Women healers in the ancient world

In this dissertation titled "Women Healers in the Ancient World", healer women in and around the Mediterranean Basin that were influenced by the Ancient Greco-Roman culture is discussed with the help of literary, medical and epigraphic sources. Questions such as healer women's professional status, which areas of medicine they practiced or whether they received the respect they deserved are focused on. One of the aims of this dissertation is to make a contribution to the problematic of healer women with the answers to these questions in the light of ancient sources. In order to accomplish this, research regarding terminology used for healer women was conducted for the first chapter; these terms were dealt with chronologically in the order they were mentioned in literary and epigraphic sources. By doing so, a reference point was tried to be established. In the second chapter, literary and medical sources were studied, which mostly give indirect information on women placed in concepts expressing healers. Also, the attitude of intellectuals and practitioners of rational medicine of Antiquity towards healer women was discussed. In the third chapter, following a general overview of attitude towards healer women in literary and medical sources, every single individual healer women is identified and using case studies, their lives, prescriptions and recipes were analyzed. Hence; the medical areas they were active in and their contributions to medical science could be determined. In the fourth chapter, a catalogue of inscriptions dedicated to healer women in and around the Mediterranean Basin that was influenced by the Greek and Roman culture in Antiquity was compiled; those inscriptions were handled in various categories. Chronological order is preferred over an alphabetical one while the inscriptions were dealt with; a chronological method was followed so that the list began with the earliest term used regarding healer women, "Μαῖα / Obstetrix", i.e. midwife; ending with the latest term "ἀρχιειάτρηνα", meaning chief physician. In the fifth chapter, the sociocultural statuses of healer women are discussed in the light of all acquired data.