#this was oroginally meant to be a quick edit and them k stsrted reading a paper

[nonexistent-triangle]

from the link provided

please actually read the things linked when someone claims to provide a source. there of course is some debate and there exist some arguments towards the historicity of agnodice but like. if you're gonna do thwt atleast link something that agrees with your thesis please.

ultimately claiming fictional stories about women are real is not good for anyone involved. not only does it say something untrue it also ends up covering up the real stories of women from the period, i mean.

the article says as much. id love to learn more about those, and im sure you would too, so lets look at the source that wikipedia cites for this claim.

ideally you should just read the article but for those that cant ill summarise a bit with relevant screenshots like this one below.

in general, women practicing medicine in the ancient world tend to fall into four categories medica/iatrinē or obstetrix/maia. the medica (im just going to use the one title not say both over and over again) seem to be more general physicians, whereas the obstetrix seem to have been moreso midwifes. there is some crosspolination between these two, theres some references to iatromaeae, a hybrid category.

a lot of our evidence of women practicing medicine actually comes from epitaphs. while we have some preserved writing by women, the authenticity of some of it is questioned due to being written under atypical names that greek/roman women didnt generally seem to have (these couldve been pseudonyms but then its unclear who actually wrote under those pseudonyms)

a lot of women, but not all, were also illiterate at that time, which would make it even harder to trace them in the written record. certainly women did practice medicine in ancient greece, although in smaller numbers than men, their expertise was valued. a lot of the evidence we have of women in medicine from that time comes from citations! here's a recipie for an ungent, from Aquilla Secundilla who actually gets cited multiple times in Galen's Compund Pharmaka.

Shes not the only woman cited, we also see someone called Antiochis of Tios, who might have gotten cited across multiple works by various authors, and even has a medical treatise dedicated to her! (there is some debate the separate references to Antiochis are all to the same person however it seems plausible based on how the things line up)

we also have some evidence that women wrote some whole medical treatises, in particular people cite things about cosmetic medicine written by Cleopatra, as in the ptolemic queen. this is probably not who actually wrote it but considering that male authors didnt seemingly have a problem with writing about topics like that under their own names, and generally when under a pseudonym itd usually match the gender of its bearer there is some possiblility that a woman wrote the texts.

to summarise! women did medicine and stuff for a while in the ancient world! we dont need to say fictional stories are real when there were actual women working in the field that we can talk about! sure its not as flashy as the mythological atory but its still interesting

my fave greek history story to tell is that of agnodice. like she noticed that women were dying a lot during childbirth so she went to egypt to study medicine in alexandria and was really fucking good but b/c it was illegal for women to be doctors in athens she had to pretend to be a man. and then the other doctors noticed that she was 10x better than them and accused her of seducing and sleeping with the women patients. like they brought her to court for this. and she just looked at them and these charges and stripped in front of everyone like “yeah. im not fucking your wives” and then they got so mad that a woman was better at their jobs then them that they tried to execute her but all her patients came to court and were like “are you fucking serious? she is the reason you have living children and a wife.” so they were shamed into changing the law and that is how women were given the right to practice medicine in athens