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Rh CHAPTER NINE ! WOMEN IN MEDICINE By MARGARET H. ROCKHILL Editor Woman’s Medical Journal Women appear in medicine in very ancient times, for even in mythology we find health and childbirth presided over by female deities — Iris among the Egyptians —June, Lucius and Hygeia among the Romans. There is reason to believe that as early as eleven centuries before the Christian Era, a college of physicians existed in Egypt, and that both sexes attended the school. In Greece it was not until the eighth century B. C. that schools of philosophy began gradually to take the practice of medicine out of the hands of the priests of Aesculapius, and to these schools women were admitted. From primitive times they had complete charge of obstetrics an art which they evolved and taught themselves, and to that science several have contributed. Hippocrates, the author of the famous Hippocratic Oath and which is used today as an expression of the high ethics of the medical profession, was the son of a midwife, as was Socrates. In Greece and Rome, women did not serve as mid- wives only—they practiced general medicine as well. In the middle ages women physicians or, as they are invariably called by historical writers “doctresses” are mentioned in the eleventh century, in connection with the great Salerno school of medicine which reached the zenith of its fame and greatness between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, remaining, during all that time, the medical mecca of the world. The women physicians connected with the Salerno School were numerous and we are told that they were highly esteemed by the professors, who quoted freely from their writings. In Paris, eight women doctresses ' were established in the year 1292 and because of that fact the edict of the Faculty of Paris, for- bidding the practice of medicine to all who were not members of that 391 391