2) Regarding women, the gatherer: "Through a process of experimentation they learned to distinguish between hundreds of plants at various stages of growth; they identified locations and habitats; named species and varieties; and discovered methods for neutralizing or removing poisons from otherwise edible vegetation. Food-gathering requires a concept of time, and prehistoric women learned to relate astronomical events, such as the phases of the moon or the rising of a star, to seasons and the availability of plant products. Their ability to exploit new sources of vegetable sustenance improved steadily over thousands of years, each generation passing on its cumulative knowledge.

      Early women developed the tools and technology they needed to gather, prepare, and preserve food. Carriers for food and infants - slings women from plant fibers - 'may have been one of the most fundamental advances in human evolution.' Women used sticks, levers, hand axes and simple flints for digging roots and scraping and pulverizing plant material. Later, they invented the mortar and pestle, and a primitive mill for grinding grain and seeds. [The tools developed by prehistoric women for preparing and cooking food are still in evidence in modern-day chemistry laboratories.] As hunting became more important, women learned to butcher and process animal products and how to tan and convert leather to a variety of uses. They invented needles and discovered natural dyes and colour fixatives.

      Women have always been healers, surgeons, and midwives. As gatherers they discovered the medicinal properties of plants and how to dry, store, and mix botanicals. Through experimentation and careful observation they discovered which herbs provided effective treatment for various ailments. It can be argued that there was little improvement in medical science from the prehistoric woman botanist experimenting with roots and herbs, until the discovery of sulpha drugs and antibiotics in the twentieth century.

      Our early ancestors learned to prepare clay and fire pottery and they discovered the chemistry of glazes. The kilns of early women potters eventually evolved into the forges of the Metal Ages. By Cro-Magnon times women were manufacturing jewelry and mixing cosmetics - the origins of the science of chemistry.

      The most important revolution in human history took place about 14,000 years ago with the beginnings of crop cultivation and the domestication of animals. No one knows exactly how it came about, but during the small-scale horticultural stage intermediate between a gathering-hunting and an agricultural way of life, women selected wild plants for cultivation and developed new edible varieties. In the 'Fertile Crescent' - from the Mesopotamian valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates to the Nile Valley of Egypt - women domesticated barley, flax, millet, and wheat from wild grasses; in China they domesticated rice, and in North America, potatoes and maize. Altogether some 250 species of plants were cultivated in prehistoric times. This selective breeding of useful plants and animals marks the beginnings of the science of genetics.

      In horticultural societies cultivation was usually the work of women. But their technological advances in tool-making, crafts and agriculture, including the invention of the hoe and a primitive plough, freed men from the rigours of hunting. Thus, with the shift to the ploughing and irrigation of permenant fields, agriculture became the domain of men. Likewise, as the importance of animal-herding increased, the role of women in caring for livestock diminished. In the Fertile Crescent this change occurred about 10,000 BC." pages 13 - 14

      3) "Nevertheless the contributions of those early women were not forgotten. The oral histories of early societies form the basis of myths and religions of the Bronze Age in which women had a prominent place. Goddesses and heroines invent tools, develop agriculture and study astronomy and medicine. Thus, evidence for the early scientific work of women can be traced in these oral traditions." page 15

      4) "Women were usually credited with the invention of spinning and weaving." page 16

      5) "Women were also credited with less traditional accomplishments. The Egyptian Seshat was patroness of writing, literature, and history (the female Greek muses had the dame functions). She was also the goddess of the stars and aided builders in the stellar alignment of temples and other structures. Isis was sometimes identified as the patroness of astronomy. Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy, was pictured holding a celestial globe in her left hand, to which she pointed with a small staff.

      That women were acquainted with mathematical principles is illustrated by the story of Dido (whose name means heroic). " page 17. Goes on to give the story of Dido's founding of Carthage by receiving the amount of land that could be enclosed by a bull's hide for a fixed price. She cut the hide in strips, tied them together, and used the long strip to enclose a semi-circular area bounded on one side by the sea. Notes that the figure with maximum area for a fixed perimeter is the circle.

      6) "Some of these goddesses were probably mortal women whose accomplishments originally earned them renown among their own people." page 19

      7) "Alone among the Athenian philosophers, Socrates and Plato spoke out for the education of women." page 26

      8)"Ancient and mediaeval historians were more often concerned with the chastity or licentiousness of their female subjects than with their intellectual achievements." page 27

      9) After noting that in classical Greece women were often physicians, especially for other women and specializing in women's disorders, pregnancy, and child-bearing: "Abortion was common among the ancients but was periodically declared illegal, especially during outbreaks of misogynist sentiment." page 28

      10) "Medicine was the only scientific pursuit encouraged by the Romans and it was perhaps the only profession consistently open to women. Although women had always been - and would continue to be - herbalists and healers as well as midwives, they would never again achieve the professional status of the Roman woman physician." page 33

      11) "The rise of Christianity did little for the advancement of science. The Church was anti-intellectual: faith was all-important; there could be no such thing as 'proof': scientific research was superfluous since the Second Coming was imminent." page 33

      12) "Egyptian alchemy probably originated in ancient Mesopotamia where women chemists developed the techniques used in the formulation of perfumes and cosmetics." page 36

      13) "Throughout the Middle Ages, monastic women enjoyed a degree of intellectual freedom and self-sufficiency that they would not experience again until the twentieth century." page 49

      14) "Especially in Germany, the position of the abbess was often the equivalent of the feudal lord, with political power and jurisdiction over a large domain. Hildegard [of Bingen] was to become one of the most scholarly and one of the most powerful of these female ecclesiastics, her influence extending to popes, emperors, and kings. She is also the earliest woman scientist whose major works have come down to us intact." page 63

      15) Regarding the 17th century: "Although reactionaries preached against the proliferation of amateur women scientists, and satirists ridiculed their 'pretensions of learning', it was widely argued that an appreciation of the enormity of the heavens and the abundance of creation would keep women pious and humble: optical instruments would bring women closer to God. As long as scientific ladies confined themselves to the new playthings, avoiding the rigorous study of higher mathematics, physics, and medicine (where they would be competing with men), society could accept their new preoccupation with amusement. Indeed, in some aristocratic circles it became socially unacceptable for women to remain ignorant of the latest scientific developments." page 79

      16) "In the eighteenth century smallpox killed approximately 60 million people world-wide. In the British Isles alone, 45,000 people died of the disease annually. Milkmaids had long known that exposure to cowpox provided immunity to smallpox and variolation (a type of immunization against smallpox) had been practised in China, India and the Middle East for centuries, but it took a brilliant and intrepid Englishwoman, lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), to introduce the practice to Britain and the rest of Western Europe." page 89

      17) "The practice spread rapidly throughout the country despite vehement opposition from both the medical profession and the Church." page 90

      18) "In January of 1753 she [Lady Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, concerning the proper education of her granddaughter:

I believe there are few heads capable of making Sir I. Newton's calculations, but the result of them is not difficult to be understood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should make her affect the character of Lady -, or Lady -, or Mrs. -: those women are ridiculous not because they have learning, but because they have it not.

      "Lady Mary paved the way for public acceptance of scientific inoculation in Europe, and her early work on variolation was a first step toward the formulation of the germ theory of disease." page 91

      19) "Bouregois's major treatise, first published in 1608, was the most comprehensive book on obstetrics since the writings of Trotula." It included but was not limited to female anatomy, diagnoses and stages of pregnancy, abnormalities of labour, signs of foetal death, abortion, and theories of infertility. She discussed preventing miscarriages and premature birth and the list goes on for the whole page. page 101

      20) "Two women members, Margaret Stovin of Chesterfield (1756-1846) and Margaretta Hopper Riley of Nottinghamshire (1804-99), were among the first British botanists to specialise in ferns, a study which became very popular later in the century." page 113

      21) "It was Marquise du Chatelet, more than any one else, who brought about the transition in France from the outmoded Cartesian science to the Newtonain cosmic order. In doing so, she made a major contribution to the furtherance of the scientific revolution." page 139

      22) Page 148 has the story of Sophie Germain winning the contest to mathematically describe the patters produced by sprinkling sand on a plate and striking the edge with a violin bow. The problem had bested Laplace, Poisson, Lagrange, Gauss, LeBlanc and the entire French mathematics establishment. Germain went on to make a lifetime of contributions to the discipline of mathematics, despite the fact that she never received formal training in the discipline.

      23) "As a general rule the scientific woman must be strong enough to stand alone, able to bear the often unjust sarcasm and dislike of men who are jealous of seeing what they consider their own field invaded." quote from Henrietta Bolton, Popular Science Monthly, 1989, p. 511 on page 191

Return to Booknotes Menu

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net