Pain, Rhetoric, and the Fetus
By Sarah Scullin
This paper demonstrates the rhetorical utility of fetal pain in the Hippocratic treatise Eight Months' Child. This treatise explains that a child born after eight months of gestation dies as a result of the twin stresses of birth and the "pains of the eighth month." In contrast, both the seventh months' child, being spared the pains of the eight month, and the ninth months' child, having recovered sufficiently, have a greater chance of survival.
A Five Year Pregnancy? Women in the Epidaurian Iamata
By Calloway Scott
This paper treats gendered constructions of the suppliant, or “patient,” in the Epidaurian iamata —a corpus of roughly 70 (47 complete and 23 fragmentary) short narratives detailing the miraculous cures performed by Asklepios (published as IG IV2 1, 142-44). I examine the assumptions about women and women’s diseases the inscriptions held, and show how these narratives structure the "ideal" female patient in a familial context. I go on to question to what extent these assumptions were shared with the authors of the (near contemporary) Hippocratic gynecological treatises.
Ritual Space and Gendered Healing: The Delphic Oracle Cures Male Infertility
By Polyxeni Strolonga
Male anxieties relating to infertility inform a significant body of questions addressed to the Oracle at Delphi (Fontenrose 1978, 443). For example, a male questioner asks the oracle how he will have children (Q104); another petitioner states his desire for children (Q160), while another declares his lack of offspring (L23).