in every branch at Italian
universities. Some of them were at least assistants in anatomy. The
Renaissance women were, of course, profoundly educated. In a word, we
have many phases of feminine education, though with intervals of
absolutely negative interest, down the centuries.

There had evidently been quite a considerable amount of opportunity, if
not of actual encouragement, for women in medicine, both among the
Greeks and the Romans, in the early centuries of the Christian era.
Galen, for instance, quotes certain prescriptions from women physicians.
One Cleopatra is said to have written a book on cosmetics. This name
came afterwards to be confounded with that of Queen Cleopatra, giving
new prestige to the book, but neither Galen nor Aetius, the early
Christian physician, both of whom quote from her work, speak of her as
anything except a medical writer. Some monuments to women physicians
from these old times have escaped the tooth of time. There was the tomb
of one Basila, and also of a Thecla, both of whom are said to have been
physicians. Two other names of Greek women physicians we have, Origenia
and Aspasia, the former mentioned by Galen, the latter by Aetius in his
"Tetrabiblion." Daremberg, the medical historian, announced in 1851 that
he had found a Greek manuscript with the title, "On Women's Diseases,"
written by one Metrodora, a woman physician. He promised to publish it.
It was unpublished at the time of his death, but could not be found
among his papers. There is a manuscript on medical subjects, bearing
this name, mentioned in the catalogue of the Greek Codices of the
Laurentian Library at Florence, but this is said to give no indication
of the time when its author lived. We have evidence enough, however, to
show that Greek women physicians were not very rare.

The Romans imitated the Greeks so faithfully--one might almost say
copied them so closely--that it is not surprising to find a number of
Roman women physicians. The first mention of them comes from Scribonius
Largus, in the first century after Christ. Octavius Horatianus, whom
most of us know better as Priscian, dedicated one of his books on
medicine to a woman physician named Victoria. The dedication leaves no
doubt that she was a woman in active practice, at least in women's
diseases, and it is a book on this subject that Priscian dedicates to
her. He mentions another woman physician, Leoparda. The word _medica_
for a woman physician was ver