Resourcefulness sharp intellect and enormous willpower for centuries bold women have been stunning the world with pioneering acts and causing patriarchal walls to crumble by Wiebke Brauer and Volker Paulun CHALLENGERS OF PATRIARCHY If we can believe Gaius Julius Hyginus Agnodice was the first female physician in antiquity According to his ac counts she lived in ancient Athens around 300 BC and studied medicine and midwifery under Herophilos Since women are not allowed to study or practice medicine Agnodice cuts her hair short and wears men s clothes which of course raises the question of how her teacher could have missed the fact that his student was a wom an Following her training Agnodice goes on to practice gynecology so successfully that envi ous colleagues accuse her of seducing her patients To exonerate herself she reveals her true gender and faces another trial Only when courageous Athenian women of influence intervene purportedly they even threatened to leave their husbands Agnodice is ac quitted And not only that the law is changed henceforth allowing women to study midwifery and medicine and to treat female patients THE PHYSICIAN About women who pretended to be men Agnodice was neither the first nor the last woman to pretend she was a man Two further examples At the beginning of the 19th century the French mathematician Sophie Germain sends her work on number theory to Carl Friedrich Gauss under a male pseudonym At the beginning of the 20th century the German chemist Ida Noddack disguises herself as a man in order to attend lectures to which only men are admitted AGNODICE 300 BC 34 35

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