Dr Flemming has written a book about women and medicine in the first centuries of the Roman Empire, an important but neglected period. It is about female medical practitioners and patients in the Roman world, what male doctors wrote about women, how they understood them, and the wider effects their ideas and writings had upon women's lives. In spite of the increased interest in both ancient medical science and the history of women, Rebecca Flemming's book covers a still quite neglected field by combining both of them.