denies that Hippok. Virgo I saw the body of the young girl as
th~sed off, but in so doing she conflates the mouth of the vagina (e.g., Morb. mul. lAO [VIll:96]) with
1'~. nlouth of the uterus (e.g., Morb. mul. 1.2 [VIII: 14]). each of which was equipped with lips or rim.
Is necessary distinction was established for the gynecology of the Corpus by Fasbender (1897) 79
over meticulous, since 4'numbness u is neither upain" nor "disease~"
Describing the process by which a gynecological catalog was "compiled" has not
and scholarly consensus seems a long way off, now that hypothetical gynecological
Cnidian Semences have been shown to be no more than a scholarly fiction and
archetype. Littre (1839-61) pointed to "parallel passages" and material shared between
gynecological catalogs: these repetitions remain explicanda. For a list of textually parallel
see Trapp (1967) 28-30, which is repeated in Grensemann (1975) 144-45 (with a
scholarship on pp. 78-79). Grensemann's own scheme (80-145), despite modifications (I
few converts; nonetheless. his implied image of "loose-leaf notebooks," the work of several
attractive for the catalogs. Roselli (1990, 167-68) properly warns against paradigms drawn
traditions of medieval manuscripts.
19. Cf. Hdt III.38; Pind. frag. 169a Snell.
20. For similar explanations of sexual differentiation in the Prcsocratics, see Leskey
23-30,70-76; Lonie (1981) 124-39; and below, section III and note 73.
21. For translation of a part, see below, section II and note 37.
22. Lonie (1981) 126-27.
23. Passages in Lonie (1981) 51-53.
24. Hippok. Morb. mul. 1.34 (VIII:78-82).
25. For the tendency of medical argumentation to become more integrated over time
able to combine the firmly entrenched details from traditional medicine with scientific
see Galen on the rightlleft distinction (below, note 93). ManuH (1983, 155) likens the
to the physician's "ward."
26. "A doctor is worth many in his knowledge": Hom. II. XI.514.
27. See, e.g., Lightfoot-Klein (1989) 38-80, Islamic communities in Africa; Oakley (1986)~
Kingdom; Wertz and Wertz (1989), America.
28. So also Lloyd (1983) 85-86.
29. Morb. mul. 1.2 (VIII:20); cf. Morb. IV.50A (VIl:582) and 51.8 (588), where the uses similar terms to describe morbid humors that course uncontrolled through the body. 30. For social and medical aspects of prognosis, see Edelstein (1967) 65-85.
31. E.g., Rhode (1966) 1:29-30.
32. For the so-called Pythagorean pairs of opposites-limit and unlimited, odd and even,
plurality, right and left, at rest and moving, straight and curved, light and darkness, good square and oblong-see above, note 13. 33. E.g., Hippok. Morb. mul. II.128 (VIII:274.19-20), 11.131 (278.19),11.154 (330); Nat.
(VII:316), 26 (342). 44 (388). Odoriferous medications were also employed by later doctors for
suffocation and prolapse: Celsus, De medicina IV.27.1; Sor. Gyn. IV.38 (CMG IV, p. 151
Galen, Comp. medicamentorum IX.I 0 (XIII:320 Klihn); Aretaios VI.I 0 (CMG II, pp. 139­
Oribasios, citing Antyllus, X.l9 (C"MG VI 1,2, pp. 61-62 Raeder);Ait. med. XVI.67 (p. 99
Paul. Aig. III.71 (CMG IX I, pp. 288-89 Heiberg).
34. PI. Ti. 91 a6-d6.
35. For fuller argument and earlier bibliography, see Hanson (1991) 81-87.
61
62
rIANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
and n. I, who draws attention not only to the essential similaritY of Hippok. Steril. 223
mul. 67 (VII:402), and Morh. mul. 1.20 (VIII:58-60), but underscores that Steril. 223 must
membrane that closed the mouth of the uterus, even though the other two passages were anatomiclllii
indeterminate. Sissa is right, then, to insist that virginitY was not equated in Greek
specific anatomical part. Neither popular anatomy nor medical writers saw the
closed off, or otherwise obstructed, prior to first intercourse (despite the hymen of
which lies inside the labia minora); rather, as Sissa argues, lips (the labia majora and
anatomy) close over to protect the vaginal mouth that opened to the outside. Sissa is wrong,
to extend her argument to the mouth of the uterus (the external os of the cervix in modem
with its anterior and posterior lips that extend down into the vagina). It is this inner
Hippocratic and popular anatomy thought was closed off in the young girl prior to ~_ftR_"_U.
first penetration-a supposition which reenforced the desirabilitY of prepubertal
inner mouth whose lips were expected to purse tight after fruitful intercourse and the
pregnancy; and it was a fantasy obstruction at this inner mouth whose existence Soranus
at Gyn. L 16-17 (CMG IV, pp. I 1-12 Ilberg). as his second proof (that in young girls/virgin.o"
probe met no resistence, but penetrated to the depths) made clear. Jones (1987, I I ~­
conflated the two mouths. For additional evidence for popular belief in the fantasy
Hanson (1990) 324- 30.
59. Hippocratics were unaware of the role of uterine contractions in childbirth and mother's pains to blows from her child, as he struggled to break the membranes that held womb; see Hanson (1991) 87-9S. 60. E.g., Hippok. Morh. mul.1.37 (VIII:92), S9 (118), 63 (130), 11.119 (260),121 (264). 135 (308), 162 (342); cf. also Rouselle (1980) 100-IS. 61. Geoponika II.24.3 (araioiotheises tes ges). III.IO.! (gen katarregnymenen). araian); cr. III.B.7, IX.9.9. 62. Compare with the previous note Hippok. Morh. mul. 1.1 (VIII: 10-12): "When a body is broken down (katarregnytal). it is inevitable that her passageways are more open receptive to menstrual blood" and "I say that a woman has more spongy flesh (araiosarktJttl, is more soft than a man." Cf. also Nat. pueri 30 (VII:S38). 63. Cf. Lonie (1969) 391-411 and (1981) 211-39; see also below, section V and notes
64. Hippok. Steri/. 218 (VIII:422) and Superfet. 30 (VIII:498- Soo).
65. Cf. King {I 989) IS.
66. Hippok. Nat.pueri 15.3 (VII:494); Morh. mul. I.lI (VIII:46), 12 (48), 17 (56), 213 (412). See Fasbender (1897) 86-87. and cf. also below, section V and note 128. 67. Hippok. Steri/. 213 (VIII;41O), where retained menses at ornear the uterine moudnl!il the seed from going "where it needed to." 68. Hippok. Gen. Nat. pueri 5.! (VII:476) and Lonie (1981) 124; also King (1990) addition section II and note 48. 69. For female seed, see esp. Hippok. Viet. 1.27-30 (VI:5OO-06); Gen.lNat. pueri VII:474-480 and 484); Morh. mul. 1.8 (VIII:34). 70. Hippok. Nat. mul. 38 (VII:380); Morh. mul. II.129 (VIII:276): Nat. mul. 40 mul. 11.141 (VIII:314); Nat. mul. 41 (VII:384), Morh. mul. II.l54 (VIII:328); Nat. mulA3 71. This is dealt with more extensively by Dean-Jones in this volume.
72. Meignynai as euphemism for intercourse appears in the Corpus only in Hippok.
1.24 (VIII:62); Steri/. 220 and 238 (VIII:424.20 and 452.27); Superfet. 26, 27, and 31 492.13, and 500.6); elsewhere the verb and its compounds were employed with literal 73. Ail. dox. Plac. V.S.!-3 and Censorinus DN VA. Von Staden (1989, 230-31) Demokritos' place in the list, when challenged by Leskey (1950) 73; George (1982, 81-86) Anaxagoras' place, often challenged on the basis of Aris!. GA IV.I, 763b30-64a1. 74. Lonie (1981) 64-67 and 115-17; George (1982) 101-06; Leskey (1950) 70-80. appears in the Corpus principally in Hippok. Air and Morb. sacr.; Nat. pueri and Morb. IV; 75. GA 1.17-18, 72 Ib7-24al 3.
76. VonStaden (1989) 168 and2!3-16(Tl05, Rufus,Nam.part.184-86;TI06, Sot, ICMG IV, p. 911berg); and Tl07, Galen Dissect. UI. 9 [VII:900 Kilhn]). Von Staden argues attempt by Potter (1976, 45-60) to transfer the anatomical error about where uterine tubes women from a mistake by Herophilos to those who misunderstood Herophilos' text. 77. Usu part. XlV.6 (IV: 164-65 Kilhn); see also below, note 93.
78. Arist. GA U8, 722b 13-14, in the context of refuting Empedokles' arguments for pangenesis;
mY debt to the fine discussion of this point in Jones (1987, 160-66 and 173) is large.
63
79. Conspicuous exceptions are Phaithousa and Nano, women who lost their status as respectable
wives after their husbands were exiled; they suffered from amenorrhea, then masculinization--a
deepening voice and beard; finally they died (Pop. V1.8.32 [V:356]), for which, see Hanson (1989)
50-51. A similar regard for maintaining the anonymity ofrespectable women prevailed in the law courts
al Athens; see Schapps (1977) 323-30.
80. Leskey (1950, 82-83) argues that this scheme also required six types of offspring, as in Viet.
1.28 (above in text, previous paragraph), and she was followed by Lonie (1981) 129.
81. See below, section V and notes 127-29 and 133-36 for Hippocratic therapies that influence
sex determination of infants prior to intercourse. For other examples of Hippocratics intervening in the
sexual lives and habits of their female patients. see above, section I (end, in Hippocratic medications
for uterine suffocation) and section II (end, in their exhortations that virgins and widows engage in
sexual intercourse to improve their health); and below, section VI, for their conviction that the health
of all women was improved by any and all reproductive actitivity.
82. See above, section II and notes 59-60. and below, section IV and notes 113-14.
83. See also below, section IV and notes 124-26.
84, Barb (1953, 198-203) argues that the votive uterus was frequently marked on the right or left
side in order to guide god's intervention in the matter of sex determination.
85. Ail. dox. V.7A, Censorinus DN VI.6-8; Aristotle added Leophanes (GA IV.I, 765a23-25),
whose advice to a prospective father was the same as that found in Hippok. Superfet. 31 (VIII:5OO),
for which see also Lienau (1973) 49-50. For bibliography on earlier discussions, see Lloyd (1966)
37-41.
86. So also Sext. Emp. Math. VII.50.
81. Erotian A 31 (pp. 15-16 Nachrnasnson) gave "ambidextrous" and "two-sided" as synonyms
for amphidexios, citing Bacchias, Eur. Hipp. 780, Hom. II. XXI. 163, Hipponax frag. 83.2 B, and Hdt.
V.92.S. Erotian discredited Glaukias by appeal to the phenomenon of twins.
88. In Hippok. aph. eomm. VII.43 (XVIIIa:147-49 KUhn). Aristophanes called a man am­
pharisteros, "doubly left," in his lost play Tagenistai, frag. S12 Kock, in a joke that perhaps combined
sex with gluttony.
89. Aineias Tact. Poliorc. XLA relates that during a siege ofSinope, a manpower shortage caused
the inhabitants to arm the most physically suited women as soldiers, but they were not allowed to throw,
lest they be recognized as women by the enemy. See commentary by Whitehead (1990) 206.
90. Hippok. Pop. VI.4.21 (V:312) and Aph. V.48 (lV:SSO). 9 L So also Arist. GA VII.3, S83b3-9. 92. Hanson ( 1991) 73-74, and again below. section VI and note 150 on ekbolia; see also Burguiere,
Gourcvitch, and Malinas (1988) 87 n. 176.
93. See, e.g., Usu part. XIV.6-7 (IV: 162-72 KUhn).
94. Hippok. Gen.lNat. pueri 5 (VII:476), and see below, section VI and note ISS.
95. For the lIeptamyehoi or Thealogia, see Oamascius Prine. 124b (OK 7A 8); for discussion of
the text, see Kirk. Raven, and Schofield (1983) 58-60 and Lonie (1981) 252-55; Schibli (1990) 17- 18.
96. For EmpedokJes (OK 31A 81), see Ait. dox. V.lO.1 and Censorinus DN VI.IO, who
complained that Empedokles did not explain how division occurred; for Demokritos, Aelian,NA XII. 16
(bK 68A 151).
97. Hippok. Nat. pueri 31 (VII:540-42); Viet. 1.30.1-2 (VI:504-06). For the uterus bicomis. as
)fl1 multiple uteri. see Lonie (1981) 254-55.
98. E.g., Hippok. Pop. 1I.2.20 (V:92.8-12) and III.17, case 14 (III: 140.1 4-4204). The apparent
exception was the mother of Terpides (VII.97 [V:4S0-S2J), and the medical writer seemed uncertain
was an instance of twinning or of superfetation.
99. See also Hippok. Pop. V.lI (V:21 0.12-1204), where a superfetation of unarticulated flesh was
bo m 40 days after the birth of a nine-month girl; see Lienau (1973) 98-100. The survival of the first
conception places this case closer to Superfet.
J00. For the first passage, see King (1985) 170-80, and for the second, Hanson (1991) 79·81. Lloyd
31) notes that Hippocratics do not attack midwives per se.
(be10I. Elite women received more considerate treatment than female slaves: e.g., Hdt. IIl.133.1-37.5
mokcdes and Queen Atossa); Eur. Hipp. 293-96 (Phaedra): Hippok. Morb. mul.l.62 (VIII: 126),
64
tIANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
Oct.3.2-5.1 (VII:438-44), Nat. pueri 13.1-4 and 30.3-6 (VII:488-92 and 532-36); Galen, Praecog
(XIV: 14.641-47 KUhn: wife of Flavius Boethus). Cf. also Hanson (1987) 596-602.
.
102. Gourevitch (1984) 255-71.
103. A similar set of questions was implied by Morb. mul.1.6 (VIII:30). Dean-Jones (1989, 1
used Prorrh. 11.24 (IX:54) as evidence that the writer thought all women menstruated at the
each month. But this ignores the fact that "Do they occur on the same days of the month?"
question about periodicity of menstrual periods just past, not a statement of expectation as to
menses should appear, and forgets that backward slippage of a menstrual cycle within a 29-day
month was slower than in a progression of Julian months, seven of which have 31 days-whatev_'11
duration of the menstrual cycle posited for an ancient female population.
104. Lloyd (1983) 68 with nn. 36-37, and 76-78; Humphreys (1983) 45.
105. E.g., Hippok. Steri/. 222 (VIII:430); cf. also Manuli (1983) 189.
106. Finley (1963,68-72) suggests that Thukydides drew his portraits of Themistokles
from medical models of the ideal physician, as the latter appeared in climatological
Corpus. But Hippocratic portraits are not so much models for Thucydidean ones,
chronologically antecedent to the other, as all are products of the same intellectual c1imate-a cIli
that also produced embryological monographs and gynecological catalogs, texts in which
expanded their interventionism to include the manipulation of female nature. Beneficial
at a moment of crisis marked off the successful politician, even as it distinguished the best
Greek society respected the "foreknowledge" that enhanced preparedness and averted
at the hands of the Persians and Spartans or in the grip of disease, and it did not
certain individuals proved in retrospect to have possessed the skill of prognosis to a higherde2t'eCl'
did their fellows.
107. See especially Carson (1990); duBois (1988, 24-36) argues against the
psychoanalytic models for classical Greece, although the gynecology and embryology of the
contributed less to her argument than they might have.
108. Hippok. Morb. mul. 11.111 (VIII:238) and Nat. mul. 1 (VII:312).
109. Ail. dox. 5.30.1 (OK 24B 4). For a date in the fifth century for Alkmaion, see Lloyd
113-14 with nn. 7-8; Edelstein (1942, 371) follows Ross when he excises Pythagoras' name Metaph. 1.5, 986a22. 110. E.g., Hippok. Morb. IV.32 (VII:542); Nat. hom. 4 (VI:38-40).
III. E.g., Hippok. Nat. pueri 18.8 (VII:504-06); 6 (478); 31 (540).
112. See above, section I and note 18.
113. Cf. also above, sections II and notes 56-58, and III and note 100.
114. See the elegant demonstration of this point in King (1985) 180-86.
liS. E.g., Hippok. Nat. pueri 18.8 (VII:504-06); 6 (478); 31 (540); cf. also 21 (510), (1981) 128. 116. Smith (1966) 547-56, with earlier bibliography. 1l7. See esp. Eusl. II. 1.13.20-21, where he explicates the first lines of the epic. 118. Smith (1966) 555 and n. 39.
119. Immortals feel the effects of cholos (e.g., 1I.1.l9, 11.599, 111.413, etc.); see below,
120. The Odyssey devotes less attention to men's cholos than to that of gods (1.69,
IV.583, VIII.227, 276, 303, XI1.348, XXII.224-25, XXIV.544).1t is not Odysseus' way to
accumulate and course about his body out of control: his cholos was roused against Phaiakiatll
insulted him (VIII.205), although others sometimes assumed that Odysseus (or his
angry (11.185, XXII.369; cf. also control of cholos by Alkinoos, VII.31O). Otherwi
his father and his son) tried to prevent cholos from rising up in others (1.433, VI. 147,
or, when aroused, to appease it (XI.544, 554, 565). Odysseus did rouse the cholos of Cyclops
Egyptians (XIV.282), lros (XVIII.20, 25), and Eurymachos (XVIII.387).
121. Nagler (1974) 147-63, and Schein (1984) 147-53, both with earlier bibliography.
122. Smith (1966) 556: "The epic menis and the medical mania retain much in common." poetry the river in flood-tide, clogged with debris and overflowing its banks, became synonyrr Achilles. Vergil uses that identification to great effect in Aeneid II, for Achilles' son tolemus enters the palace of Priam during the sack of Troy "with his father's force," in the such a river (aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis 496-99). 123. Lloyd (1966) 56-59; see, e.g.,Aph. V.62-63 (lV:554-56), discussed above, section
94.
124. E.g., Aer 9 (11:38); Progn. II (11:134-38); Affect. 10 (VI:218) and 55 (264-66); Aph. 11.20
(IV: 476) and 53 (484).
125. Cf. also Aph. 111.17 (IV :494), where a south wind makes the body flabby and wet, dulls the
hearing, and makes the person sluggish.
126. Repeated with variations at Hippok. Pop. V1.6.8 (V:328).
127. Hippok. Steri/. 218 (VIII:422); cf. 220 (424), which reiterates that the man is not to be drunk,
but orders the woman to fasl.
128. For references, see above, section III, note 66.
129. A cryptic version at Hippok. Pop. 11.3.17 (V: I 16); see also Pop. V1.8.6 (344).
130. Hippok. Steri/. 220 (VIII:424); Nat. pueri 12.1 (VII:486). For pus which prevents the seed
being taken up, Steri/. 222 (VIII: 128). For "f1owouts," see references above in note 7.
131. A version of the same principle at Hippok. Pop. 11.3.17 (V:116 = Pop. V1.8.6 [344]). An
account similar to Oct. 9.6 appears at Arisl. HA VII.3, 583b20-28, and here Aristotle adds that women
who grow old very quickly are those who have bome more children (see also below, section VI and
note 153, on Soranus).
132. Hippok. Pop. 11.6.17 (V:136) equates articulation of parts in the three-month-old fetus with
the appearance of milk.
133. Nat. pueri 12.6 (VII:488) compares the membrane that forms around the conceived seed with
that which appears on the surface of bread as it is being baked. Cooking was also a mark of civilization
in the Corpus and it separated the men of today from their more primitive ancestors and from animals
in Prise. 3 (1:574-78); cf. also Vegetti (1979) 135-41.
134. For references, see Hanson (1989) 48 and n. 42. Cf. also Hippok. Steri/. 232 (VIII:446).
135. The point is argued in greater detail in Hanson (1991) 87-95.
136. Hippok. Nat. mul. 32 (VII:350) and 109 (428); Morb. mul. 1.78 (VIII: 176.1 1-12, 178.2,
182.13-14, 186.4, 188.13-15, 18-19,21),84 (208.15-17), 91 (218.13,220.16-17). Cf. Pliny, HN
xxii .48.100 (ad purgandas vulvas pel/endosque emortuos partus); and also Mchle (1974) 425-36 and
Riddle (1991) 3-32.
137. In Hippok. Nat. pueri 22.5 (VII:516), heat of the sun firms fruit by removing moisture; Lonie
(1981) 221. For a woman's body (= uterus) as an oven, see also Henderson (1975) 47-48, and duBois
(1988) 110-29.
138. E.g., Hippok. Morb. IV.52-53 (VII:59O-94), where changes in the weather cause separation
and accumulation of a humor, whose end result is a morbid fever; cf. also above, section IV and notes
125- 26. Aristotle knew of those who saw women as hotter because they supposed that menstrual blood
was a sign of surplus heat, but he thought them mistaken (GA IV.I, 765bI9-28).
139. Cf. Viet. 1.34 (VI:512): "The males of all species are warmer and drier, and the females moister
and colder ..."; and Morb. mul.1.I (VIII: 12): "For a woman has warmer blood than a man and because
ofthis she is warmer than he is."
140. The common arguments about woman's innate heat, as compared with man's, are neatly
summarized in Plul. Quaest. conv. 650e9-5Ie9. Although Halperin (1990,141-42) was influenced by
my ealier claims that the dominant opinion in the Corpus was that women were hotter than men, he
went on to argue that the instability of woman's heat was a male construcl.
141. See above, section II and notes 61-62.
142. E.g., Aristoph. Lys. 591-92.
143. So also Lonie (1981) 169-70. Dean-Jones (1989, 188-89) argues that with this passage the
author meant to endorse the notion that "all women menstruated at the same time ... during the coldest
part of the month, i.e. during the waning moon." This seems to me unlikely. Such a view of the text
glOsses over the fact that the writer said "Month differs from month" (not that the first half of the month
differs from the second half of the month) and the fact that the author said he would explain why blood
was set in agitation each month, in order to fill the uterus (not why blood flows). Important are the
parallels between this passage (with its emphasis on causes of agitation) and the author's discussion
of how changes in climate brought on disease (a change from cold to hot or hot to cold causes agitation
ot a bodily humor, makes it separate off and accumulate in excess) at Hippok. Morb. IV .51-53 (VII:584­
94): cf. Nat. pueri 15.4 (VII:494): hokotan de tarakhthen to haima kai apokrithen me khOreei exo, al/'
es fas metras, and Morb. IV.51 (VII:584): en me apokathairhai ho anthropos, toude tarassomenou,
apokrinetai hokotan anpleon ei tou kairou. For me in place of Littre's men, see Lonie (1981) 339, and
add A. Anastassiou, RhM 117 (1974) 44.
65
66
144. The author's theory for production of spenn was similar (Hippok. Gen.lNat. plUr/
[VII:470] and 2.2-3 [VII:472-74]); cf. also Lonie (1981) 169-70 and 337-49.
145. Lonie (1981, 168-70) is to be preferred for Hippok. Oct. 9 ("The appearance of the
shows ... that the month wields its own special power in bodies"), but Dean-Jones (1989, I
Oct. 13 (elucidation of this author's correction for the popular notion that all women menstruared~
the waning moon).
146. There is little ancient evidence for male participation in nonnal birthing: e.g., male
(maiO!) celebrated the adoption of a foundling by an inscription dedicated to Eileithyia on
first century C.E. (/G Xli. 5.199); and the epitaph of the doctor Evandros (Lambaesis.
CE.) alluded to children he delivered (Helly and Jaubert, ZPE 14 [1974] 252-56). The
Maximus to Tinarsiegis abOut birth (Egypt, second century C.E.) was definitely an exchange
two women (0. Flor. 14 and J. D. Thomas. CE 53 [1978]142-44).
147. Pomeroy (1975) 84; see also Lloyd (1990) 30-31, where he listed the health-care
of Greece.
148. The story of the woman with the twelve-year flux. who was cured after she
robe, began in two of the Gospels with "she had spent all her money on doctors" (Mark
Luke 8:43-48).
149. Of the 43 cures attributed to Apollo and Asclepius. ten involved women, and
women consulted about a reproductive problem; see Herzog (1931), and Edelstein and Edelstemfj
1:221-37 (" T423). The testimonia for men recorded many diseases that were as miraculous as
the god used to heal them.
150. See esp. Manuli (1980) 393-403 and (1983) 152; Halperin (1990) 140-41; HanSOll
314-24; Dean-Jones, in this volume.
151. E.g., Hippok. Gen.!Nat. pueri 4.3 (VIl:476) and Lonie (1981) 122.
152. Hanson (1990) 311-20; see also above, section IV and note 110. For Hippocratic
also Foucault (1985) 97-124; for Soranus and the Romans, Foucault (1984) 143-54.
153. Soranus distinguishes between ekiJolia, abortives that shook out a conception by
means, andphthoria, abortives that destroyed through drugs, at Gyn. 1.61 (CMG IV, pp.
The distinction was not one observed in the Corpus. which recognized only the tenn
154. For references, see above, section V and note 136.
155. Hippok. Gen.lNat. pueri 5 (VlI:476); Manuli (1982,42) also sees this as a reterellCClIN
interruptus. Pomeroy (1975, 245 and n. 58) adds the Archilochos fragment P. Colon. 7511
evidence against Hopkins (1965-66,143-49). who denies that Greeks and Romans made
use of coitus interruptus; add also Sor. Gyn. 1.6I (CMG IV. p. 46l1berg) and Lucr.
156. Hippok.Morb. mul.1.76(VIIl:170) and Nat. mul. 98 (Vll:414).
157. Jilchie (1974) 425-39.
158. Hanson (1991) 79-81; see also above, section IV and note 100. For an attempt to
Oath and its anomalies, see Edelstein (1967) 3-64, with earlier bibliography. The
58-64 and 1991,3-32) and Scaiborough (1989, 19-25) on chemical properties of ancient contnl
is expanding our view of their efficacy.
159. GYIl.1.60-65 (CMG IV, pp. 45-4911berg); see also Hanson (1991) 73-75.
160. Pomeroy (i975) 40 and 228; Golden (1990) 82-114.
161. E.g., Hes. Op. 376 hoped that only a single son would nourish his inherited estale;
West (1978, 251) for many who echoed Hesiod.
162. In the city-state population was perceived as "just right" so long as military
could be met, but "too small" when they were not. Linking military defeat to underprodlljll
children began in earnest only in Hellenistic and Roman times. For example, Aristotle
saw military defeat and subsequent decline of political power as caused by a populs
resulting from the selfish refusal to bear and raise children: in Sparta, between the
Peloponnesian War and Leuktra (Pol.1I.6.lO-13,1270a12-b7); in the Peloponnese, betWeel
of the Achaean League and 146 B.C.E. when Rome made Greece a province (XXXVI.17.5
Roman emperors, beginning with Augustus, encouraged reproduction rates among
economic groups throughout the empire, but as heads of aristocratic households many also
Hesiod's hope to leave but a single heir good advice.
163. For example, Perikles to the parents of those who died in the first year of the
11.44.3). Gomme (1962. 142) realized that aliOIl paidon elpidi meant "hopes of having oCher
for no apparent reason decided that "only very few parents of sons killed ... [would] be likely
flANSON-THE ORIGIN OF FEMALE NATURE
67
lOre." Sallares (1991, 129-60) argues that prevailing social values of classical Athens, developed in
nnearlier time when population density was low, were hostile to the idea of voluntary fatnily limitation
:od that the population was a natural fertility one in which maximizing child survivorship was a high
dority. Further, if family limitation was practiced by some individuals because of specific pressures,
more likely means used would have been abortion. He would alter this construct of fertility and
fecundity in the classical period for the Hellenistic and Roman periods, When the effects ofa population
density that had surpassed the carrying capacity of the Greek mainland in the fourth century B.C.E.
began to be widely felt.
164. Cf. Arisl. Pol. VII.l4.IO, 1335a2-12. on exposure of defonned infants, and PI. Tht. ISle,
where. as symbol for anger, Socrates summoned the image of a woman who was deprived of her
first-born because the midwife judged it defective.
165. Cf. Lloyd (1979) 240-64 and (1990) 50-71 for connections between socio-political habits of
tbe democracies of classical Greece and nascent Greek science.
;he
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