Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
The Romans imitated the Greeks so faithfully--one might almost say
copied them so closely--that it is not surprising to find a number of
Roman women physicians. The first mention of them comes from Scribonius
Largus, in the first century after Christ. Octavius Horatianus, whom
most of us know better as Priscian, dedicated one of his books on
medicine to a woman physician named Victoria. The dedication leaves no
doubt that she was a woman in active practice, at least in women's
diseases, and it is a book on this subject that Priscian dedicates to
her. He mentions another woman physician, Leoparda. The word _medica_
for a woman physician was very commonly used at Rome. Martial, whose
epigrams have been a source of so much information in medical history,
especially on subjects with regard to which information was scanty,
mentions a _medica_ in an epigram. Apuleius also uses the word. There
are a number of inscriptions in which women physicians are mentioned.
Among the Christians we find women physicians, and Theodosia, the mother
of St. Procopius, the martyr, is said to have been very successful in
the practice of both medicine and surgery. She is numbered among the
martyrs, and occurs in the Roman Martyrology on the 29th of May. Father
Bzowski, the Polish Jesuit, who compiled "Nomenclatura Sanctorum
Professione Medicorum" (Rome, 1621; the book is usually catalogued under
the Latin form of his name, Bzovius), has among his list of saints who
were physicians by profession a woman, St. Nicerata, who lived at
Constantinople in the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, and who is said to
have cured St. John Chrysostom of a serious disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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