CLEOPATRA treated the diseases of women. ARTEMISIA, Queen of Caria, ISIS, CYBELE, LATONA, DIANA, PALLAS, ANGITA, MEDEA, CIRCE, POLYDAMNA, AGAMEDA, HELEN, ŒNONE, HIPPO, OCRYOE, EPIONE, ERIOPIS, HYGEIA, ÆGLE, PANACEA, JASO, ROME, and ACESO are the ladies of classic story who had more or less acquaintance with medicine for good or evil purposes. That women, subject to many disorders for which in any state of society their natural modesty would make it difficult for them to consult men, should become proficient in the treatment of complaints which are peculiar to their sex, is the most natural thing in the world, and it is probable that very much of our knowledge of the treatment of these cases may be due to feminine wisdom. An ancient law of the Athenians forbade women and slaves to exercise the art of medicine, so that even midwifery, which they considered a branch of it, could only be practised by men. Some Athenian ladies preferred to die rather than be attended by men in their confinements. Women acted as accoucheuses in Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and some of them in classic times wrote books on medicine. Ætius gives some fragments in his works from a doctress named ASPASIA. Although the Greek physicians did not know anything of the circulation of the blood as we understand it, they were not wholly ignorant of the phenomena of the vascular system. The arteries were so called by the ancients because they thought they contained air, as they were always found empty after death. Hippocrates and his contemporaries called the trachea an artery. Some of the ancient anatomists, however, knew that they contain blood, and they knew that when an artery is divided it is more dangerous and entails a longer recovery than the division of a vein. They knew also of the pulsation in the arteries which does not exist in the veins, and they were fully aware of the importance of this fact in its relation to diagnosis and treatment. “The ancients chiefly regarded the odd days, and called them critical (κρισίμοι), as if on these a judgment was to be formed concerning the patient. These days were the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first; so that the greatest influence was attributed to the seventh, next to the fourteenth, and then to the twenty-first. And therefore, with regard to the nourishment of the sick, they waited for the fits of the odd days; then afterwards they gave food, expecting the approaching fits to be easier; insomuch that Hippocrates, if the fever had ceased on any other day, used to be apprehensive of a relapse.”[426] These critical days were believed by Hippocrates and most of the other ancient physicians to be influenced by the moon.