Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece

Gynecology in ancient Greece originated in the myth of the first woman Pandora, whose beautiful appearance was seen to cover her dangerous insides. This book explores how Greek healers understood the interior workings of the female body, and how gynecology was based on ideas about women and their bodies found in myth and ritual. Helen King also presents a detailed account of how doctors twisted ancient Greek texts into ways of controlling women's behavior, and how later medicine diagnosed hysteria and recommended clitoridectomy by claiming ancient Greek origins which never existed. Hippocrates' Womanprovides a provocative insight into the origins of gynecology and the influence of the early study and medical texts on later medical practices.