The history of endometriosis

Although shrouded in the mists of antiquity, descriptions of most gynecologic diseases can be recognized in the writings of Hippocrates (Figure 1.1), Soranus of Ephesus, or followers of the Roman god of healing Asclepios (Latin Aesculapius) (Figure 1.2), or the Hebrew Talmud, but this is not the case with endometriosis. There is no reference to it in any medical historical encyclopedias, such as the Cambridge World History of Human Disease, edited for the CambridgeUniversity Press in 1993 by Kenneth Kiple.1 Even the Encyclopaedia of Medical History by Roderick McGrew2 published in 1985 and the extensive study by the television historian Roy Porter, entitled The Greatest Benefit to Mankind,3 published in 1997, does not mention endometriosis at all.