Sexual Difference and the Uterus in Luis Mercado, Rodrigo de Castro, and Zacuto Lusitano

Cristina Pinheiro

doi:10.18778/1505-9065.21.05

Authors

Cristina Pinheiro University of Madeira https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5223-0519

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9065.21.05

Keywords:

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treatises on gynaecology, sexual difference, Luis Mercado, Rodrigo de Castro, Zacuto Lusitano

Abstract

Many treatises on gynaecology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries describe the uterus as the cause of women’s diseases, according to a perspective inherited from the Hippocratic Corpus and Aretaeus. Simultaneously, however, and in a more positive view much indebted to Galen, its position, form and functions were presented as the admirable work of a wise nature that does nothing at random. In this paper, I aim to analyse the tension resulting from the coexistence of these two perspectives in Luis Mercado’s, Rodrigo de Castro’s, and Zacuto Lusitano’s treatises on women’s diseases and how the tension between the two is articulated with these authors’ views on sexual difference. Common to the three is an evident effort to aggrandise the subject of their treatises and to present women’s medical care as a particularly challenging area of expertise in which the medical author is a key authoritative character.

Author Biography

Cristina Pinheiro, University of Madeira

Cristina Santos Pinheiro (PhD, University of Madeira 2009) is a Professor in the University of Madeira and a Researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. She led the research project “Gynecia: Rodrigo de Castro Lusitano and the ancient medical tradition about gynaecology and embryology,” funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Her research interests include Gender Studies, Women and children in Ancient Greece and Rome, and Ancient and Early Modern medical texts on women’s diseases. She has published book chapters and articles on these topics, e.g, the edition of the Latintext and Portuguese translation of Rodrigo de Castro’s De uniuersa mulierum medicina (Part 1 and 2), the Portuguese translation of Galen’s De uteri dissectione and De foetuum formatione, “From flesh to text: The chapters on the uterus and its parts in Rodrigo de Castro’s De uniuersa mulierum medicina”. Ágora: Estudos Clássicos em Debate, 23(1), p. 293-317; (forthcoming). “The enlarged clitoris: naming and defining female pathology in Rodrigo de Castro’s De uniuersa mulierum medicina”, in Pathology from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. A. Foscati, M. Goyens, Brepols.

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