Rebecca Flemming – författare

In this book Dr Flemming includes new translations of some of the works of medical practitioners from Celsus, writing during the reign of Tiberius, to Galen, whose career ended under the Severans, and puts their ideas about women's bodies in their social and philosophical contexts. Relations between women and medicine are now a major area of historical enquiry, but the Roman imperial era, despite the plentiful material it offers and the critical role it plays in the formation of the Western medical tradition, has received less than its fair share of the attention. This book seeks to redress the balance as it investigates female involvement in the manifold medical activities of the Roman world: how women fared as practitioners and patients, how they were understood and described in the copious medical writings of the period, and what effects those understandings and descriptions had in wider society. Dr Flemming examines both the contribution of medicine to gender in the Roman Empire, and the contribution of gender to medicine, and argues that the particularities of the Roman relationship between the two has much to reveal about how systems of sexual difference work in general.

This book explores relations between medicine and empire in the Roman world. It charts Rome's accumulation of medical resources in the Republic, bound up with the acquisition of territory and power, and then reveals the redistribution of those resources as part of the larger project of imperial consolidation after Augustus. It demonstrates the ways in which medicine – ideas and practices around health, disease and healing – supported the Roman imperial enterprise. From the medical care of large enslaved workforces and Roman armies to the hierarchies of medical practitioners in communities across the empire and the ordering of health and bodies. Rome was the medical and political capital of the Mediterranean. It was also the disease capital, and the integration of imperial territory by the second century CE not only established a unified (but not uniform) medical culture but also helped the spread of disease, culminating in the Antonine Plague.

This book explores relations between medicine and empire in the Roman world. It charts Rome's accumulation of medical resources in the Republic, bound up with the acquisition of territory and power, and then reveals the redistribution of those resources as part of the larger project of imperial consolidation after Augustus. It demonstrates the ways in which medicine – ideas and practices around health, disease and healing – supported the Roman imperial enterprise. From the medical care of large enslaved workforces and Roman armies to the hierarchies of medical practitioners in communities across the empire and the ordering of health and bodies. Rome was the medical and political capital of the Mediterranean. It was also the disease capital, and the integration of imperial territory by the second century CE not only established a unified (but not uniform) medical culture but also helped the spread of disease, culminating in the Antonine Plague.

From contraception to cloning and pregnancy to populations, reproduction presents urgent challenges today. This field-defining history synthesizes a vast amount of scholarship to take the long view. Spanning from antiquity to the present day, the book focuses on the Mediterranean, western Europe, North America and their empires. It combines history of science, technology and medicine with social, cultural and demographic accounts. Ranging from the most intimate experiences to planetary policy, it tells new stories and revises received ideas. An international team of scholars asks how modern 'reproduction' - an abstract process of perpetuating living organisms - replaced the old 'generation' - the active making of humans and beasts, plants and even minerals. Striking illustrations invite readers to explore artefacts, from an ancient Egyptian fertility figurine to the announcement of the first test-tube baby. Authoritative and accessible, Reproduction offers students and non-specialists an essential starting point and sets fresh agendas for research.