Women's Bodies in Classical Greek Science

Presents scientific theories about the female body in Greece of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. It demonstrates the influence of cultural preconceptions on such theories and the reciprocal influence of scientific theories on cultural attitudes.

---

In this book Professor Dean-Jones gives a close analysis of theories concerning women's bodies in such authors as the Hippocratics and Aristotle. She demonstrates the centrality of menstruation in classical theories of female physiology, pathology, and reproduction, and suggests that this had both negative and positive repercussions in attitudes towards women's bodies in that society. In particular, she argues that many of the medical principles governing clinical practice on male patients derived from the observation that healthy women menstruate and women who are seriously ill tend not to.
Many of the primary sources dealt with are not yet accessible in English, and to date research done on this material has appeared only in discrete articles, in several languages, and scattered in various publications. In addition to presenting many original theories, therefore, the book is important in assembling and presenting both original texts and the results of scholarly research on these texts in a way that is fully accessible to the non-specialist.