Galenus Latinus II: Burgundio of Pisa's translation of Galen's ΠEPI TΩN ΠEΠONΘOTΩN TOΠΩN “De interioribus”

medical texts of the period. The detailed evaluation of these recipes by comparison with scientific experiments on the plants used in the medical systems of, for example, India and Latin America then forms the second part of his argument. Riddle shows that most ancient writers after Soranus did distinguish between contraception and abortion; the grey area was instead between delayed menstruation and very early abortion, especially since the woman's word as to whether or not she was pregnant tended to be accepted. This means that drugs "to provoke the menses" could well have the same effect as those "to expel the foetus". He concludes that the plant agents employed were not only safe, if correctly used, but also highly effective. As with any book covering the period from ancient Egypt to the seventeenth century, it is possible to criticize this work for over simplifying issues which are the subject of heated debate within particular historical specialisms. The relationship between Egyptian and Greek medicine relies on a few ingredients in common and a couple of unidentified plants, followed by the conclusion that there must "have been a connection, albeit undocumented" (p. 76). On the ancient Greek material, Riddle's discussion of myrrh as an anti-fertility agent in Soranus and Dioscorides refers to the myth of Myrrh, incestuously used by her father, and becoming the mother of Adonis, rather weakly arguing that "the plant became a rescuer of daughters caught in the distress of incest" (p. 58). The substance does not seem to have given much benefit to its mythical eponym. Here Riddle does not appear to be aware of the important work of Marcel Detienne on scent in Greek culture. Riddle also tends to see contraceptives and abortifacients where they may not exist; for example, in a discussion of the Hippocratic Diseases of women 1.78 he translates as "Potent uterine abortifacient" (p. 78) a phrase more accurately rendered "Able to expel the afterbirth". Later he claims that Diseases of women "was not translated into Latin until the Renaissance period" and was thus "unavailable to the Western Middle Ages" (p. 81); this is not strictly true, as sections were translated into Latin in Ravenna in the fifth to seventh centuries AD. It is also possible to question Riddle's theory of knowledge. He suggests that information on effective plant contraceptives was transmitted within female networks, until these became separated from the world of university-trained physicians after the Middle Ages. This information was based on observation. However, he also provides eloquent testimony to the context within which the plants were used; not only in compound prescriptions, but also in conjunction with other methods such as amulets, pessaries, sexual positions and incantations. In such a context, how did our ancestors know which of the many elements was effective? Furthermore, were the right plants being used for the wrong reasons? The squirting cucumber has now been shown to have anti-fertility effects, but was it used in early contraceptive recipes on sympathetic magic principles, because of the way it ejects its seeds when the fruit dries? As the argument accumulates, and more and more plants are identified as anti-fertility agents, the reader may well wonder what is left to eat if the human race is to continue. Riddle himself muses, "If garlic is a contraceptive or abortifacient, one might wonder why there is any population in the Mediterranean at all" (p. 38). By the end of the book, he observes that many anti-fertility plants are pot herbs, which could be served in salad; he proposes that, for a woman, salad "may have been her control over her own life and her family's life" (p. 155). This gives a new culinary dimension to a woman's right to choose. It is worth noting that the preface to the book includes a health warning against trying the recipes at home, in case of "unintended effects".