Women Doctors

Surviving sources of information about women doctors in ancient Greece and Rome are fragmentary: some passing mentions by classical authors, scattered references in medical works, and about 40 inscriptions on tombs and monuments. Yet even from these fragments we can piece together a picture. The evidence shows that in ancient Greece and de Romana’s licensure to practice general medicine, the earliest known officially recorded occurrence of this sort.

The very nature of the scant evidence tells us something. There is no list of women doctors in antiquity, no direct comment on the fact that there were such people. Instead, the scattering of references to them indicates that, although their numbers were probably small, women doctors were an unremarkable part of pointing to something that everyone could already see—that there were female doctors as well as male.

Moreover, despite evidence that some of these women doctors treated mainly female patients, their practice was clearly not limited to midwifery. Both Greek and Latin have distinct terms for midwife and doctor, and important texts and inscriptions refer to female practitioners as the latter. Other references provide evidence of a broad scope to another describes her as “savior of all through her knowledge of medicine.”

Also pointing to a wider medical practice are the references in various classical medical works to a great number of women’s writings on medical subjects. Here, too, the very nature of the evidence tells us something, for Galen, Pliny the elder, and other ancient writers of encyclopedic medical works quote the opinions simply give excerpts from the female authority’s writing without biographical information or special comment.