Born: 400 BC, Greece
Died: 360 BC
Country most active: Greece
Also known as: Agnodike
Agnodice is believed to be the first female midwife or physician in ancient Athens, according to the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus in his Fabulae. There is debate over whether Agdonice was a real person, but her story has been used as a precedent for women practising medicine, or as an argument against it.
Describing her as an obstetrix, Hyginus writes that Agnodice studied medicine under Herophilus, and worked as a physician in her home city of Athens disguised as a man, because women were forbidden from practising medicine. Having trained as a physician, Agnodice tried to help women in labour, who were ashamed of consulting male physicians and/or refused to do so at all. In one case, Agnodice revealed her sex to her patient and was allowed to treat the woman. As her popularity with female patients increased, jealous rival physicians accused her of seducing the women of Athens. She was tried, and lifted her tunic to reveal her sex to the jury (a gesture known in ancient Greek as anasyrma). Accused of illegally practising medicine as a woman, the women of Athens defended her, praising her for her effective treatments. She was acquitted, and the law against female physicians in Athens was revoked.
Hyginus states that Agnodice was taught medicine by “a certain Herophilus” – generally assumed to be Herophilus of Chalcedon, an ancient physician known for his work on gynaecology who was credited with the discovery of the ovaries. One reason people believe Agnodice was not a real person is the lack of midwives in Athens before her. While it is possible there were no midwives prior to Agnodice – certainly feasible if women were not allowed to practice medicine – it has been proposed that there were earlier midwives but they had been forbidden by law from practising. Obstetrician Kate Hurd-Mead was the first to propose this theory in 1938, suggesting that women may have been forbidden from practising medicine because they had been accused of performing abortions.