“The extent to which women engage with gynecological recipes depended in large part on their socio-economic class.”

IMPRS researcher Leonie Böttiger presents her recent work on female patients in Arabic Gynecological Recipes of the 9th and 10th century. Drawing on recipe collections and grammatical patterns from two medical works that have shaped the Arab world for centuries, she examines not only the understanding of women's health, but also the target audience and the transmission of medical knowledge at that time.

Publication

• Böttiger, Leonie. "'And let her use it': Women Patients in Early Medieval Arabic Gynecological Recipes." In postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2026). doi:10.1057/s41280-025-00377-y.