Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 167
behalf of those who “by nature and way of life are healthy but have
some hidden illness in them” (407de). Sokrates continues:
However, in the case of those whose bodies are inwardly diseased through
and through, the god did not attempt . . . to prolong an already wretched
existence for the individual concerned, who in all probability would foster
other offspring like himself. If a man is incapable of living a normal existence
he did not think it right to treat him, since such a person is of use
neither to himself nor to the state.
Dissection
Despite the keen interest in medicine, knowledge of the internal
workings of the human body was extremely rudimentary because
dissection was not employed in the study of anatomy before the
Hellenistic Period. Even then the practice was perhaps confined
to Alexandria, Egypt. None of the works ascribed to Hippokrates
is devoted to the study of either anatomy or physiology. Aristotle,
writing at the close of the fourth century b.c.e. , frankly states: “The
internal parts of the body, especially those belonging to humans,
are unknown. We must therefore examine the parts of other creatures
that resemble humans” (History of Animals 494b 22–24). This
refusal, or at least reluctance, to perform dissection was due largely
to religious scruples, since the Greeks believed that the procedure
could prevent the deceased from entering Hades.
Women’s Bodies
Ignorance of dissection did not prevent physicians and scientists
from inventing elaborate theories about the internal workings of
the human body, particularly the female body. From Aristotle’s perspective,
women were failed males. It was their lack of heat that
made them more “formless.” Aristotle went so far as to propound
the notion of a zoological hierarchy with men at the pinnacle and
women one (giant) evolutionary step below. Women, in his telling
phrase, represented “the first step” along the road to deformity
(Generation of Animals 767b 8). Similarly, Galen, writing over half a
millennium later, stated that, if it were not for the fact that the menses
were needed to contain the hot male seed, we might suppose
that “the creator had purposely made one half of the whole race
imperfect, and, as it were, mutilated” (On the Use of Parts 14.6).
The fact that women needed to menstruate was proof in Aristotle’s
eyes that they could not burn up the residue that coagulated inside