How Were Tears Repaired In Childbirth In Ancient Times
As one might expect, childbirth in the aboriginal earth was extremely dangerous. This was due partially to a lack of understanding about the female body, leading to societal assumptions about pregnancy and childbirth, besides every bit the utilize of potentially unsafe herbs.
The Hippocratic writings
A big portion of the written sources most women's bodies in Ancient Greece comes from the Hippocratic corpus, which constitutes a large body of medical treatises, seven of which focus specifically on gynecological issues. The material is sufficiently diverse, and sometimes contradictory, that it is pretty much incommunicable to attribute it to one single writer. To modern optics, the statements fabricated in these treatises are quite shocking, but many of the ideas that men had about women'south bodies came less from direct observation, and were more a result of pre-existing societal assumptions. For example, the full general caption for menstruation was that both men and women sucked upwards nourishment through their glands, simply since women did less physical work than men, their excess nourishment had to come out in the class of menses. The quantity of menses was determined to have to be more than the amount of semen expelled from men in the course of a month, since women had larger breasts, and therefore spongier glands.
Diseases of Women
Diseases of Women, from the Hippocratic corpus, focuses primarily on the diseases that occur but in women and are more often than not the result of their wandering uteruses. For example, it states that if a adult female was having trouble animate, it was because she either exerted herself or did not consume enough, causing her uterus to rise up in her body and suffocate her. The most common cure for illnesses in women, from fever, to back hurting, to an inability to sleep, was to dampen the uterus in order to keep information technology in place, achieved through either intercourse, or ideally, pregnancy.
Click to read virtually wandering womb/hysteria
The writings also discuss problems around pregnancy, particularly difficulties around conception and miscarriage. If a woman could not go pregnant, it was e'er the fault of her body, whether from a cervix or uterus that is misshapen, or from an excess of phlegm and other fluids. 1 instance given in the text every bit a way to treat infertility is to insert medication into the cervix immediately earlier intercourse with a lead probe, and then to lie with crossed legs for at to the lowest degree half dozen days subsequently, avoiding bathing or eating solid foods. Once conception had occurred, however, it appears as though miscarriage in the ancient globe was incredibly common, and once once more always the mistake of the adult female. According to the Hippocratic writers, miscarriages happen in the tertiary or fourth month of pregnancy if there were unhealthy matters in the uterus, or if the uterus itself was too smooth to preclude everything from slipping out. The text goes on to list a diversity of reasons that the woman's deportment tin can induce a miscarriage: the woman lifts something heavy, is beaten, leaps into the air, goes without food, has a fainting spell, is frightened, shouts violently, loses control over herself, eats/drinks something contrary to usual habits. Information technology so states that, "women need non be surprised at the fact that they take miscarriages although they do not want to," and that it takes special skill and attention to be able to carry a baby to term.
Menstruation
In artifact, women'south periods seemed to exist quite different from those that women in the western world experience today. This is largely based on the fact that women today generally have admission to much amend diet. While some ancient women seemed to have menstrual cycles that lasted a month, the majority lasted much longer. The ancient writings also suggest that the healthy amount of blood loss over the form of a menstruation was about a pint, and therefore seven to eight times more than modernistic scientists suggest. Information technology is, however, hard to tell if women actually bled more, or if aboriginal physicians simply did not have the proper tools for measuring. Either style, information technology was suggested by those physicians that periods would become less painful only after having achieved pregnancy, which would stretch the womb to permit for plenty room to hold such a large amount of menstrual blood.
Click to read more most ancient gynecology
Sources from the archaeological record
Attic Grave stele, c.330 BCE, found in Rome, Harvard Art Museums
Attic grave stele: Adult female dying in childbirth, c.330 BCE, found 1905 in Rome, Harvard Art Museums
This marble stele, almost three anxiety tall, depicts iv people. The woman who has just died, while her clothes are hanging loose, does not prove any other signs of having just given nativity. Her breadbasket is adequately flat, and her expression rather tranquil, keeping inside the traditional methods of depicting women in Greek sculpture at this time. Standing around her are three figures: a women supporting her, likely a servant; a disguised human being holding her manus, possibly her father or her hubby; and a figure whose caput has not survived, who could mayhap be the midwife continuing aside to let family mourn, or the mother, grieving backside the father.
Funerary Inscription
Peterson and Salzman-Mitchell (2012) have also provided the funerary inscription that was probable written by the married man or father of a adult female who died in childbirth in the 2d century BCE. While written in the first person, it reflects a male perspective on childbirth: "the unstoppable Fury of the newborn infant took me, bitter, from my happy life with fatal hemorrhage. I did non bring the child into the light past my labor pains, but it lies subconscious in its female parent'southward womb amidst the dead" (p. 85).
Dedications: clothing fasteners
Ancient Greek women often dedicated manufactures of clothing to female deities as a thank you later on a successful birth. Since cloth dedicated at that time would not survive today, garment fasteners, such as belt clasps and dress pins, are largely what remain in the archaeological tape today. These were related to the act of loosening the belt during birth, perhaps mimicking the act of loosening the womb. Of all the belt clasps plant in Ancient Hellenic republic, while some were defended by men for male deities for other reasons, 84% were dedicated to female deities.
At the site of Argos lonely, there are roughly 700-800 clothes pins that survive. Other common dedications were keys before the nascency in the hope of an easy delivery and amulets worn during the birth to assist with pain. In addition to Hera, Artemis was some other common receiver of dedications as a special protector of women and girls, particularly during transitional phases such as childbirth. Eileithyia, commonly associated with Athena or fifty-fifty represented as a office of her, played an important role in religious dedications as the goddess of midwifery and childbirth.
The nascence was followed by a menses of balance lasting roughly forty days for female parent and kid. They would stay in bed for 5 to seven days earlier existence able to move around the house. On the 10th 24-hour interval, there was an official naming anniversary for the baby, who would later be formally presented to not-family members in a commemoration after the twoscore days were over. This ceremony included a public purification ritual that seems to have included the cede of a dog, along with the burning of incense to purify the bodies of mother and child, since childbirth was seen as a polluting human activity. A celebratory feast followed, with the ritual dedication of cakes and cake-baking figurines, still surviving in the archaeological record today.
Herbs and other medical treatments
Contraception
Soranus of Euphesus, a Greek physician who lived during the Roman period, wrote a 4-book treatise on gynecology in which he speaks at length about the use of herbs as contraceptive and abortive methods. According to his writings, contraceptives were nigh oft administered as pessaries (inserted into the vagina) since they "crusade the orifice of the uterus to shut before the time of coitus and do not permit the seed pass into its fundus" (Riddle, 1997, p. 37). The use of such herbs were non seen as immoral; family planning was an accepted idea since having too many sons would effect in dividing the wealth too thinly. The herbs were just seen as evil since they could crusade adverse physical reactions such as an upset tummy or congested caput. Herbs were also sometimes taken orally every bit contraceptives, such as silphium, which was to be added to juice once a month. This plant was an export from North Africa and used every bit a contraceptive, as well as to care for various pocket-sized illnesses. Its popularity somewhen led to its over-cultivation and subsequent extinction.
Click to watch the "10 Strangest Birth Control Methods Ever", including some from Soranus!
Pomegranate seeds were commonly used as contraception since they were associated with a interruption in fertility because Persephone ate them while in the Underworld. Information technology was afterward tasting food from the Underworld that she would take to return for a third of every year, during the winter months, while at that place was a pause in fertility on earth.
Ballgame
In aboriginal Hellenic republic, medical termination of pregnancy was not seen every bit immoral, equally long as the fetus did non however have recognizable human features. For reasons such equally the fact that women with their wandering uteri were prescribed intercourse to help with menstrual cramps, etc., ballgame was probably a fairly common occurrence. Most often, women took the abortive substances on their own, and physicians were simply actually involved if at that place were complications. The Hippocratic writings name the squirting cucumber constitute, known today as ecballium, as the most effective abortive.
Click to sentry the squirting cucumber squirt! (start video from 1:01)
Many of these plants were toxic and extremely dangerous if taken in too large of a dose. Pennyroyal, also taken as an abortive, can exist fatal even when taken in small doses. Oil from the establish has been used throughout history by women in attempts to induce an abortion on their own, though many of these cases have resulted in decease. In antiquity, this unsafe constitute was often prescribed by physicians.
Click to read more than about abortion in antiquity
Aids during nascency
Post-obit the birth, medicines would sometimes be called upon to help expel the afterbirth, such as myrrh. Artimisia, the establish of Artemis, was likewise used to do so, once more attesting to the importance of the goddess during the process of pregnancy and childbirth.
The agnos castus institute is said to have helped to expel the afterbirth, as well as encouraged menses, lactation, and conception, and helped to bring along nascence after a long labour. Medications made with an extract from the plant are yet sometimes prescribed for PMS (premenstrual stress syndrome) and acne.
Infanticide/infant exposure
In the patriarchal societies of Ancient Greece, the husband had the power to decide if the newborn child was to be declared legitimate or not, based on what he determined to be the kid'south worth. He, or possibly more oftentimes she, was declared illegitimate if frail or deformed, and, if so, was sold or given away as a slave, or more likely, exposed. Soranus of Euphesus wrote of the medical decisions behind whether or not a child should be reared or exposed. He said that the female parent should be healthy, the child should be full-term, information technology should cry with vigor, it should be perfect in all its parts, its "ducts" must be free from obstacle, the natural functions of every fellow member should be neither sluggish nor weak, the joints must bend and stretch, it must be the right size and shape, and exist properly sensitive to stimulus. In his writings, Aristotle claimed that it was an accented requirement that no deformed child be reared. Killing a newborn, or rather letting it die, was not the same thing morally or legally equally killing a fellow member of the family. This was, of class, ignoring any bail that may accept occurred between mother and child.
Academic references
*For exact citations, please contact the author*
Dean-Jones, L. (1989). Menstrual Bleeding According to the Hippocratics and Aristotle. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 119, 177-192. doi: 10.2307/284268
Engels, D. (1980). The Problem of Female Infanticide in the Greco-Roman World. Classical Philology 75(2), 112-twenty. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.mta.ca/stable/268918
Hanson, A. (1975). Hippocrates: Diseases of Women 1. Signs one(ii), 567-584. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173068
McClure, L.Thou. (2002). Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World. Oxford: Blackwell Press.
Patterson, C.B. (1985). 'Not Worth the Rearing': The Causes of Infant Exposure in Ancient Hellenic republic. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 115, 103-23. doi: ten.2307/284192
Petersen, L.H., & Salzman-Mitchell P., eds. (2012). Mothering and motherhood in ancient Greece and Rome. Austin: University of Texas Printing.
Riddle, J.Grand. (1997). Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the Westward. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Source: https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/pregnancy-and-childbirth/
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