ABSTRACT
In Egypt, infertility, or the inability to conceive, is a devastating problem for women, who are typically blamed for the reproductive failing and must bear the burden of overcoming it through a reproductive quest that is sometimes traumatic and often unfruitful. This quest for conception-or the "search for children", as Egyptian women themselves call it-involves remedies of quite disparate origins and natures and is a near-universal phenomenon for infertile Egyptian women of all social backgrounds. In Egypt, gynecologists are not the sole caretakers of infertile women, nor are they necessarily the first line of resort. Rather than there being only one hegemonic form of gynecology, we may speak of multiple Egyptian "gynecologies," or multiple philosophies regarding the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of women's reproductive bodies. These multiple healing philosophies are the result of the dynamic syncretism of four major literate medical traditions in Egypt, the most recent of which is European colonially-produced Egyptian biomedicine.
