View source for Women medical practitioners in Early Modern Europe

Early Modern Europe marked a period of transition within the medical world. Universities for doctors were becoming more common and standardized training was becoming a requirement.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Minkowski|first=William|date=1992|title=Women Healers of the Middle Ages: Selected Aspects of Their History|journal=American Journal of Public Health|volume=2|issue=82|pages=288–295|doi=10.2105/AJPH.82.2.288 |pmid=1739168 |pmc=1694293 }}</ref> During this time, a few universities were beginning to train women as [[Midwife|midwives]],<ref name="Windsor, Laura Lynn 2002 pp. 66">Windsor, Laura Lynn (2002). ''Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia''. Santa Barbara: [[ABC-CLIO]]. pp.&nbsp;66.</ref> but rhetoric against women healers was increasing.<ref name=":0" /> The literature against women in medicine started in the 13th century, and the Early Modern period gave way to a widespread call for licensing and proper training for midwives, which was largely unavailable.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Minkowski|first=William L.|date=1992|title=Women Healers of the Middle Ages: Selected Aspects of Their History|journal=American Journal of Public Health|volume=2|issue=82|pages=289}}</ref>
Within family households, however, women continued heal,<ref>Astbury, Leah; Leong, Elaine (2020). "Medical Knowledge and Practice". In Capern, Amanda L. (ed.). ''The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe''. New York: [[Routledge]]. p.&nbsp;184.</ref> as seen in the recipe books many women kept and passed down from generation to generation.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Broomhead|first=Elizabeth|title=A Book of Choice Receipts in Preserving, Consearving, and Candying, etc: Receipts in Cookery and Physick, and Other Things| url=http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/2932051R|access-date=October 13, 2020|website=[[U.S. National Library of Medicine]]}}</ref> Women "were brought up to know how to make medicines and how to use them."<ref name=":2">Kowalchuk, Kristine (2017). ''Preserving on Paper: Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen's Receipt Books''. Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]]. p. 20.</ref> The roots of medicine within Europe largely originated from women and their knowledge.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kowalchuk|first=Kristine|title=Preserving on Paper: Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen's Receipt Books|publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]]|year=2017|location=Toronto|pages=27}}</ref>
Women medical practitioners were both paid and unpaid. Women were healers whether compensated or not, but harder to separate into specialties as with male healers, because women had no formal guilds.<ref name=":7">Fissell, Mary E. (2008). "Introduction: Women, Health, and Healing in Early Modern Europe". ''[[Bulletin of the History of Medicine]]''. '''82''': 7-9 – via JSTOR.</ref> This has resulted in some confusion about what women's roles actually were when it came to medicine.<ref name=":7" />
== Paid labor ==
=== Midwives ===
[[File:Midwife.jpg|thumb|Community helping woman to give birth with a midwife present]]
[[Midwifery in the Middle Ages|Midwifery]]'s move was relatively recent to medical standards of practice.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Marland|first=Hilary|title=The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=1993
|location=London |pages=3}}</ref> In the 16th century, university training became a norm for male physicians and increasing worry started to permeate throughout Europe concerning midwives and their training.<ref>{{Cite book|title=English Midwives, Their History and Prospects|publisher=[[J. & A. Churchill]]|year=1872|location=London|pages=1}}</ref> Men did not rival midwives in childbirth care until midwives' training was questioned.<ref name=":8">''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;57, 159.</ref>  It would take four centuries for men to be the majority in childbirth.<ref name=":8" />
Supporters of licensing midwives said was that midwives learned the trade of childbirth through trial and error.<ref>''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;1-2.</ref> As well, midwives were consistently accused of practicing  [[witchcraft]].<ref>''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;2-4.</ref> Throughout Europe, midwifery and witchcraft had strong ties. Reasons for those ties included midwives' use of empiricism.<ref>Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;30.</ref> This, along with their use of herbs and mixtures, including the highly toxic [[Atropa belladonna|belladonna]], made them a target of the church and claims of witchcraft.<ref name="Ehrenreich, Barbara 2010 p. 28">Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;28.</ref> Women knew that [[ergot]] helped in labor and that certain herbs such as [[Mentha pulegium|pennyroyal]] or [[Juniperus sabina|savin]] "forced the courses", or in simpler terms, caused abortions.<ref name="Lindemann 2010 122–123">{{Cite book|last=Lindemann|first=Mary|title=Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|year=2010|location=Cambridge|pages=122–123}}</ref> Distrust grew of midwives, especially among middle and upper classes.<ref>Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;159.</ref>
Despite increasing backlash, midwives continued to play an important role within communities.<ref name=":3" /> Countries such as Spain, Italy, and Holland opened schools for midwives. But these were unaccessible for many women, so apprenticeships continued to play an important role.<ref name=":3">Marland, Hilary (1993). ''The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe''. London: [[Routledge]]. p.&nbsp;2.</ref> In France, King [[Louis XV]], concerned about the [[infant mortality]] rate combined with the deaths of soldiers in the [[Seven Years' War]], commissioned [[Angélique du Coudray]] to travel throughout the country and train both men and women in proper labor and childbirth care in the 18th century.<ref name="Windsor, Laura Lynn 2002 pp. 66"/> Another important French midwife was [[Marie Boivin|Marie Anne Victoire Gillain Boivin]], who advocated for formal midwifery training, and in addition, "invented a new pelvimeter and a vaginal speculum and was the first to listen to a fetal heart using a stethoscope."<ref>Windsor, Laura Lynn (2002). ''Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia''. Santa Barbara: [[ABC-CLIO]]. pp.&nbsp;35.</ref> In England, efforts to train midwives differed. There was not much literature written on the subject and the works that were accessible in English were often translated and carried a negative connotation.<ref>''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;28.</ref> It was not until 1671 that a woman midwife, [[Jane Sharp]], authored a book about midwifery, entitled ''The Midwives Book''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sharp|first=Jane|title=The Midwives Book, Or, The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered: Direction Chilbearing Women how to Behave Themselves in their Conception, Breeding, Bearing, and Nursing of Children in Six Books|year=1671|location=London}}</ref> In it, she encouraged women to continue to being midwives, as they were in other cultures, which was in response to more man-midwives entering the field.<ref>''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;50-51.</ref> [[File:Marie Boivin, détail, retournement.jpg|thumb|Marie Boivin]]
[[File:Angélique du Courdray.jpg|thumb|Angélique du Courdray]]
[[File:Medical Heritage Library (IA b20391596).pdf|thumb|Medicinal book from Late Modern Europe]]
Increased pressure put on midwives and their defense, also put midwives in a negative light. One work described them as "shy and sulky", arrogant, superstitious, and that they rushed mothers in delivery.<ref>''English Midwives, Their History and Prospects''. London: [[J.A. Churchill|J. & A. Churchill]]. 1872. p.&nbsp;45, 133.</ref>
=== Healers ===
Throughout European history, women were taught knowledge of healing, most often from childhood.<ref name=":2" /> When medicine as a profession in 13th century Europe, women healers started to be pushed from view.<ref name=":9">{{Cite book|last1=Ehrenreich|first1=Barbara|title=Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers|last2=English|first2=Deirdre|publisher=[[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]|year=2010|location=New York|pages=29}}</ref> Licenses began to be required to practice medicine, but even so, this was only enforced for some clienteles.<ref name=":4">Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;31.</ref> Literate women who often shared clients with trained physicians were the most targeted group for these checks.<ref name=":4" />
While literate women were often targeted for lacking a license, poor women who were the most vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft,<ref name="Ehrenreich, Barbara 2010 p. 28"/> due in part, to the trust that women, also named "witch-healers", had in their ability to heal.<ref>Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;28</ref> The church disliked that women healers relied heavily on their intuition and that they trusted that new cures could be discovered.<ref name=":9" />
Those cures consisted of different herbal preparations.<ref name="Ehrenreich, Barbara 2010 p. 28"/> They looked at herbs and plants for their medical potential and also for the symbolic factor. Different plants carried different meanings. For example, violets symbolized humility and columbine stood for perseverance and steadfastness.<ref>Ehrenreich, Barbara; English, Deirdre (2010). ''Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers''. New York: [[The Feminist Press at CUNY]]. p.&nbsp;48.</ref> There were also women who were alchemists. One such woman, as recorded by Lady Anne Clifford, was her mother who "was a lover of the study of medicine and the practice of Alchimy. She prepared excellent medicines that did much good to many." Anne would go on to use these same preparations in her own family.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hurd-Mead|first=Kate Campbell|title=A History of Women in Medicine: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century|publisher=[[The Haddam Press]]|year=1938|location=Haddam|pages=343}}</ref> She was not the only woman who practiced [[alchemy]]. Many women would prepare and study medicine and prepare it on a larger scale.<ref name="Lindemann 2010 122–123"/>
== Unpaid labor ==
Many women were healers within the home.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Fissell|first=Mary E.|date=2008|title=Introduction: Women, Health, and Healing in Early Modern Europe|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44448504|journal=[[Bulletin of the History of Medicine]]|volume=82|issue=1 |pages=1–17|doi=10.1353/bhm.2008.0024 |jstor=44448504 |pmid=18344583 |s2cid=37622681 |via=JSTOR}}</ref> Healing was seen as a "continuum from domestic caring".<ref name=":5" /> Along with healing being universal, so was knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Stannard|first=Jerry|date=2013|title=Medieval Herbalism and Post-Medieval Folk Medicine|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/24631898|journal=[[Pharmacy in History]]|volume=55|issue=2/3 |pages=47–54|jstor=24631898 |pmid=25654900 |via=JSTOR}}</ref> Usually, this knowledge was passed throughout a community through word of mouth and also intergenerationally.<ref name=":6" />
=== Recipe books ===
[[Cookbook|Recipe books]] were often used to keep track of herbal remedies. These recipe books (also referred to as receipt books) were "highly collaborative, handwritten domestic manuals that included a combination of culinary recipes, medical remedies, and household tips."<ref>Kowalchuk, Kristine (2017). ''Preserving on Paper: Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen's Receipt Books''. Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]]. p. 3-4.</ref> These recipes were sometimes passed down through generations and continually added to.<ref name=":1" /> These cookbooks, in the medieval time period and leading into early modern, were written with a backdrop of famine and failed harvests. As agricultural knowledge developed, recipe books followed it by including more recipes with the "life-saving" vegetables such as carrots that were being turned to.<ref>Kowalchuk, Kristine (2017). ''Preserving on Paper: Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen's Receipt Books''. Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]]. p. 31.</ref> Recipes came from a variety of methods, including personal trial and error. But often, these recipes came from neighbors and others in the community.<ref name=":1" /> Some scholars conclude that women's process of finding medical cures influenced the development of science.<ref>Kowalchuk, Kristine (2017). ''Preserving on Paper: Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen's Receipt Books''. Toronto: [[University of Toronto Press]]. p. 47.</ref> In fact, herbals, which were books containing knowledge of herbs, had less botanical information than these recipe books did.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Stannard|first=Jerry|title=Herbs and Herbalism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance|publisher=[[Ashgate Publishing Company]]|year=1999|location=Brookfield|pages=xi}}</ref> The recipes themselves followed traditional [[Galenic medicine]], which depended upon the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.<ref name=":2" /> Although women are known to be the main keepers of these books, male Physicians also participated. In the cookbook of Sir Hans Sloane, multiple recipes were passed down to him from his mother and grandmother.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sloane|first=Sir Hans|title=Medical Recipe Book 1750|url=https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-2931172R-bk|access-date=November 10, 2020|website=[[U.S. National Library of Medicine]]}}</ref>
=== Recipe ===
"for deafness
Taje the juice if ye Bud. 'leaves,' inner rinde
Or yong branches of elder; Luke war; put'
it in to the yeares; it will breake the
Impoftume within 4 or 5 days : And cure
the deafness"<ref>{{Cite web|title=A Book of Receipts of All Sorts 1693|url=https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101202660-bk|access-date=November 10, 2020|website=[[U.S. National Library of Medicine]]}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Midwives]]
[[Category:Midwifery]]
[[Category:History of medicine]]
[[Category:Cunning folk]]