CLA219H1 Chapter Notes -Exorcism, The Consul, Protease
Document Summary
Readings for oct 30 (no course materials for the 23rd) Factored into the treatment of uterine suffocation : amulets from as widespread as lebanon, egypt and england. Imagined demons and errant wombs as wild animals. Fumigations to control it: apparently earlier theory was that midwives or wet-nurses were the original source for either the idea of the wandering womb, or its treatment. The wandering womb from plato to the medical writers of the roman empire. Readings from course materials oct 23 - nov 06. In short the ability of the womb to move about justifies the patriarchal ideal of a woman"s life: early marriage and multiple pregnancies. In the advent of human dissection, about 50 years after plat"s death strongly challenged the concept of the mobile womb among doctors and medical writers. It finally proved what aristotle had already surmised in that the womb was firmly anchored by ligaments (even though he found this out through the dissection of animals)
