…the strongest challenge from alternative healers came from practitioners of traditional women's medicine; the Epid. (Epidemics) contains only half the number of female as male case histories, which suggests women resorted to other forms of healing more often than men.

Yet there still exist among a great number of the common people an established conviction that these phenomena are due to the compelling power of charms and magic herbs, and that the science of them is the one outstanding province of women. At any rate tales everywhere are widely current about Medea of Colchis and other sorceresses, especially Circe of Italy, who has even been enrolled as a divinity

Evidently most of this popular-technical writing was composed for men, yet in literature and historical anecdote suspicions are regularly directed to women as food handlers who might add secret ingredients to affect men's eros.