Note 8 — I. Medicine as a Profession for Women. REPRINTED, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, FROM “WOMAN’S WORK AND WOMAN’S CULTURE.”

I subjoin as a curiosity the quaint version of this story that is given in a letter from Mrs Celleor (a fashionable midwife of the reign of James II.), published in 1687, and now to be found in the British Museum. After saying that “Among the subtile Athenians a law at one time forbade women to study or practise medicine or physick on pain of death, which law continued some time, during which many women perished, both in child-bearing and by private diseases, their modesty not permitting them to admit of men either to deliver or cure them,” she continues, “Till God stirred up the spirit of Agnodice, a noble maid, to pity the miserable condition of her own sex, and hazard her life to help them; which to enable herself to do, she apparelled her like a man, and became the scholar of Hierophilos, the most learned physician of the time; and having learned the art, she found out a woman that had long languished under private diseases, and made proffer of her service to cure her, which the sick person refused, thinking her to be a man; but, when Agnodice discovered that she was a maid, the woman committed herself into her hands, who cured her perfectly; and after her many others, with the like skill and industry, so that in a short time she became the successful and beloved physician of the whole sex.” When her sex became known to the public, “she was like to be condemned to death for transgressing the law ... which, coming to the ears of the noble women, they ran before the Areopagites, and the house being encompassed by most women of the city, the ladies entered before the judges, and told them they would no longer account them for husbands and friends, but for cruel enemies that condemned her to death who restored to them their health, protesting they would all die with her if she were put to death.... This caused the magistrates to disannul the law, and make another, which gave gentlewomen leave to study and practise all parts of physick to their own sex, giving large stipends to those that did it well and carefully. And there were many noble women who studied that practice, and taught it publicly in their schools as long as Athens flourished in learning.”