Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/526

508 a curtain, in order to prevent the students, one and all, falling victims to her charms.

Among the ancients, mention is made of Athjrta, sister of Sesostris, who is said to have been an astronomer; Berenice, wife of Ptolemy III, King of gypt, whose hair has given name to one of the constellations; Agnodice, the first female medical practitioner, who lived three hundred years before Christ; and the great Cleopatra, who is credited with possessing medical and chemical knowledge, besides occult powers.

At a later period we read of Hypatia, the romance of whose short and brilliant life is well known through the pen of one of England's most popular writers. She has obtained a place in the history of science by her extraordinary knowledge of mathematics; she taught geometry, algebra, and astronomy, and is said to have invented astronomical and chemical instruments. It is a remarkable fact that the story of the pagan maiden, murdered by Christian hatred, should have become transposed into the world-wide legend of St. Katherine of Alexandria, the beautiful, young, and learned martyr-queen.

Among the learned women we find St. Hildegarde, foundress of the Monastery of St. Ruppert on the banks of the Rhine, whose great work De Physica contains many personal observations of Nature. It treats of the rivers of Germany, of the nature and properties of metals, of vegetables, fruit and flowers, fish, birds, and quadrupeds. She seems to have been acquainted with the circulation of the blood, the physical phenomena of the tides, and with many other wonders of Nature. "The naturalist," says a recent writer, "finds in Hildegarde the germs of many modern discoveries." St. Hildegarde, who died at a great age in 1180, is a patron saint of physicians, and is often represented in art with a book or a pen in her hand.

The ancient universities of Italy early recognized the intellectual abilities of women, giving them every opportunity of gaining and imparting knowledge, and for several successive centuries numbered women among their most honored professors.

During the eighteenth century, three distinguished women were at one time occupants of chairs in the University of Bologna, one of the oldest and most important seats of learning in Italy: Maria Agnesi, Laura Bassi, and Anna Manzolini. Of the three, Laura Bassi was a few years the senior, having been born in 1711; she was a precocious child, and was early considered a prodigy of learning, being proficient in mathematics, Greek, and philosophy. While still quite young, she attracted the notice of Cardinal Lambertini, afterward Pope Benedict IV, and when only twenty-one was given the chair of philosophy in the university, a position which she held for twenty-eight years. In 1738 she married a physician,