Unit 2: Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Medicine - CLAS 3239 | Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities - Brooklyn College Library LibGuides Home at Brooklyn College Library

About Gender and Sexuality

These texts explore and reflect Greek and Roman ideas about gender, sexuality, sexual reproduction, obstetrics, gynecology, and the like. They include sources written from medical and scientific perspectives (e.g. works attributed to Hippocrates and Aristotle), poetic tragedies, epic poems like Lucretius' epic poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), papyrological evidence such as contracts for wet nurses and female caregivers, and more.

Diotima: Medicine and Anatomy
Lefkowitz and Fant, the authors of Women's Life in Greece and Rome, have published portions of their collection of primary source texts on the website Diotima. This collection features comments on medicine from the Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle, Soranus, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Galen, et al.

Women's Life in Greece and Rome: Medicine and Anatomy Chapter: Part 1
Women's Life in Greece and Rome: Medicine and Anatomy Chapter: Part 1: Lefkowitz and Fant, 3rd. ed.
Women's Life in Greece and Rome: Medicine and Anatomy Chapter: Part 2
Women's Life in Greece and Rome: Medicine and Anatomy Chapter: Part 2: Lefkowitz and Fant, 3rd. ed.

Lefkowitz: The Wandering Womb

Lefkowitz - The Wandering Womb
Sections from the book 'Heroines and Hysterics' (1981) by scholar Mary R. Lefkowitz, in which she discusses beliefs about 'the wandering womb' in ancient Greece.

Seneca's Phaedra

Seneca's Phaedra
Excerpts from a mythological tragedy, written by the Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca, that deals with extreme desire (Amor) and its associated mental and physical symptoms. Seneca, the tutor of the Roman emperor Nero, portrays Amor as a form of Insania, or mental illness. This is one particularly vivid example of the connection between erotic desire and madness, a phenomenon which is explored in various genres of Greek and Latin literature.

Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Lucretius' De Rerum Natura: Selections
Selections of Lucretius' famed scientific poem, in particular his views on sexual attraction and reproduction.

CLAS 3239 | Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities: Unit 2: Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Medicine

About Gender and Sexuality

Women's Life in Greece and Rome

Lefkowitz: The Wandering Womb

Seneca's Phaedra

Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)