The Vienna conference “Transforming Tibetan Anatomy” of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences ws held on June 12th and 13th, 2014. Ulrike Steinert represented the Berlin BabMed Project with a lecture on
“Concepts of the Female Body in Mesopotamian Gynaecological Texts”
In contrast to the Greco-Roman medical literature on women’s diseases, Mesopotamian gynaecological texts lack general theoretical statements about the anatomy and physiology as specific to the female body, i.e. the anatomical differences between men and women, the female reproductive system, and processes restricted to women such as menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, gestation and birth. Yet, the extant sources on women’s healthcare from the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE Mesopotamia, notably diagnostic and
therapeutic texts, contain a wealth of implicit and explicit information regarding the indigenous healers’ knowledge and concepts of female anatomy and physiology. Our reconstruction of these concepts has to take into account that on the one hand, the information preserved in the medical texts stems from the necessities to diagnose and treat women’s complaints, and as such focuses on morbid and abnormal processes (e.g. bleeding, not menstruation). On the other hand, concepts of physical processes are mainly expressed through metaphors and comparisons with phenomena in nature and everyday life, which are found especially in the incantations that accompanied medical treatments. This contribution will discuss the available information to assess the questions: What did the Mesopotamian healers know about the anatomy of the female body and the processes pertaining to it? Do these concepts share traits with comparable theories found in other medical traditions of the ancient world?
See the complete programme of Transforming Tibetan Anatomy Conference.
Tanja Hidde
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