1881.] Early Practice of Medicine by Women. 59 
The writings of Homer have been examined to ascertain his 
testimony, but, with the exception of slight reference to 
woman’s part in nursing wounded warriors, he contributes 
nothing to the subject under consideration. 
The learned among the Celts, the Druids, were at the 
same time judges, legislators, priests, and physicians. By 
persuading the people that they maintained intimate rela- 
tions with the gods, they succeeded in imposing their 
authority on the ignorant masses. “ Their wives, who were 
called Alraunes , exercised the calling of sorceresses, causing 
considerable evil by their witchcraft, but caring for warriors 
wounded in battle. They gathered those plants to which 
they attributed magic virtues, and they unravelled dreams.” 
( Dunglison.) 
The first female practitioner who received a medical edu- 
cation appears to be Agnodice, a young Athenian woman 
who lived about 300 b.c. To satisfy her desire for know- 
ledge she disguised herself in male attire, and, braving the 
fatal results of detection, dared to attend the schools of 
medicine forbidden to her sex. Among her instructors was 
numbered Herophilus, the greatest anatomist of antiquity, 
and the first who dissected human subjects. After com- 
pleting her studies, Agnodice preserved her disguise and 
practised her chosen calling in the Grecian capital with 
great success, giving particular attention to the diseases of 
her own sex. The physicians of Athens, becoming jealous 
of Agnodice’s great reputation and lucrative practice, sum- 
moned 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 defence, and eventu- 
ally 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 profession, yet Galen, Pliny, and others have pre- 
served the names of a few distinguished in the art of healing : 
— Phsenarete, 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 pur- 
chased of a woman a prescription for the cure of cholic, the 
composition of which she had learned in Africa. Why 
Aspasia appears in this connection is not perfectly clear ; 
F 3 
