rhaps especially) when the weight of scientific evidence interrogates such certainty. Consider the well-known and vexed history of witch hunting among midwives in the medieval period or the even more vexed (and more recent) history of conflict over birth control and abortion.
Another example of the way moral certainties crowd out the technical achievements of medicine has to do with identifying the authoritative voice of science. Consider the history of resistance to innovative theories, even when experimentally verifiable. Pasteur's theory of the linkage between bacteria and infection emerged in the mid-19th century, but it did not find practical application until 1867. Controversy still surrounds the issue of who truly discovered the surgical application of ether, the surgeon who in 1849 revealed that he had been using it since 1842 or the mere dentist who in 1846 went public with his discovery (Bloom). As for the 1847 question of whether women such as Elizabeth Blackwell either were competent enough or should be allowed to practice medicine--well, one need not "go there" to get the point ("Blackwell"). Miller captures the tension between discovery and authority in medicine when he cites "the criteria which are used to decide what will count as a contradictory finding: if a theory has found favor with a scientific community, it is the anomalous finding rather than the theory itself which I discredited" (Miller 189-90).
It is in the context of the manner in which moral philosophy has intersected with medicine that attributes of ancient Greek gynecology as practiced by Soranus may be understood. Less well known than the practitioner Galen (AD 130-201), whose patients included Marcus Aurelius, Soranus of Ephesus (so styled so as not to be confused with the minor Roman deity called Soranus) is said to have "flourished" in the first and second centuries AD ("Soranus of Ephesus"), supposedly dying in AD 129 (Galanakis 2012). He appear...