Tag: Metrodora
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Byzantine women in medicine
Brady LonerganFarmington, Connecticut, United States Literary and material evidence includes medical treatises ostensibly written by female physicians and references to female medical writers’ pharmaceutical contributions as early as the late classical period (fifth century BCE) in the Greco-Roman world.1 The second century CE physician Galen cites remedies attributed to Spendousa, Aquilia Secundilla, and Antiochis.2 The…
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Metrodora: Egyptian physician, midwife, and surgeon
Geraldine MillerLiverpool, England Metrodora is considered to be the “the mother of gynecology.”1 Yet, for many centuries, she has remained unknown. Even today, there are few within the medical community who know much about her pioneering work as a midwife, gynecologist, and surgeon who performed “procedures ahead of her era.”2 She is believed to have…
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Women surgeons
Moustapha AbousamraVentura, California, United States Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire fences at first glance appear ominous with their threatening thorns,…