Transcript Women as Healers: Medicine

Women as Healers:
Medicine
Women In Medicine
 Very
difficult to generalize
 Learned physicians did not have
monopoly
 Social conventions rather than
professional conventions dictated
women’s participation in medicine
Egypt
 Evidence
from tombs & wall
paintings
 Peseshet “Overseer of Women
Physicians”
 Drawings of women performing
surgical procedures
 Medical schools at Heliopolis & Sais
Greece
 Agnodice
– Studied with Herophilus
– Brought to trial by men of Athens
– Law amended to enable freeborn
women to study medicine
 Agamede
 Philista
Rome
 Prior
to 1st century of Common Era,
women could practise a profession
– Little known about them
 Social
conventions encouraged them
to be inconspicuous
 Generally aristocratic
 Practised domestic medicine
 Not taken seriously
 Did
double duty
 “their rewards were great, but
gained at the price of fatigue”
 Marginalized after Galen
 Less lucrative areas of practice or
care of the poor
Salerno
 Medical
university founded around
1000 CE
 Previous site of healing baths
 Much of material was from pagan
sources
 Allowed women to study medicine
 Trotula
di Reggerio
– Passionibus Muleirum Curandorum
 Surgical
feats
– Caesarian section
– Repair of perineum
 Other
contributions
– Regarded pediatrics as a medical
speciality
– Described dermatological manifestations
of syphilis
– Believed women should not suffer in
childbirth
– Believed men could have physiological
defects that affected conception
– Provided a remedy to counterfeit
virginity
 Other
female physicians at Salerno
– Textbooks in anatomy
– Certification
– Healing process
– Textbook on women’s medicine
 Did
not attribute her medical writings
to dreams or visions
Hildegard von Bingen
1098 – 1181 CE
 Born in what is
now Germany
 Taken to study with
Jutta von Sonheim
at age 8
 Joined Benedictine
order at age 16
 Chosen Abbess in
1136

 Mystic
 Seven
books
 Two concerning medicine
– Liber Simplicis Medicinae or Physica
– Liber Compositae Medicinae or Causae
et Curae
 Used
and elaborated humoural
theory
 Herbal remedies
 Astrology
 Gemology
 Magic and counter magic
 Dream divination
 Hildegard’s
medical writings:
 Herbal treatments for women’s
health problems
 Explanation for intercourse &
conception
 Sexual desire in men and women
 Female
orgasm
 Circulation of the blood
 Treatment for diabetics
 Limited
impact on formal medicine
 Literary devices necessary for her
work to be published
– Mysticism
– Humility
16th – 17th Century Lyon
 Women
practised at the municipal
poor hospital
– Widows & wives of surgeons
– Repentant prostitutes
– Birth attendants
 Accepted
on basis of traditional
knowledge, social relationships
and/or proven skill
17th Century Bologna
 Women
healers occupied low rank in
medical community
– Midwives
– Vendors of patent medicines
 High
status in religious healing
 Differences in role that contact with
the body had in healing in these two
spheres
Women’s Access to Knowledge
 Access
to books essential to practice
learned medicine
 Women had less access
 Two themes emerge
– Systematic obstacles to women based
on gender
– Those in exceptional positions could get
around them
Women & Medicine in the 19th
Century
 Ideas
about biological differences
between men and women
 How
medicine contributed to this
debate
 How
women participated in the
medical profession
Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)
Early advocate of
women’s rights
A Vindication of the
Rights of Women
 First
wave feminism gained
momentum in middle of 19th century
 John
Stuart Mill
– Parliamentary motion re: votes for
women
 Agitation
for other reforms
– Education
 The
Subjectation of Women (1869)
 Little
popular support for these views
 Use
of scientific “evidence” to
maintain boundaries between men’s
& women’s roles
 Darwin
 Distinguished
between natural
selection & sexual selection
 Sexual
selection over time
exaggerated sexual differences
 Thus,
sexual differences part of
natural order of things
 In
more evolved species & societies,
male selected the female
 Theory
appropriated to preserve
traditional boundaries between the
sexes
 “What
was decided among the
prehistoric protozoa cannot be
annulled by an act of Parliament
(Herbert Spencer)
 Used
as an argument against
education of females
 Even
those who supported education
of women believed males still had
the advantage
Medical Opinions About Women
 These
had a profound impact on
women’s access to education
Intelligence
 Widely
believed women were less
intelligent
 Physicians
offered “proof” of this idea


Paul Broca (18241880)
Brilliant French
neurologist
 Believed
he had scientific proof of
sex based differences in intelligence
of men & women
 Believed
differences were increasing
over time
 Based
these conclusions on two
studies
– Cranial size of prehistoric skulls
– Weight of contemporary male & female
brains
 Both
study methodologies flawed
Impact of Education
 19th
century women demanding
more educational opportunities
 Efforts
undermined by medical
opinions about education for women
 Dr.
Samuel Clark, professor of
medicine, Harvard medical school
 Sex
in Education, Or a Fair Chance
for Girls
 Education
for girls a bad thing
 Not
a question of justice, but of
biology
 Less
capable of scholarship
 Studying
shunts blood away from
uterus towards the brain
 Makes
women “irritable and infertile”
 During
puberty, reproductive
functions required high energy
 All
else should be secondary
 Equal
education for women against
the laws of nature
 Would
create a race of women
incapable of reproduction
 “They
graduated from high school or
university excellent scholars, but
with undeveloped ovaries. Later they
married and were sterile.”
Way of Life
 Much
medical opinion about many
aspects of women’s daily lives and
life options
 Celibacy/
marriage
 Childbearing
 Child
rearing
 Exercise
– Bicycles
 Dress
The Struggle for Medical Education
 Women
disadvantaged by
medical/scientific views on the
weakness of their sex
 Unable
to gain access to universities
or medical schools


First American
female medical
graduate:
Elizabeth Blackwell
Graduated from
Geneva Medical
College (NY) in
1849
 Her
admission was essentially a
mistake
 No further women admitted
 Similar
situation in Britain
Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson
Unable to gain
admission to
medical school in
Britain
Graduated from
Paris, 1870
Sophia Jex-Blake
 Admitted to U. of
Edinburgh 1869
 University
rescinded offer

 Subsequently
admitted 5 women on
special grounds
 Received separate instruction from
men
 Controversy erupted when one
attained highest score in the class
 Award given to highest scoring male
student
 Women
went to court
 University
subsequently refused to
grant them degrees
 Offered
instead
certificates of proficiency
 Student
riots ensued against
granting women degrees
 Jex-Blake
completed her degree and
earned her MD in Berne
 Feminists
learned to use arguments
against them to their own advantage
 Separate
schools
spheres = separate medical
 First
women’s medical college
founded in Philadelphia in 1850
– Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia
– Charlotte Whitehead Ross a graduate
 New
England Female Medical
College, Boston, 1856
 New
York Medical College for Women
(1863)
– Founded by Elizabeth Blackwell & Maria
Zackrewska
 By
1870, approx. 300 female
physicians in the US
 by 1900, approx. 7300
 By
1895, 17 women’s medical
colleges
 In
Canada, U of T and Queen’s
offered limited access to women in
1870s
 Opposition caused them to reverse
this position
 Two
women’s medical colleges
opened in Ontario in 1883
– Kingston (closed 1894)
– Toronto
 Britain
 London
1874
School of Medicine founded
 Elizabeth
Blackwell taught there
– Became first female to be placed on
British Medical Register
– Pioneered in preventive medicine &
hygiene
 By
1890, 4 women’s medical colleges
in Britain
 Female
physicians often relegated to
margins of medical profession
 Had
more difficulty becoming
licensed
Emily Stowe
(1831-1903)
 1867 graduate of
New York Medical
College
 Practiced in
Toronto without a
licence for 22
years

 Had
more success practicing in
rural/remote settings
Charlotte
Whitehead Ross
(1843-1916)
 Graduate of
Women’s Medical
School Philadelphia
1875
 First female
physician Montreal

 Settled
in Whitemouth MB, 1878
 Only physician between Kenora &
Winnipeg
 Practiced medicine for 27 years
without a license
 Awarded a posthumous license in
1993
 More
likely to be caring for women &
children or in public health positions
(Margaret) Ellen
Douglass (18781950)
 Graduate of
Toronto
 Settled in Winnipeg
in 1909
 Worked in child
health

 More
likely to volunteer for medical
missionary work