Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

The word medica, which occurs in Latin authors of the classical period, testifies to the existence of the woman doctor as early as the age of Augustus.

But the most important documents bearing on women physicians, not only in the city of Rome but also in Italy, Gaul and the Iberian peninsula, are the large body of epigraphic monuments which have recently been brought to light, and which prove beyond all doubt that women were not only obstetricians, but that they were successful practitioners in the entire field of medical art. Thus a funeral tablet found in Portugal tells of a woman who was a most excellent physician—medica optima—while another describes the deceased not only as a woman incomparable for her virtues, but also as a mistress of medical science, antistes disciplinæ in medicina fuit.

The Greek word for medica—iatromaia—occasionally found in some of the inscriptions, seems to refer specially to women of Greek origin or birth. This is particularly true of a monument erected to one Valiæ, who is designated as Kalista iatromaia—the best doctor.[184]

Among the many women who became converts to Christianity during the early ages of the church a goodly number were physicians. Unfortunately, our information respecting these votaries of the healing art is not as complete as we could wish. One of the most noted of them is St. Theodosia, whose name is given in the Roman martyrology for the twenty-ninth of May. She was the mother of the martyr, St. Procopius, and was distinguished for her knowledge of medicine and surgery, both of which she practiced in Rome with the most signal success. She died a heroic death by the sword during the persecution of Diocletian.

Another woman who was as eminent for her knowledge of medicine as for her holiness of life was St. Nicerata, who lived in Constantinople during the reign of the emperor Arcadius. She is said to have cured St. John Chrysostom of an affection of the stomach from which he was a sufferer.

To the Roman lady Fabiola, remarkable as the daughter of one of the most illustrious patrician families of Rome, but more remarkable for her sanctity and her boundless charity toward the poor, was due the erection of the first hospital—a noble structure which she founded in Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, which was then the port of entry to the capital of the Roman empire. Here the noble matron received the poor and suffering from all parts, and did everything in her power to afford them succor in their wants and infirmities.

It is difficult for us now, when hospitals and charitable institutions of all kinds are so common, to understand what an innovation Fabiola's unheard-of institution was considered by her contemporaries. For her method of treating the needy and the suffering was as different from that which had hitherto obtained as were the debasing lessons of heathendom from the elevating precepts of the Gospels.

No wonder that the news of this godlike work was soon wafted to the uttermost bounds of the earth; that, in the words of St. Jerome, "summer should announce in Britain what Egypt and Parthia had learned in the spring." No wonder that the same eloquent hermit of Bethlehem should proclaim the foundress of this home of the indigent and the afflicted to be "the glory of the church, the astonishment of the Gentiles, the mother of the poor and the consolation of the saints." No wonder that, in contemplating her countless acts of charity, he should ignore the fact that Fabiola was a daughter of the Fabii and a descendant of the renowned Quintus Maximus, who, by his sage counsel, had saved his country from her enemies, and that, recalling the words of Virgil, he should declare: "If I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths and iron lungs, I should not be able to enumerate all the maladies to which Fabiola gave the most prodigal care and tenderness—to the extent even of making the poor who were in health envy the good fortune of those who were sick."[185] No wonder that Fabiola's funeral, which brought together the whole of Rome, was more like an apotheosis than the transfer of the remains of the deceased to their last resting-place, and that Jerome should declare, "the glory of Furius and Papirius and Scipio and Pompey, when they triumphed over the Gauls, the Sammites, Numantia and Pontus" was less than that which was spontaneously accorded to Fabiola, the solace of the sick and the comforter of the distressed. For she had in her hospital at Ostia established a type of institution that was to effect more for ameliorating the condition of suffering humanity than anything that had before been dreamed of; something that was to contribute immensely to the efforts of physicians and surgeons in minimizing the sad ravages of wounds and disease; something whose beneficent effects were to be felt through the centuries and in every part of the world down to the wards of the military hospital at Scutari, guarded by the watchful eyes of Florence Nightingale, and to the leper-tenanted lazarettos, blessed by the ministrations of Father Damien and the Sisters of Charity, on the desolate shores of plague-stricken Molokai.

After the fall of the Roman empire and through the long period of the Middle Ages, when the monasteries and convents were almost the only centers of learning and culture for the greater part of Europe, the practice of medicine was to a great extent in the hands of monks and nuns. For every religious house was then a hospital as well as a school, a place where drugs and ointments were compounded and distributed, as well as a place where manuscripts were transcribed and illuminated. At a time when there were but few professional physicians and when these few were widely separated from one another, the only places where the poor could always be sure to find free medical treatment as well as abundant alms were those sanctuaries of knowledge and charity where the love of one's neighbor was never lost sight of in the love of science and literature. And during this time, too, the care of the sick was regarded as a duty incumbent on everyone, but particularly on those devoted to the service of God in religion. It was considered, above all, as a duty devolving on women, especially on the lady in the castle and on the nun in the convent.

The old romance of Sir Isumbras gives us a charming picture of the nuns of long ago receiving the wounded knight and ministering unto him until he was made whole and strong, as witness the following verses: