Books 2009: the diseases of women
Sep. 23rd, 2009 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks 2009: 77
non-fiction
77. Soranus, Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin, Johns Hopkins, 1956.
Soranus was a Greek physician who worked in the Roman world shortly before Galen. Most of his work, when it survives, does so only as paraphrases and quotations by other authors.
The Gynaecologia deals with the diseases of women, the things according to nature and the things against nature. It's divided into "On the midwife" and "On the things with which the midwife is faced", and it's an interesting look into the mind of an ancient physician.
If you read it, be prepared to be horrified at the bleeding, and the cupping, and the purging, and the use of hellebore in the more extreme of the "metasyncretic" treatment. And the dismembering infants during labour if there's no other way to get them out.
On the other hand, considering his handicaps and his philosophy, what's almost more surprising is that at times Soranus actually makes sense. Which just goes to show, I guess.
In other news, I remain miserable sick. Alien spores, wheezing, the works. It's very inconvenient.
non-fiction
77. Soranus, Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin, Johns Hopkins, 1956.
Soranus was a Greek physician who worked in the Roman world shortly before Galen. Most of his work, when it survives, does so only as paraphrases and quotations by other authors.
The Gynaecologia deals with the diseases of women, the things according to nature and the things against nature. It's divided into "On the midwife" and "On the things with which the midwife is faced", and it's an interesting look into the mind of an ancient physician.
If you read it, be prepared to be horrified at the bleeding, and the cupping, and the purging, and the use of hellebore in the more extreme of the "metasyncretic" treatment. And the dismembering infants during labour if there's no other way to get them out.
On the other hand, considering his handicaps and his philosophy, what's almost more surprising is that at times Soranus actually makes sense. Which just goes to show, I guess.
In other news, I remain miserable sick. Alien spores, wheezing, the works. It's very inconvenient.
