268 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



In this favored cradle of civilization, to which Greece owed 

 so much of its knowledge and culture, there were many 

 women who, like Polydamna, achieved distinction in the 

 healing art, and many, too, we have reason to think, who 

 communicated their knowledge to their sisters in the fair 

 land of Hellas. 



But not only were there in Greece women physicians like 

 Agamede, who were noted for their general medicinal 

 knowledge and practice, but there were also others who 

 made a specialty of treating ailments peculiar to their own 

 sex. This we learn from a passage in the Hippolytus of 

 Euripides, wherein the nurse of Phaedra addressed the 

 suffering queen in the following words: 



"If under pains 



Thou labor, such as may not be revealed, 

 To succor thee thy female friends are here. 

 But if the other sex may know thy sufferings 

 Let the physician try his healing art." 



More positive information, however, is afforded us by 

 the ancient Roman author Hyginus, who, in writing of the 

 Greek maiden, Agnodice, tells us how the medical profes- 

 sion was legalized for all the free-born women of Athens. 

 Instead of a literal translation of Hyginus, the version of 

 his story is given in the quaint language of one Mrs. Cel- 

 leor, a noted midwife in the reign of James II. 



' ' Among the subtile Athenians, ' ' writes Mrs. Celleor, ' ' a 

 law at one time forbade women to study or practice medi- 

 cine or physick on pain of death, which law continued 

 some time, during which many women perished, both in 

 child-bearing and by private diseases, their modesty not 

 permitting them to admit of men either to deliver or cure 

 them. But God finally stirred up the spirit of Agnodice, a 

 noble maid, to pity the miserable condition of her own sex, 

 and hazard her life to help them ; which, to enable herself 

 to do, she apparelled her like a man and became the scholar 



