Metrodora, The Woman Who Wrote the Book
A woman’s name, Metrodora, appears on an ancient Greek medical textbook—one of the oldest surviving by any female doctor, anywhere.
Unknown — "Bronze statuette of an artisan with silver eyes" (ca. mid-1st century BCE), public domain
A Woman’s Name in a World of Men
A medical manuscript from ancient Greece bears a rare author: Metrodora. This wasn’t a pseudonym, but a real woman doctor—writing centuries before women practiced openly across the Mediterranean.
On the Diseases and Cures of Women
Her treatise diagnosed everything from womb disorders to hair loss and filled recipes with honey and myrrh, but didn’t stop at gynecology. Later Greek and Byzantine texts quote her as an authority—proof her work crossed centuries and borders.
Echoes in Later Science
Metrodora’s voice survived in medicine long after her era, copied by medieval doctors. Her book is one of the rarest glimpses we have into a woman’s hands shaping ancient science.
Metrodora wrote On the Diseases and Cures of Women, a work so detailed that later physicians copied her remedies for centuries. She tackled everything from infertility to eyebrow diseases, signing her own name when most women couldn’t legally practice medicine.
