HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Erectile Dysfunction, Virginity, Aromatherapy
9 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
HIST 449- Mar 1 2018
Women and Children
Womens bodies and diseases
• Thought in polarities- woman/man, cold/hot, wet/dry etc.
• Pre-Socratic philosophy, antagonistic thought, no middle space
• Women always fit on the side of the negative, they are always wet and
sinister and on the left side
• Women with dark and men with bright
• Female with the bad/sick
• In Aphorisms part V there are many left/right binaries- you can predict twins
based on left/right sides
• Orgasm was sometimes prescribed to fix the uterus, bring it back down
during suffocation
• For the Hippocratic writers, the only healthy woman is one that is
menstruating or pregnant
• Men can be rendered infertile and impotent by cutting the vein behind the
ear
• The Scythians have problems with impotence and the woman are too fat
• These polarities need to be taken with a grain of salt
• Pregnant women look and feel better when carrying a male
Hippocrates Epidemics
• Menstruation defines a woman
• If a woman is not menstruating, then she can risk becoming a man
• Woman are not locked into being wet and cold
• BUT: the uterus is hot, and if you dont have sex or have a baby your uterus
can suffocate
• Lack of sex brought on lack of menstruation, she became a man and it killed
her- this story
• To reverse this process- the physician thought they should try to bring back
the menses
• In other treatises, there is talk of hermaphrodites
• Hermaphrodites were thought of being essentially male, but with female
parts- default thought that people are men
Hippocratic Gynecology
• Women are wet and suffer from too must moist (disease of virgins)
• Solution to this: stimulate menses, loosen them by pregnancy
• Womb is hot and dry, and therefore wanders in search of moisture,
producing suffocation and stifling
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Document Summary
Hippocrates epidemics: menstruation defines a woman, woman are not locked into being wet and cold. In other treatises, there is talk of hermaphrodites: hermaphrodites were thought of being essentially male, but with female parts- default thought that people are men. Some women become livid: then the women resemble those who suffer from epilepsy. Galens gynecology: women are less perfect because they are colder, the uterus is the bottom if everything, on the affected parts , loss of breath is caused by retention of blood or female seed. Typically affects women who were once sexually active: solution: bloodletting, orgasm, all the parts that the woman have, the men have too- women just have them. Only a league midwives allowed- they should know something about medicine and therapy: soranus midwife is essentially the same as the good hippocratic doctor, surgery and diet therapy.
