6 i Flora Unveiled
female contributes gross matter to the growing embryo, he maintains that the male semen
contributes the all- important soul, which, like the hands of a carpenter, directs the forma-
tion of the developing fetus.
Earlier Greek writings on sex differences, specifically those of the Hippocratic School,
recognized the same differences between the sexes as Aristotle did but did not attach hier-
archical values to these differences.^12 Aristotle went further than his predecessors in empha-
sizing the superiority of males over females. He believed he was applying reason and logic to
the question of the nature of the sexes, but in fact his conclusions were strongly influenced
by the tradition of social inequality that prevailed in the Athens of his day.
In his book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Thomas Laqueur
discusses the role played by gender in the development of scientific theories about sexual
differences in humans.^13 According to Laqueur, from the time of Aristotle to the seven-
teenth century in Europe, the male reproductive system was considered the fundamental
and primary pathway for sexual development, whereas the female reproductive system was
regarded as a secondary, less robust version of the male’s. Aristotle’s ideas were endorsed
by Galen, the second- century Greek physician from Asia Minor. Like Aristotle, Galen saw
the female reproductive organs as essentially an internalized version of the male sexual
organs:
Think too, please, of ... the uterus turned outward and projecting. Would not the tes-
tes [ovaries] then necessarily be inside it? Would it not contain them like the scrotum?
Would not the neck [the cervix and vagina], hitherto concealed inside the perineum
but now pendant, be made into the male member?^14In other words, the female reproductive system was equivalent to a male reproductive
system that had simply failed to protrude. Galen attributed this failure to the female’s lack
of heat. Thus, the female reproductive system is simply a colder, and therefore defective,
version of the male’s. Laqueur refers to this explanation as the “one- sex model.” The idea of
the female as a defective male reinforced the Greek patriarchal social structure, providing a
“scientific” justification for depriving women of their full rights of citizenship.
According to Laqueur, this one- sex model held sway in Europe throughout the Middle
Ages. However, as early as the sixteenth century, anatomists began to reject the Galenic
view that the female reproductive system was merely an inverted form of the male’s. After
the founding of the first medical schools in Italy in the thirteenth century, human dis-
section was no longer the sole province of illiterate barber- surgeons conducting postmor-
tems, as it had been in medieval times. Dissections were now overseen by medical professors
who wrote textbooks based on their observations for their students. But anatomy had not
yet entered the scientific stage, and no one was yet prepared to challenge the authority of
Aristotle and Galen.
Some time in the sixteenth century, medical professors began performing the dissections
themselves, which soon led them into uncharted territory. Novel anatomical structures
were discovered that were not mentioned in the classical texts, and the cumulative effect
of these discoveries began to undermine the authority of the Greek authors. Gradually, a
scientifically accurate view of the complexity and functionality of human sexual differences
began to emerge.^15