Agnodice is a figure oft mentioned in the histories of the medical profession; but her story is largely unfamiliar to Classicists. She is credited with achieving a role, that of physician, forbidden to her by law. However, it is highly unlikely that she was an historical figure in third century Athens; instead she belongs to the realm of myth and folk tale. The only source for her tale is Hyginus, a Latin author of the first century CE:

A certain maiden named Agnodice desired to learn medicine and since she desired to learn she cut her hair, donned the clothes of a man and became a student of Herophilos. After she learned medicine, she heard a woman crying out in the throes of labor so she went to her assistance. The woman, thinking she was a man, refused her help; but Agnodice lifted up her clothes and revealed herself to be a woman and was thus able to treat her patient. When the male doctors found that their service were not wanted by the women, they began to accuse Agnodice, saying that she had seduced the women and they accused the women of feigning illness [to get visits from Agnodice]. When she was brought before the law court, the men began to condemn Agnodice. Agnodice once again lifted her tunic to show that she was indeed a woman. The male doctors began to accuse her all the more vehemently [for breaking the law forbidding women to study medicine]. At this point the wives of the leading men arrived saying ‘you men are not spouses but enemies since you are condemning her who discovered health for us’. Then the Athenians emended the law so that freeborn women could study medicine.”

How should this story be read? Is Agnodice fact or fiction? The main use of this tale within the history of medicine is by midwives from the seventeenth century to the present day who have defended themselves against a male-dominated profession seeking to medicalise childbirth. Agnodice has been invoked as fact, and hence a valuable classical precedent. The users of Agnodice in history cite her as a pioneering midwife, or as a precedent for women in medicine in general.

However, as much as traditional medical history focuses on pioneering individuals who struggle against the odds and win--and indeed Agnodice fits into such a tradition well--it is highly unlikely that Hyginus’ account is based upon fact. First of all, the act of lifting the skirts to reveal one’s sex is a common folk-tale motif found in other stories, including the tale of Demeter and Baubo at Eleusis, that of Bellerophon and the Lycian women, and the story of Cephalus and Procris. Second, terra cotta figurines of women lifting their garments, which date to the 5th-3rd centuries BCE, are generally interpreted as apotropaic, driving evil forces away. The story of Agnodice may simply be an aition (i.e., an explanation) for such a figure or may reveal in context that her healing powers were somehow connected to those of the figurines. Furthermore, the name Agnodice literally means “chaste before justice”, a coincidence which suggests her name stems from this tale--a not uncommon device in Greek literature.

The story of Agnodice, whether semi-legendary or not, underlines one of the major problems in treating female patients. As the author of the Hippocratic treatise De morbis mulierum (1.62) explains, women were loathe to confide in doctors, and this often interfered with successful treatment. It is no wonder that women were less than cooperative when one considers that they were brought up in seclusion and taught to be ashamed of their bodies.

Yet gynecology was not always the province of male physicians. Before the fifth century BCE and the advent of Hippocratic medicine, childbirth had been entrusted to the informal care of female kin and neighbors who had themselves given birth. Some of these women became known for their skills and were accorded the informal title of maia or “midwife”, and as they worked they accumulated lore about other aspects of women’s reproductive lives as well, such as fertility, abortion, contraception, and even (in imagination if not in reality) sex determination. But by the time the Hippocratic treatises were being composed in the late fifth century BCE, the traditional female monopoly in childbirth care was breaking down; male doctors were increasingly involved in gynecological cases, as evidenced by the creation of treatises dealing with such problems.

This shift from female control to male involvement came about because men were suspicious of women’s reproductive autonomy. Female patients described in the Hippocratic treatises, and for that matter, in Greek literature in general, were often suspect by men because of the male anxiety about a wife’s potential for sabotaging her husband’s production of an heir. Thus, women’s struggle to control their own bodies was a volatile issue in antiquity even as it is today.