Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. ‘Medicine’, in William Morris, ed., The American Heritage Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976); ‘medicine n.’, in The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English, Oxford Reference Online (Oxford University Press, 1999), University of Toronto Libraries, http://www.oxfordreference.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/ views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t21.e19038 [accessed 22 August 2008]. 2. The term doctor was derived from the Latin docere, to teach. See Vern Bullough, ‘The Term Doctor’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 18 (1963): 284–7. 3. Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter, Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 11. 4. I am indebted to many previous scholars who have worked on popular healers. See particularly work by scholars such as Margaret Pelling, Roy Porter, Monica Green, Andrew Weir, Doreen Nagy, Danielle Jacquart, Nancy Siraisi, Luis García Ballester, Matthew Ramsey, Colin Jones and Lawrence Brockliss. Mary Lindemann, Merry Weisner, Katharine Park, Carole Rawcliffe and Joseph Shatzmiller have brought to light the importance of both the multiplicity of medical practitioners that have existed throughout history, and the fact that most of these were not university trained. This is in no way a complete list of the authors I have consulted in prepa- ration of this book; however, their studies have been ground-breaking in terms of stressing the importance of popular healers. 5. This collection contains excellent specialized articles on different aspects of female health-care and midwifery in medieval Iberia, and Early Modern Germany, England and France. The articles are not comparative in nature. 6. Monica H. Green, ‘Midwives and Other Female Practitioners’, in Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis, eds, Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: an Encyclopedia (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), p. 216. 7. Chapter 8 looks at unpublished medical receipts and remedies produced by women who, although not formally trained as medical practitioners, provided medical services to their communities. 8. See Elaine Hobby for a discussion of the authorship of this text, Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing: 1649–88 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 175. 9. Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman’s Companion, or, A Guide to the Female Sex (London: A. Maxwell, 1673), p. 10. 10. Sabuco de Nantes preceded British physicians, Thomas Willis (1621–75) and Francis Glisson (1597–1677) in their work on the nervous system by about thirty years. The editors and translators of the Nueva Filosofia note that these scientists did not credit Sabuco de Nantes even though their works are very similar in content. See New Philosophy of Human Nature, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintro and C. Angel Zorita (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007). 11. Chapter 5 relies heavily on the work of others in this field of medicine. The litera- ture on the history of midwifery is enormous. Subsequent notes should provide readers with a guide to the literature. 198 Notes 199 12. For some negative stereotypes which historians of medicine had traditionally held concerning female medical practitioners in general and nurses in particular, see Margaret Connor Versluysen, ‘Old Wives’ Tales? Women Healers in English History’, in Rewriting Nursing History (London: Croom Helm, 1980), pp. 175–99. She writes, ‘Organised medicine, especially its most prestigious branches, has formally barred women from its ranks for most of its known past. History has reflected this sexual exclusivity and has been primarily the story of a socially privileged group of male healers’ (p. 177). 13. William L. Minkowski, ‘Women Healers of the Middle Ages: Selected Aspects of their History’, American Journal of Public Health, 82(2) (February 1992): 289; Thetis M. Group and Joan I. Roberts, Nursing, Physician Control, and the Medical Monopoly: Historical Perspectives on Gendered Inequality in Roles, Rights, and Range of Practice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), p. 24. 14. Midwives come up frequently in the demonology literature, but cases where women were actually prosecuted for practising their craft are much fewer in number than those where women were accused of healing. See the provoca- tive article by David Harley, who poignantly makes this point, arguing that ‘ historians have been led astray by a tradition that derives from the discred- ited work of Margaret Murray’. ‘Historians as Demonologists: the Myth of the Mid-Wife-Witch’, Social History of Medicine (1990): 99–124. 15. Primary source material for witch persecutions consist of trial records, demon- ology handbooks and witch-hunters’ textbooks, contemporary pamphlets of eyewitness accounts, theoretical works by believers and sceptics. For an excel- lent guide to sources, see Jean-Pierre Coumont, Demonology and Witchcraft: an Annotated Bibliography (Utrecht: Hes and DeGraaf, 2004). 16. This role was not unique to European society, but can also be found in the Middle East and Latin America where women’s healing practices were widespread. Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of European Witch Hunts (San Francisco: Pandora, 1994), p. 207, n. 1. 17. John Henry, ‘Doctors and Healers: Popular Culture and the Medical Profession’, in Stephen Pumfrey, Paolo L. Rossi and Maurice Slawinski, eds, Science, Culture and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), p. 191. 18. Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 17. 1. The Medieval Contribution 1. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of the Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards, foreword, Marina Warner (New York: Persea Books, 1972 ), p. 26. 2. Monica H. Green, ‘Midwives and Other Female Practitioners’, in Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis, eds, Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: an Encyclopedia (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), p. 216. 3. Nursing and midwifery are considered in Chapters 5 and 6. These were areas of health-care which were open to women in the Early Modern period. Midwifery was women’s speciality. 4. Jennifer Lawler, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (London and Jefferson, WI: McFarland, 2001), p. 122. 5. See Monica Green’s chapter, ‘Documenting Medieval Women’s Medical Practice’, in Luis García Ballester, ed., Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 322–52. 200 Notes 6. See Thomas G. Benedek, ‘The Roles of Medieval Women in the Healing Arts’, in Douglas Radcliff Umstead, ed., The Roles and Images of Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Publications on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 1975), III, pp. 145–59. Geneviève Dumas adds that the study of medieval medical practitioners is a relatively recent one and that women are very under-represented in the sources. Geneviève Dumas, ‘Les Femmes et les pratiques de la santé, dans le “Registre des plaidoiries du Parlement de Paris”, 1364–1427’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la medicine, 13 (1996): 3–27. 7. Cited in Eileen Edna Power, Medieval Women, ed. M.M. Postan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 86, n. 17. 8. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena, ed. and trans. Elizabeth A.S. Dawes (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), Preface, I, p. 1. 9. Muriel Joy Hughes, Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literature (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968), p. 37. 10. Rae Dalven, Anna Comnena (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972), p. 78. 11. Comnena, Alexiad, IV, pp. 1, 99–100; XIV, pp. 4, 370–1; VI, pp. 6, 147. 12. Comnena, Alexiad, I, X, p. 26. 13. Alain Touwaide, ‘Galen’, in Thomas Glick, Steven J. Livesey and Faith Wallis (eds), Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: An Encyclopedia (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), p. 179. 14. Comnena, XIV, pp. 4, 434; XIV, pp. 7, 449, cited in Georgina Grenfell Buckler, Anna Comnena: A Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), p. 216, n. 8. 15. Comnena, XV, pp. 11, 419– 20. 16. Comnena, XV, pp. 11, 422. 17. Comnena, XV, Sec. 11, p. 422; XV, Sec. 11, pp. 424, 426. 18. Comnena, Preface, Sec. 3, p. 3. 19. Comnena, VI, Sec. 6, p. 147. 20. Demetrios Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare, 2nd revised edi- tion (New Rochelle, NY: Aristide D. Cartazas, 1991), p. 129; G.C. Pournaropoulos, ‘The Real Value of Greek Medicine (Byzantium)’ in XVIIe Congrès International d’histoire de la medicine, I (Athens, 1960), p. 357. 21. G.C. Pournaropoulos, ‘Hospital and Social Welfare Institutions in the Medieval Greek Empire (Byzantium)’, XVIIe Congrès International d’histoire de la medicine, I (Athens: The Congress, 1961), p. 378. 22. Comnena, Alexiad, XV, pp. 7, 409–10; Marilyn French, Beyond Power: on Women, Men and Morals (New York: Ballatine Books, 1986), p. 159. 23. Excerpts from the Typikon are cited in Demetrios J. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1968), pp. 172–5. 24. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy, p. 129. 25. Timothy S. Millar, ‘Byzantine Hospitals’, Dumbarton Oak Papers, 38, Symposium on Byzantine Medicine (1984): 61. 26. Ferdinand Chalandon, Jean II Comnène 1118–1143 et Manuel I Comnène 1143– 1180 (New York: B. Franklin, 1960), I, 84–7; Comnena, Alexiad, Book XV, p. 7. 27. Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, The Emergence of Modern Nursing (New York: Macmillan, 1969), p. 44; Millar, ‘Byzantine Hospitals’, p. 61. 28. Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy, p. 175. 29. See especially the writings of the Byzantium monastic reformer, Theodore of Studium (d. 826) in Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy, p. 184. Notes 201 30. Robert de Sorbonne founded the first college in 1275 in Paris. Mortimer Chambers et al., The Western Experience, Vol. 1: To the Eighteenth Century, 9th edn (Boston: McGraw–Hill, 2006), p. 251.