Hippocrates

Paper Summary:

The paper examines the Hippocratic corpus, which consists of medical writings from Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. These many text were collected under the name of Hippocrates, a fifth-century physician from the island of Cos. The paper discusses how medical information about women varies considerably, showing that the articles were written by different individuals. For example, abortion is severely prohibited in one section and freely discussed in another. The materials discussed include "Diseases of Women 1 and 2" and "Nature of Women", which provide a good idea of how women were viewed in ancient Greece.

From the Paper:

"Hippocrates disagreed with Aristotle by saying that both men and women gave their seed for conception but also portrayed the female seed as weaker and less pure. He argued that seed came in two types--male seed produced characteristics of strength, courage and a "brilliant" soul and female seed produced traits of grace and delicacy. Hippocrates, in fact, defined three kinds of men and three kinds of women. If both parents secrete female seed, the child will be a beautiful and highly feminine girl; if the woman produces female seed and the man male seed and the female seed is stronger, the child will be a girl who is bolder, but still behaves within the bounds of modesty; and if the man produces female seed and the woman male seed, and the female seed dominates, then the child will be female but masculine."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Aristotle, Generation of Animals, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943
• Helen King. Hippocrates' Woman. New York: Routledge, 1998.
• M Alec., Hypatia's Heritage. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.
• Nancy Demand. Birth, Death and Motherhood in Classical Greece. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University.

More papers on Hippocrates:

• Essay # 33513 : "The Legacy of Hippocrates"
• Analytical Essay # 443 : "History of Greek Mathematicians"
• Essay # 25448 : "Medical Theory in the Ancient World"

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