|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
This is the first modern edition of Book X of the Historia
Animalium. It argues that the first five chapters are a summary,
from the hand of Aristotle, of a medical treatise by a physician
practicing in the fourth-century BCE. This gives short shrift to
Hippocratic staples such as trapped menses and the wandering womb,
and describes a woman's climax during sex in terms that can be
easily mapped onto modern accounts. In summarizing the treatise and
examining its claims in the last two chapters, Aristotle follows
the method described in the Topics for a philosopher embarking on a
new field of study. Here we see Aristotle's ruminations over the
conundrum of a woman's contribution to conception at an early stage
in the development of his theory of reproduction. Far from being an
insignificant pseudepigraphon, this is a central text for
understanding the development of ancient gynaecology and
Aristotelian methodology.
In this book Professor Dean-Jones gives a close analysis of
theories concerning women's bodies in such authors as the
Hippocratics and Aristotle. She demonstrates the centrality of
menstruation in classical theories of female physiology, pathology,
and reproduction, and suggests that this had both negative and
positive repercussions in attitudes towards women's bodies in that
society. In particular, she argues that many of the medical
principles governing clinical practice on male patients derived
from the observation that healthy women menstruate and women who
are seriously ill tend not to. Many of the primary sources dealt
with are not yet accessible in English, and to date research done
on this material has appeared only in discrete articles, in several
languages, and scattered in various publications. In addition to
presenting many original theories, therefore, the book is important
in assembling and presenting both original texts and the results of
scholarly research on these texts in a way that is fully accessible
to the non-specialist.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.