Female Medicus?

[Hanna]

Have ennyone heard about a widdow efter a Medicus, there taken over her late housbounds job?.

Just woundering, if there is ennything on this it woud be fun to reenagting this. :whistle:

[Marja]

It is certainly possible. Audrey Cruse, in Roman Medicine discusses medicae on p. 194.

[Sean Manning]

There are a reasonable number of medicae in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. (See the Clauss-Slaby transcriptions with their false positives and transcription errors. Edit: I can't link to search results so here is the search page). I don't know if we know how any acquired their trade.

An interesting one is AE 2001, 00263:

C(aius) Naevius C(ai) l(ibertus) Phi[lippus] / medicus chirurg(us) / Naevia C(ai) l(iberta) Clara / medica philolog(a) / in fro(nte) ped(es) XI s(emissem) / in agr(o) ped(es) XVI

"C. Naevius Gaius' freedman Phillipus, doctor, surgeon. Naevia Gaius' freedman Clara, doctor, scholar. [This plot is] 11.5 feet wide and 16 feet deep."

[Kegluneq]

http://www.academia.edu/544146/Women_phy...ine_Empire

This looks like a pretty good resource for women physicians in the Roman world. I don't know of examples of female doctors in a military role, but there is the example of Paterna at Vindolanda, who brings the wife of the prefect some medical remedies - perhaps more of a pharmacist role if anything. Still, you do get an excuse to show off Roman eye salves etc. if you go with a role like that!

http://vto2.classics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/...ubmit=View

[Robert]

Hi Hanna, welcome to the forum. For my wife's Roman impression I have gathered some material on female surgeons and midwives. Much was kindly given to me by Medicus Matt, by the way. It is well known the midwife played an important role, so you could do a midwife impression, who also had a good number of implements, but it is less known by most that females were actually trained and did act as surgeons. She would not have needed to be the widow of a surgeon. There have been some recorded female graves found with tooth extractor (dental pliers), probes and scalpels.
Send me a PM with you email adress and I will send you some articles and pictures. For your kit, I would suggest getting Ernst Künzl's book "Medische Instrumente ... ", but I could also send you some info to get you started.

[Medusa Gladiatrix]

Andrea Rottloff states in her book "Lebenbilder Römischer Frauen" that there were quite some medicae, e.g.

Gravestone from Metz on display at Musées La Cour d'Or
Inscriptions mention the mediace: Pantheia from Pergamon, Domnina from Neoklaudiopolis, Antiochis from Tlos, Olympias from Thebes and Favilla from Libya
A cremation grave from Cologne dating 1st half of 3rd century
Aemilia Hilaria, the aunt of the writer Ausonius, who wrote the Mosella, is known to be a medica.

All these women were not slaves but free women.

Rottloff states the following literature:
D. Gourevitch, Le mal d'être femme. La femme et la médecine dans la Rome antique, Paris 1984.
E. Künzl, Medizinische Instrumente aus Sepulkralfunden der römischen Kaiserzeit, Bonner Jahrbücher 182, 1982.
E. Künzl/H. Engelmann, Römische Ärztinnen und Chirurginnen. Beitrag zu einem antiken Frauenberufsbild, Antike Welt 28/5, 1997.
D. Nickel, Berufsvorstellungen über weibliche Medizinalpersonen in der Antike, Klio 61, 1979.
A. Wilhelm, Ärzte und Ärztinnen in Pontos, Lykien und Ägypten, Jahresh. Österr. Ar4ch. Inst. Beiblatt 1932.

I hope that you could read French and/or German so that this will help you with further research. Unfortunately I can't give you any English literature on this topic :-(

[Hanna]

Thank you everyone, just the thing I wos loking for. Wel i just look the wrong places. I am from Danmark, read scandinavisk, engelsk and a tigny litle germany. But i wil look in to all the link. Thank you.

[Sean Manning]

I hope that you could read French and/or German so that this will help you with further research. Unfortunately I can't give you any English literature on this topic :-(

Lawrence Bliquez has published on medical instruments in English, but I only know his work from a lecture.

[Martin Moser]

Lawrence Bliquez has published on medical instruments in English, but I only know his work from a lecture.

That would probably be:
Lawrence J. Bliquez. Roman Surgical Instruments and Other Minor Objects in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. With a catalog of the surgical instruments in the "Antiquarium" at Pompeii, by Ralph Jackson. Mainz, Germany: von Zabern, 1994. xvi + 238 pp. Ill.

Cheers,
Martin