Thanks, René. I am familiar with some of this...I sampled the handwriting of as many female scribes as I could locate, to see if they wrote differently from the male scribes, but I hadn't seen this specific article.
What I have NOT been able to find, is the name of a female Jewish doctor who lived in the middle ages that I read about early in my VMS research. If the VMS were designed or created by a woman, she would be a good candidate. She apparently defied convention in the area where she lived where women were discouraged from practicing medicine, but I lost track of where I found the information and haven't been able to re-locate it.
My initial impression of the VMS in 2007 was that it was created by a female, but I changed my mind over the next few months as I became more familiar with it, and realized it could be either male or female. I even looked into the practice of castration at the time, to see if a eunuch had created it (quite a few of the nymphs are sexually ambiguous). I thought perhaps someone who had access to a harem, like a eunuch obstetrician, might have created it. But I discovered that even eunuchs were usually kept away from harems, so probably they used female midwives.
Prior to the 14th century castration was still practiced rather frequently (more than I realized), and the ancients castrated themselves so they could be temple goddesses (who were held in great reverence), but by the 15th century, it appears to have become uncommon.
Speaking of castration, in some moments of history, the men were supposed to do it themselves. They were handed a giant vice-grips style tool and told to go at it while everyone watched. I'm not even going to describe my reaction to reading that.
What I have NOT been able to find, is the name of a female Jewish doctor who lived in the middle ages that I read about early in my VMS research. If the VMS were designed or created by a woman, she would be a good candidate. She apparently defied convention in the area where she lived where women were discouraged from practicing medicine, but I lost track of where I found the information and haven't been able to re-locate it.
My initial impression of the VMS in 2007 was that it was created by a female, but I changed my mind over the next few months as I became more familiar with it, and realized it could be either male or female. I even looked into the practice of castration at the time, to see if a eunuch had created it (quite a few of the nymphs are sexually ambiguous). I thought perhaps someone who had access to a harem, like a eunuch obstetrician, might have created it. But I discovered that even eunuchs were usually kept away from harems, so probably they used female midwives.
Prior to the 14th century castration was still practiced rather frequently (more than I realized), and the ancients castrated themselves so they could be temple goddesses (who were held in great reverence), but by the 15th century, it appears to have become uncommon.
Speaking of castration, in some moments of history, the men were supposed to do it themselves. They were handed a giant vice-grips style tool and told to go at it while everyone watched. I'm not even going to describe my reaction to reading that.