Menstrual Bleeding according to the Hippocratics and Aristotle

Abstract

Hippocratic and Aristotelian models of a woman's interior space were inferred from observable phenomena such as menses and breasts, and analogy with such things as sponges and cupping instruments.' Insofar as the Classical Greeks did not dissect human bodies, they had no evidence to gainsay the societal assumption of female physiology and the extent to which it differed from the male. Comparisons with dismembered animals could give some testimony to what lay inside humans, but as there was no reason to think that humans bore any but a superficial resemblance to quadrupeds, the Greeks would naturally select those observations which confirmed their ideas about the human body and reject those that contradicted firmly established beliefs. E.g., other animals, such as pigs, were seen to have compartmentalized wombs, a fact which was thought to explain multiple births; this seems to have been taken as confirmation that the human womb had at least two compartments2 (though, in fact, it is not divided at all) to accommodate twins. On the other hand, the sedentary nature of most animal reproductive organs was never brought forward to challenge the belief in the wandering womb in women.3 Such egregious errors in ancient theories about female anatomy were the result of wrong inferences stemming from