As a young woman, I've grown up my whole life surrounded by a support system telling me I can do and be whatever I want. If you're a young woman, chances are you've probably heard the same spiel. Women can be doctors, lawyers, and engineers. It's no secret that it hasn't always been that way. However, women have been practicing medicine for centuries in Greece, and it's all thanks to one woman.
In the 4th century BCE, a lot of women were undergoing painful childbirths and many died. Women were allowed to study gynecology for a period of time, but then the leaders of Athens discovered they were performing abortions. Women were immediately banned from practicing midwifery.
Agnodice of Athens left to study gynecology in Egypt (specifically Alexandria), where it was perfectly legal for a woman to be involved in medical affairs, and was even quite frequent and almost important. The law against women practicing midwifery in Athens wasn't cutting it for Agnodice. She pulled a Mulan and cut her hair and wore men's clothing to perform the job of her dreams.
Women loved Agnodice because frankly they were not comfortable with men touching them during childbirth. Eventually, the other physicians realized they weren't getting any employment. They came to the brilliant conclusion that Agnodice was seducing the women and they were faking pain to be with her (him?).
A group of angry husbands and male physicians brought her to court where they condemned her for seduction. When they wouldn't listen to her, Agnodice lifted her tunic to clearly reveal that she was not, in fact, a man, and therefore could not be seducing everyone's wives. The men then tried to punish her for lying, to which the women of the town angrily came to her defense. Because, you know, without Agnodice, many of them would probably be dead. The men reluctantly agreed to drop the charges and change the law.
The message of this historical tale is that people are paranoid and often jump to ridiculous conclusions because of the paranoia. Clearly illustrated in this tale, when the women preferred Agnodice over the rest of them, the answer could not possibly have been that Agnodice was perhaps just good at her (his?) job, no, she (he?) MUST have been sleeping with all of them! Natural selection has obviously not taken out this trait yet (perhaps thanks to the medical work of Agnodice?), as people today still come to the most ridiculous conclusions, like thinking your best friend hates you when she doesn't text you back or that all technology would crash on January 1, 2000.
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