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The Womb Lay Still in Ancient Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Harold Merskey  and
Paul Potter
Harold Merskey*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Western Ontario
Paul Potter
Affiliation:
Department of History of Medicine and Science, University of Western Ontario
*
∗Department of Research, London Psychiatric Hospital, 850 Highbury Avenue, PO Box 2532, Terminal A, London, Ontario, N6A 4HI Canada
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Abstract

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Any reader of the handbooks of medical history will know that among the ancient Greeks, the womb was on occasion held to cause various complaints by moving about the body. A particularly graphic account is to be found in the Timaeus (91b–c), where, in likening sexual desire to an actual animal, Plato first mentions “… in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful like an animal disobedient to reason”, and then alludes to:

Type
Comment
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 154 , Issue 6 , June 1989 , pp. 751 - 753
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989 

References

Ebbell, B. (1937) The Papyrus Ebers. The Greatest Egyptian Medical Document. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Grapow, H. (1954–1973) Grundriss der Medizin der alten Aegypter. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.Google Scholar
Griffith, F. L. (1898) Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob, pp. 5–11. London: Bernard Quaritch.Google Scholar
Jowett, B. (1953) The Dialogues of Plato Translated into English with Analyses and Introductions, 4th edn, vol. 3, p. 779. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sigerist, H. E. (1951) A History of Medicine. Primitive and Archaic Medicine, vol. 1, p. 303. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Veith, I. (1965) Hysteria. The History of a Disease. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wreszinski, W. (1913) Der Papyrus Ebers. Leipzig: JC Hinrichsche Buchhandlung.Google Scholar
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