WOMEN HEALERS

Midwives, Physicians, and Folk Healers


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If Galen wrote little about women, it is in part because the majority of female patients would have been treated primarily by women healers. Most women received medical care from other women. We know about the activities of female providers—midwives, physicians, and folk healers—only indirectly. Women were involved in a range of medical practices, but none penned treatises that have survived or had prestigious careers that were documented in the literature beyond a passing reference. Nor did female patients record details of the treatments they received. Today much of what we know about ancient midwives and female physicians comes from funerary inscriptions or from accounts written by male medical authors such as Galen and the second-century physician Soranus of Ephesus.

A horizontal gray slab with six lines of text. The text is partially damaged on the left side due to a break in the marble.

Plaque inscribed “[Dis] Manibus / [Crescen] ti a frumento / [minist] ratorum Aug(usti) / [Anonyma] Caesaris medica / [ex familia c]astrensi coniugi / [optimo f]ecit et sibi posterisque suis (To the divine spirits of [Crescentius], attendant on the imperial food supply, [Anonyma], (freedwoman) of Caesar, physician of the imperial household, made (this) for her excellent husband and herself and their descendants).” Roman, 1st or 2nd century CE. Marble. Photo: Zoe Perkins Collection, Rutgers University.

Historians note that the paucity of documentation is not unique to the story of female care providers; except for the most elite practitioners, the activities of most ancient male physicians also went unrecorded. But sexism was a factor too. 

Extant evidence makes it clear that women did practice medicine in the ancient world, yet these same sources raise questions about the type of care female providers delivered. The terms for “midwife” and “female physician”—obstetrix and medica (and their Greek equivalents maia and iatrinē)—seem to have overlapping and imprecise meanings.

Brownish stone niche containing a high-relief sculpture of a robed female figure. A line of text is inscribed above the niche and painted red.

Stela for a female doctor, inscribed “[---]S A[-----]/ini fil(ia) medica ([Name unknown], daughter of A[---]inus, physician).” Roman, 1st–3rd century CE. Metz, Église Sainte-Ségolène, France. H. 111 cm; L. 63 cm. Musée de La Cour d’Or Metz Métropole: 2012.0.52. Photo: © Laurianne Kieffer / Musée de La Cour d’Or, Metz Métropole.

Some midwives may have treated women beyond pregnancy and childbirth, while a few female physicians may have also cared for male patients. An inscription dedicated to the first-century-BCE female healer Antiochis of Tlos (herself the daughter of a doctor) by the citizens of that city, alongside a now-lost statue, suggests a position of greater esteem and prominence than a plaque inscribed to the midwife Flavia Sabina dedicated by her husband. Honored or humble, female healers operated on a different wavelength from male physicians.

A gray square inscribed with six lines of text. There is a diagonal crack from the bottom middle to the right. The bottom of the square is broken and rough.

Plaque inscribed “HYGIAE FLAVIAE SABINAE OPSTETRVIXIT ANN XXX MARIVS ORTHRVS ET APOLLONVS CONTUBERANLI CARISSIAMAE” [To Hygiae, Flavia Sabina, midwife, lived 30 years; Marius Orthus and Apollonius dedicated this to his dearest wife]. Roman, second half of 2nd century CE. Sepulcher R of Porta Maggiore, near the Statilii columbarium, Rome. H. 35 cm; W. 37 cm. CIL 6.6647. Photo: Zoe Perkins Collection, Rutgers University.

When Galen describes the midwives whom he encounters in his practice, the competitiveness and hostility typically unleashed on his male rivals is wholly absent. In fact, Galen even presented his theoretical treatise on the anatomy of the womb to a midwife, a rare example of a text with a female readership in mind. We know that Galen worked with female care providers in a hands-on way as well: when describing the midwives assisting with Boetheus’s wife, he even praised them as “the best in the city” and wrote of the lead provider, “I knew her to be very good.” While male doctors were in the majority and women were limited in their practice, female healers were an essential part of the ancient medical world.

A greenish-yellow scissor-like tool on a black background.

Modern replica of a vaginal speculum from the House of the Surgeon, Pompeii. Original 1st century CE, before 79 CE. Bronze. L. 29.8 cm. Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia: artifacts00165. Photo: Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

Galen’s favorable words about midwives and his engagement with them in cases notwithstanding, women healers were considered subordinate to male physicians (perhaps the very reason for the doctor’s lack of hostility since he did not consider them to actually be his peers). In the tale of Boethus’s wife, despite her excellent midwives, Galen ultimately takes charge. Soranus, author of Gynecology, also explains that while a midwife may oversee a birth, she should do so under the supervision of a doctor, who should take over the moment a complication arises. And, despite the occasional textual or epigraphic clue that a rare female healer may have conducted an expanded medical practice, most women practitioners cared only for other women.