Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (2nd Ed.): A History of Women Healers (Contemporary Classics)

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himself a distinguished physician, if all the medicines used by the “regular” doctors in the US were thrown into the ocean, it would be so much the better for mankind and so much the worse for the fishes. Those accused of witchcraft were often subjected to sleep deprivation during the trial process and some would be examined by witch prickers – people paid to find the mark of the devil on accused witches by stabbing them with long needles. The medieval Catholic Church elevated sexism to a point of principle: The Malleus declares, “When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.

Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

The distinction between “female” superstition and “male” medicine was made final by the very roles of the doctor and the witch at the trial. Digitalis, still an important drug in treating heart ailments, is said to have been discovered by an English witch.

In New York State, the Movement was represented in the legislature by a member of the Workingman’s Party, who took every opportunity to assail the “privileged doctors.

Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, has

In fact, feminists of the late 19th century were themselves beginning to celebrate the nurse/mother image of femininity. And nurses of every rank from aide up are just “ancillary workers” in relation to the doctors (from the Latin ancilla, maid servant). Nightingale and her immediate disciples left nursing with the indelible stamp of their own class biases. The real issue was control: Male upper class healing under the auspices of the Church was acceptable, female healing as part of a peasant subculture was not. So some of what they were doing would have been acceptable practice pre-Reformation, but post-Reformation was not.Besides, an occupational group doesn’t gain a professional monopoly on the basis of technical superiority alone. But with the development of scientific medicine, and the modern medical profession, the two functions were split irrevocably. Professionalism in medicine is nothing more than the institutionalization of a male upper class monopoly. There were very few schools of medicine in America and very few institutions of higher learning altogether. Finally, the witch craze provided a handy excuse for the doctor’s failings in everyday practice: Anything he couldn’t cure was obviously the result of sorcery.

Witches, Midwives, And Nurses (2nd Ed.): A History of Women Witches, Midwives, And Nurses (2nd Ed.): A History of Women

The witch-hunts were well-organized campaigns, initiated, financed and executed by Church and State. Now the motive of the will is something perceived through the senses or the intellect, both of which are subject to the power of the devil. Florence Nightingale and Louisa Schuyler (the moving force behind the creation of America’s first Nightingale-style nursing school) were genuine aristocrats. This means to us that the sexism of the health system is not incidental, not just the reflection of the sexism of society in general or the sexism of individual doctors.It was recorded, like all history, by the educated elite, so that today we know the witch only through the eyes of her persecutors. Going into the project, Nicola was aware of the witch stereotype: “There is a ‘witch healer’ perception of an old, poor, uneducated woman. Six witnesses affirmed that Jacoba had cured them, even after numerous doctors had given up, and one patient declared that she was wiser in the art of surgery and medicine than any master physician or surgeon in Paris. For eight long centuries, from the fifth to the thirteenth, the other-worldly, anti-medical stance of the Church had stood in the way of the development of medicine as a respectable profession. While the run-of-the-mill American doctor was still mumbling about “humors” and dosing people with calomel, a tiny medical elite was travelling to German universities to learn the new science.

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By 1800, fashion even dictated that upper and middle class women employ male “regular” doctors for obstetrical care – a custom which plainer people regarded as grossly indecent. The first generally co-ed medical school was the “irregular” Eclectic Central Medical College of New York, in Syracuse.

Any peasant organization, just by being an organization, would attract dissidents, increase communication between villages, and build a spirit of collectivity and autonomy among the peasants.