The McKinsey Institute says that health outcomes for women are less successful than those for men, and it has been argued that men should take a greater interest in the problem. We have names of about 50 female doctors from the ancient world, and one wonders what they made of the male theorists’ views of their bodies.
Health in the ancient world was understood to depend upon the balance of the four ‘humours’ (liquids) inside the body: yellow bile (vomit), black bile (from the spleen and liver), phlegm and blood. Having no idea what the purpose of menstruation was, doctors argued that women’s soft and spongy bodies tended to corrupt their blood, which the body very sensibly expelled every month. But it was retained during pregnancy, because (as Aristotle thought) it provided the raw material for life. When male seed entered the womb, it acted, as he said, rather like rennet on milk: it coagulated it and turned it into the material from which the foetus was constructed, and into breast milk.
But what if a woman remained sexually abstinent? That could cause the womb to dry up, become restless and start hunting around in the body for moisture, interfering with other organs and often making the woman hysterical (ancient Greek hustera, ‘womb’). The doctor Soranus thought it was best dealt with by treating the body with tender, loving care: hot baths, massages, and suitable exercises.
According to one ancient Greek doctor the result, without some form of treatment, could be very serious indeed: ‘The woman rages, becomes murderous, wants to throttle herself and throw herself down a well, and loves death as some kind of good. I urge young women suffering from a condition of this kind to cohabit with men as soon as they can: for if they become pregnant, they recover.’ In 1682 Thomas Sydenham showed that this was a nervous disorder, connected with the brain not the womb, to which men could also be subject.
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