Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers | 
“the witch hunts were a step back…not only for the lower-class people who lost so many of their traditional healers. Instead, what could have been a proud occupation for women and a field for lively intellectual inquiry was discredited when not actually obliterated, so that later, when…the educated elite sought to recapture some of the lost knowledge of the natural world, they had to turn to fairly marginal remnants of the old healing tradition.”
pickAn interesting book. It‘s only 103 pages, and it‘s probably important to remember that it was a talk, turned pamphlet, turned book written in 1973.
The most interesting parts weren‘t what I had expected (the correlation between “witches” and practical healers) but the discussion of how class/race played into the demonization of women health care workers.
In 14th century France, the upperclass female healers were the first targeted...
"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. But these testimonials were used against her, for the charge was not that she was incompetent, but that—as a woman—she dared to cure at all." (p. 55)
This morning I struggled picking what to read next. Do I go with something that has been in my TBR pile for way too long? Or something that has just arrived? I even had my tablet in there for good measure.
In the end I picked a new arrival and a short read: Witches, Midwives, & Nurses!
#screamathonphotochallenge
#ancestors
@4thhouseontheleft
This tiny (67 page) book discusses the theory that witches were the predecessors to midwives and nurses. I have the first edition, published in 1973. There is a second edition that mentions errors in their research. As a nurse and a green witch I couldn‘t pass this one up when I saw it for sale at the Brooklyn Book Festival.
pickSo. This got me all upset at some points but also provided a great history of what women went through. As a nurse, I found it enlightening but also enraging. (I would have definitely burned at the stake)
pickThis book is fabulous. A second-wave feminist look into the history of women as healers with a special focus on sexism and classism in general medicine and in the women's health movements. I definitely recommend this, especially the 2010 edition with the intro featuring corrections and new sources unavailable when it was written in the 70s.
