Adams of Fleet Street, instrument makers to King George III

the sectarian tradition. Firstly, Flemming considers a corpus of imperial rationalist or eclectic texts, which includes the work of Rufus of Ephesus, Aretaeus the Cappadocian, the pseudo-Galenic Introduction and Medical definitions, as well as the works of the authors called Anonymus Londinensis and Anonymus Parisinus. Secondly she studies the Gynaecology of Soranus of Ephesus, the only extant methodist author of this period. The construction of women in the whole of the sectarian tradition is quite uniform: woman's health is relativized, for she is considered more female than human. Men and women have implicitly different positions in the medical goal of human health. The last part of the book is devoted entirely to Galen and his treatment of women. Even though Galen was not systematic in this and none of his treatises was explicitly devoted to gynaecology, the whole of his extant work gives a rich description of the role of women in that period. In chapter 5, Flemming writes an introduction to the works of Galen where she summarizes the justification of authority based on his identification with the perfect practitioner and his understanding and construction of medical art. In Galen's works men are presented as objects of medical knowledge in so far as they understand themselves as such. Women were simply not included in this pattern. The last chapter presents a selection of Galen's texts dealing with female anatomy, pathology and therapeutics. In her conclusions, Flemming provides an overview of all the topics considered previously: female practitioners treated women and were present to minister to female patients, but always subordinated to an iatros. The goal of the medical art was, indeed, human health, but women were relegated to an inferior position; a sexual asymmetry is present in the sources analysed. This sexual difference is hierarchical: women differed from men, and not vice versa. These are some of the particularities of Roman medicine which contributed to the gendering of society and therefore to the making of Roman women. The authors and works used as evidence are listed in an appendix, where the editions and translations used are also indicated. As a second appendix Flemming includes a collection of imperial inscriptions (with translations) which contain references to medicae or iatrinae. One of the major merits of this research consists of its being based upon texts which in part have not been translated and for which there is no reliable edition. This …