Women in Medicine: Past, Present, & Future Ryleigh S
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Honors Theses University Honors Program May 2015 Women in Medicine: Past, Present, & Future Ryleigh S. Livingston Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/uhp_theses I would like to thank Dr. Yeomans and La'Mayah Hodges for all of their help and encouragement during this project and my parents for all of the love and support they've given me, especially during these last four years. Recommended Citation Livingston, Ryleigh S., "Women in Medicine: Past, Present, & Future" (2015). Honors Theses. Paper 390. This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the University Honors Program at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Running head: WOMEN IN MEDICINE 1 WOMEN IN MEDICINE: PAST, PRESENT, & FUTURE Ryleigh S. Livingston A thesis submitted to the University Honors Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors Diploma Southern Illinois University Carbondale 13 May 2015 WOMEN IN MEDICINE 2 Since the beginning of human existence, women have been the healers, the caretakers, and the midwives in civilized society. Evolutionary psychology tells us that women have adapted to fit this role through natural selection, that we are somehow predestined to be caring and nurturing and to ensure the health of our families and communities. We are the mothers and the healers, expected to take on both the physical and mental healthcare of the people around us, yet we have only recently cracked through the glass ceiling separating us from mainstream acceptance into Western medical schools and the field of Western medicine. Western medicine has been widely dominated by men since ancient Greece; in the Middle Ages, this was intensified by the witch trials in which women healers and midwives were persecuted for practicing medicine, and the folk healing traditions in northern Europe were almost completely eradicated from written history. Despite this, however, women have been seen to be both numerous and significant in healing and healthcare throughout history. In this paper, I trace women and their role in medicine throughout history, with discussion mainly focusing on Western medicine, but Eastern traditions in medicine are also briefly examined. Literature Review To begin our journey around the world and through time to examine women’s role in medicine, let us first look at ancient Egypt. It is here that we find where “medicine probably started” (Serageldin, 2013, p. 1). Serageldin (2013) goes on to discuss Imhotep, whose name was recorded not for his conquests, but for his contributions to knowledge and science more than 5,000 years ago (p. 1). He was an advisor to Pharaoh Zoser, an engineer who built the stepped pyramid of Saqqara (a “precursor” for pyramids to come), and a physician who started the “first true medical revolution”: that disease was to be handled by observation, diagnosis, and WOMEN IN MEDICINE 3 treatment rather than by “magic” (p. 1). According to Serageldin (2013), “Egyptians would later deify [Imhotep] as the god of medicine” (p. 1). There are two surviving documents from this time, the Edwin Smith papyrus and the Ebers papyrus, that demonstrate knowledge of anatomy (notably the first record of cranial sutures, the meninges of the brain, the external surface of the brain, and cerebrospinal fluid) and mental disorders such as depression and dementia (Serageldin, 2013, p. 2). The Ebers papyrus also documents the use of contraception, the diagnosis of pregnancy and other gynecological care, intestinal disease, eye and skin problems, and the surgical treatment of tumors, abscesses, bone-setting, and burns (Serageldin, 2013, p. 2). Around 2700 BCE, Merit Ptah was an early physician who has noted as the first woman to be known by name in the field of medicine, and possibly the first named woman in the field of science. As Egypt was slowly declining and eventually conquered by the Persians in 525 BCE, Greece was an already established civilization that soon took over the “torch of knowledge” and began its golden period that is still overwhelmingly discussed and admired today (Serageldin, 2013, p. 3). It is during the age of Pericles and through Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 BCE – c. 370 BCE) that medicine was established as an independent field completely separate from both “magic” and the other sciences. Women were originally forbidden from practicing medicine, but in late fourth century BCE Athens, the physician Agnodike was “put on trial for pretending to be a man in order to practice medicine.” Her female patients, who were mostly the wives of important men, saved her from punishment and eventually had the law repealed (Serageldin, 2013, p. 4). Hippocrates, who is known formally as the “Father of Western Medicine,” was indeed one of biggest historical contributors to the field of medicine. According to Serageldin (2013), it WOMEN IN MEDICINE 4 is true that Hippocrates helped to establish the nature of disease in that it was not caused by “superstition and gods” but rather it was a “product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits”; the Hippocratic Corpus contains no mentions of any illnesses or cures due to “mystical” factors (p. 4). However, Hippocrates did work with information that has now been found to be based on incorrect anatomy and physiology, notably his theory of the four humors of the human body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Another known female physician around 200 – 400 CE was Metrodora, who is credited with authoring the oldest medical text written by a woman, On the Diseases and Cures of Women , which survives in two volumes, totaling 63 chapters. She followed Hippocrates and his Hippocratic Corpus, as did many physicians in her time. She practiced in many different medical specialties, including gynecology, which that and obstetrics were considered acceptable fields for the women who were able to be medically trained at that time, mostly due to the tradition of midwifery that was dominated by women. Metrodora did not focus on obstetrics or surgery in her treatise, for surgery was not typically practiced in ancient Greece or Rome, but rather on pathology, while another female physician, Aspasia, did cover gynecological surgery, including abortion, in her writing. However, it can be assumed that Metrodora was greatly experienced in clinical practice, as she detailed how she conducted her examinations both digitally (using only her finger) and with a speculum and displayed a vast knowledge of physiology, which she used to classify vaginal discharges and rectal parasitic infections, and it is also said that she was the first to create an alphabetized medical encyclopedia. Sometime between Greece’s decline and Rome’s mighty rise to power, the field of medicine was dominated by the great city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great 2,300 years ago, and at its center was the ancient Library of Alexandria, which would become the WOMEN IN MEDICINE 5 zenith of learning (Serageldin, 2013, p. 6). In the third century BCE, a medical school opened in Alexandria, and although it was mostly influenced by Greek medicine and followed Hippocratic teachings, it was also largely influenced by ancient Egyptian medicine. Because it was possible to dissect the human body at this time, anatomy because increasingly advanced, and there were many famous physicians to graduate from Alexandria’s medical school (Serageldin, 2013, p. 8). Galen, the famous Roman physician, studied in Alexandria, and his teachings survived well into the 16 th century and helped to shape the modern medical practices of the Renaissance. After the great fire of 391 CE that destroyed the great Library of Alexandria, almost no record of Alexandrian medicine survived, except what was conserved by Christian monks and Arab and Jewish scholars of the middle ages, which was mostly the work of Galen (Serageldin, 2013, p. 8). Galen, then, once he moved from Alexandria to Rome, signaled the end of Hellenistic medicine and the beginning of Imperial medicine. Galen was a successful physician, researcher, writer, and lecturer during this time, writing no less than 500 treatises and serving as physician to three Roman emperors: Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Septimus Severus (Serageldin, 2013, p. 11). His death marked the end of that particular history of medicine, Rome’s power was declining, and the Dark Ages were setting it, which allowed the Arabs and Muslims to “carry the torch of science and learning” until the beginning of the European Renaissance in the 16 th and 17 th century (Serageldin, 2013, p. 14). From ancient Egypt, Greece, Alexandria, and Rome, we move to medieval medicine, both in Europe and in Islamic world. In the Middle Ages, convents were significant in their education of women, and some even provided opportunities for scholarly research; one well- known female physician from this time was the German abbess Hildegard von Bingen, who wrote extensively in natural history, botany, and medicine and is considered Germany’s first WOMEN IN MEDICINE 6 female physician. She suggested that disease in the human body was a result of an imbalance in a person’s life, while balance resulted in health; her writings have come to be known as “Hildegard Medicine” (HM), which has been associated with the contemporary and alternative medicine (CAM) of the medical field today (Micke, 2011, p. 150). Though Hildegard has been considered a saint by branches of the Roman Catholic Church for centuries, she was formally named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Her medicinal writings, though thematically complementary to her beliefs about nature in her visionary works, were founded on experiences in the monastery’s herbal garden and infirmary rather than on her “visionary experience” and its divine authority.