EARLY PRACTICE OF MEDICINE BY WOMEN. 193 



her before the Areopagus, and accused her of abusing her trusts in 

 dealing with female patients. To establish her innocence, Agnodice 

 disclosed her sex, and her persecutors then accused her of violating 

 the law prohibiting women and slaves from studying medicine, but the 

 wives of the most influential Athenians arose in her defense and even- 

 tually obtained a revocation of the law. 



The laws and customs of the Romans, as well as of the Greeks, 

 were antagonistic to the entrance of women into the medical profes- 

 sion, yet Galen, Pliny, and others have preserved the names of a few 

 distinguished in the art of healing : Phpenarete, the mother of Socrates, 

 Olympia of Thebes, Salpe, Sotira, Elephantis, Favilla, Aspasia, and 

 Cleopatra. Of these, details are generally wanting. Scribonius Largus 

 writes of an " honest matron " who cured several epileptic patients by 

 an absurd remedy, and mentions having purchased of a woman a 

 prescription for the cure of colic, the composition of which she had 

 learned in Africa. Why Aspasia appears iu this connection is not 

 perfectly clear ; the talented wife of Pericles, renowned as " a model 

 of female loveliness," was doubtless too involved in affairs of state to 

 undertake the absorbing cares of the medical profession. Cleopatra, 

 the accomplished and luxurious Queen of Egypt, of whom so many 

 marvels are related, is named among those women possessed of medi- 

 cal skill ; she is rej)orted to have compounded cosmetics and to have 

 written on the art of preserving beauty, but this statement is probably 

 no more worthy of credence than that of the infatuated alchemists of 

 the middle ages, who would persuade us that Cleopatra was the for- 

 tunate possessor of the philosopher's stone and of the universal sol- 

 vent. In proof of the former statement, they point to her personal at- 

 tractions, unchanged by increasing years, and to her immense wealth ; 

 in proof of the latter, they rely with confidence on the well-known 

 fable of the solution of the costly pearl at the extravagant banquet to 

 Marc Antony. 



In a Roman lady named Fabiola we find an early pi-edecessor of 

 Florence Nightingale. She was of the illustrious house of Fabius, and 

 was celebrated in the fourth century for piety and charity. She is to 

 be held in grateful remembrance as the founder of hospitals in Italy, 

 and she is said to have personally nui'sed the sick at Ostia. The 

 establishment of hospitals is commonly credited to the Emperor Julian, 

 362 A. D., with whom Fabiola was contemporary ; perhaps she took an 

 active part in the humane movement, and held a position analogous to 

 that of lady manager in modern times.* 



Half a century later lived a woman justly distinguished for com- 

 bining in one person a high degree of female loveliness, womanly vir- 

 tue, and intellectual strength : though not occupied with the art of 



* Celsus, who wrote in the reign of Augustus (a. d. 1), mentions large hospitals where 

 patients were treated with specific medicines. (Milligan's Ed., p. 14.) Seneca also refers 

 to them as " valetudinaria." 

 VOI-. XVIII. 13 



