Women Healers and Physicians

Climbing a Long Hill

Lilian R. Furst, Lilian R. Furst

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813181660
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Women have traditionally been expected to tend the sick as part of their domestic duties; yet throughout history they have faced an uphill struggle to be accepted as healers outside the household.

In this provocative anthology, twelve essays by historians and literary scholars explore the work of women as healers and physicians. The essays range across centuries, nations, and cultures to focus on the ideological and practical obstacles women have faced in the world of medicine. Each examines the situation of women healers in a particular time and place through cases that are emblematic of larger issues and controversies in that period.

The stories presented here are typical of different but parallel facets of women's history in medicine. The first six concern the controversial relationship between magic and medicine and the perception that women healers can harm or enchant as well as cure. Women frequently were banished to the edges of medical practice because their spiritualism or unorthodoxy was considered a threat to conventional medicine. These chapters focus mainly on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but also provide continuity to women healers in African American culture of our own time. The second six essays trace women healers' efforts to seek professional standing, first in fifth-century Greece and Rome and later, on a global scale, in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to actual case studies from Germany, Russia, England, and Australia, these essays consider treatments of women doctors in American fiction and in the writings of Virginia Woolf.

Women Healers and Physicians complements existing histories of women in medicine by drawing on varied historical and literary sources, filling gaps in our understanding of women healers and nulling social attitudes about them. Although the contributions differ dramatically, all retain a common focus and create a unique comparative picture of women's struggles to climb the long hill to acceptance in the medical profession.

[Part 1]

BETWEEN MAGIC AND MEDICINE

[1]

MEDIEVAL GERMAN WOMEN AND THE POWER OF HEALING

DEBRA L. STOUDT

The role of medieval women in the healing arts in Western Europe traditionally has been viewed as a modest one, and its characterization has been fraught with myth and assumption.¹ Women healers in works of medieval fiction and noblewomen in the Middle Ages who commissioned medical works often have attracted more attention than the female practitioners themselves.² Whereas women in medieval epics appear in the role of healer with some frequency, extant historical documents offer little evidence of a reflex of this situation in medieval reality. The common perception is that women healers of the Middle Ages either were unschooled or their knowledge was limited to folk medicine. Scholars have assumed that medieval women healers served exclusively as midwives, an assumption not borne out by contemporary accounts; although much of the secondary literature on female practitioners of medicine has focused on women as gynecologists or women as gynecological patients, it is apparent that women were involved in all aspects of the healing arts.³

This study undertakes a closer examination of the role of women as healers in medieval and Renaissance Germany and focuses on the type of care offered, by whom and to whom it was offered, and the kinds of remedies employed. The first section provides an overview of the medical activity of German laywomen, a phenomenon of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, with extant records dating only from the thirteenth century. The second section focuses on the role of religious women in the healing arts and examines in detail how such women modified their response to the power of healing in the course of the Middle Ages. The image of female healers that emerges from the study underscores the evolving relationship among religion, magic, and medicine throughout the Middle Ages and the role of women in this evolution.

The traditional role of laywomen as health-care providers is noted by Tacitus in his depiction of Germanic women who treat the wounds of the men and do not shrink from counting and comparing the gashes.⁴ Caring for illnesses and injuries among family and friends constitutes a customary domestic duty, a tradition that continues throughout the Middle Ages, as references in works of fiction suggest. By the twelfth century there is evidence to support the thesis that laywomen legally practiced medicine in European cities such as Salerno and Paris, but before the thirteenth century there are only occasional references to laywomen in German-speaking areas renowned for their medical expertise.⁵ In the middle of the twelfth century the abbot Rudolf wrote to the provost of a neighboring monastery in Thuringia concerning the “mulier de Sangeherhusen,” who was versed in the healing arts and from whom he requested information regarding the preparation and dosage of a certain medication.⁶ In the thirteenth century a prescription entry mentions a “Frau von Tesingen.”⁷ City chronicles and tax registers offer more numerous references to female physicians, particularly Jewish women, beginning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.⁸ For example, in 1394 in Frankfurt the daughter of the deceased physician Hans Wolff twice received payment for healing mercenaries who had been wounded in the line of duty, and in Hildesheim two women were compensated for supplying draughts for wounds (wundentrank) and otherwise treating wounded soldiers.⁹ Bishop John II of Würzburg permitted the Jewish doctor Sara to practice medicine in and around Würzburg in 1419, but at the end of the century, in 1494, an unidentified Jewish woman was forbidden to treat the sick in Frankfurt. Most of the chronicle entries offer few details concerning the nature of the healing the women engaged in, but interestingly many of the women are identified as eye doctors.¹⁰ Because surgery still was considered a skilled trade, women would not have been excluded from practicing it.¹¹ There is scant reference to the means by which German women received their medical training. Based on evidence in documents from other areas in Europe, many may have been apprenticed to medical masters who instructed them.¹²

That so few female healers can be identified is related to the fact that the practice of medicine developed from a skill into a profession in the High Middle Ages, as John Benton notes.¹³ The founding of universities and the licensing of physicians ostensibly barred secular (and religious) women from practicing medicine. Barbara Kroemer claims that the pharmacy guilds excluded women until the seventeenth century, and women knowledgeable about the preparation of medications often were denounced as quacks, herb women, and witches.¹⁴ Although the guilds may have banned women from their membership, by the sixteenth century certain individuals clearly were more tolerant of female herbalists and pharmacologists. In his Arzneibuch Anton Trutmann mentions six women whose remedies he has included in his collection; for example, from Klara Friederlerrin he obtained a salve for scabies (grind), and an eyewash (ougen wasser) was provided by “die Rohrmännin.”¹⁵ In the sixteenth and more frequently in the seventeenth centuries women of the aristocracy exhibited considerable interest in pharmacology. Anna Marie, wife of Duke Christoph von Wittenberg, and Duchess Eleonore Marie Rosalie von Jagersdorf und Troppau were two such women who recorded remedies and whose collections achieved renown. Women of commoner social status demonstrated even greater involvement. Two such individuals, Anna Gremsin and Regina Hurlewegin, contributed substantially to the Zwölfbändiges Buch der Medizin (Twelve-Volume Book of Medicine) of Ludwig V, the elector of the Palatinate from 1502 to 1544. Ludwig’s great interest in medicine motivated him to copy three thousand pages of medical tracts and recipes, noting the source of a significant number of the more than twenty-two thousand entries. Anna’s name appears in connection with approximately four hundred entries, that of Regina with more than nine hundred. The remedies offered by these women do not differ at all from those attributed to male healers: there are herbal remedies as well as charms such as the following:

Noch eins fur den wurm¹⁶

Schreibe diese wordt an ein zettell: Cardia Caredentia nestia Simponia Caradiaticca Tensatica anos Amos Sanctiuicatio; Oder sprich: Jch beschwer dich, wurm, wo du seiest, Bei dem vatter vnd dem sune vnd dem hailigen gaist Vnd bei dem hailigen man Sant Job, Das du so bald sterbest.

[Another one for the worm

Write these words on a slip of paper: Cardia Caredentia nestia Simponia Caradiaticca Tensatica anos Amos Sanctiuicatio; or recite: I adjure you, worm, wherever you may be, by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and by the holy man Saint Job, that you die soon.]

Ein segen für den augenschweren¹⁷

Sprich: Sant nicasius het ein flecken in den augen Vnd badt Godt, wer seinen namen anrüefft, Das der erlöst würde von dem schmertzen der augen. Sant Nicasie, Gottes merteller, vertilg den schmertzen der augen des N. + Jn dem namen des vatters + vnd des suns + vnd des hailigen gaists, amen. Vnd früm drej messen Jn Sant Nicasien er.

[A blessing for the pain in the eyes

Say: Saint Nicasius had a sty in his eye and entreated God that whoever would call his name would be relieved from the pain of the eyes. Saint Nicasius, God’s martyr, destroy the pain in the eyes of N., + in the name of the Father + and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit, amen. And have 3 masses said in honor of Saint Nicasius.]

Regina’s name also is found in Codex palatinus germanicus 1, a collection of tracts dealing with the salutary effects of bloodletting, baths, and special diet. Keil maintains that the remedies that appear under her name betray familiarity with collections such as the Cirurgia of Peter von Ulm and indicate medical knowledge beyond that of a dilettante.¹⁸

The relationship between religion and medicine is a very close one in many cultures, and the alliance of the two in Western Europe proves no exception. The intertwining of religion and medicine has led scholars to posit two types of medicine in the Middle Ages. Loren MacKinney proposes the dichotomy between supernatural and human medicine; the former relies upon Christian saints and their relics as well as Christian pagan charms and magical incantations, whereas the latter stresses drugs, surgery, and diet.¹⁹ In her description of the relationship between Christianity and medicine, Nancy Siraisi characterizes religious and secular healing in terms of the supernatural and natural means employed; most significant for her argument is the role of miracles as part of the religious healing process in early Christianity.²⁰ Throughout the Middle Ages religious men and women dedicated their efforts to both types of healing practices. The period from the seventh century to the mid-eleventh century was the era of monastic medicine; the Council of Aachen of 817 placed the care and healing of the sick squarely in the hands of the religious,²¹ and already in the ninth century the names of male religious healers were recorded.²² Despite the meager documentation, most scholars have asserted that religious women also were active in the healing arts at the time. As the best educated members of society, religious men and women functioned as transcribers and disseminators of medical knowledge; their communities were centers of learning, housed scriptoria where medical texts could be copied, and included gardens which served as sources for herbal remedies. The first hospitals were either physically joined to religious institutions or directed by them,²³ and hence the inhabitants served as healers and caregivers, as physicians and as attendants. Although their principal responsibility was to fellow religious, they attended to the laity as well.²⁴ The hospitals became independent institutions as secular education gained in importance, as Church councils sought to create a dichotomy between the seelenarzt and the leibarzt, and as urban areas grew. Nonetheless, particularly outside the cities, the religious continued to perform the dual role of spiritual and physical healers throughout the Middle Ages.

The relationship of religious women to the healing arts in medieval Germany reflected prevailing emphases in spiritual life and developed in a parallel fashion to them. In the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, religious women wielded greater ecclesiastical authority and exercised a greater number of responsibilities within and without their communities.²⁵ In 657, Hilda, the grand-niece of King Edwin of Northumbria, became abbess of the double monastery at Whitby; recognized for her abilities as a teacher and administrator, she earned the adulation of no less a luminary than Bede himself. Lioba (died 782), a nun from the community of Wimborne, journeyed from her Anglo Saxon homeland to the area around Würzburg at the request of Boniface; she assisted in the conversion of the German people and later directed the abbey at Tauberbischofsheim. At the behest of Queen Hildegard, Lioba visited Charlemagne’s court at Aachen on several occasions. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the abbey of Gandersheim was allied closely with the royal family, whose princesses, for example, Gerberg II (died 1001), daughter of the duke of Bavaria, served as the leaders of the community. Because of the special status afforded the institution by Otto I in 947, the abbesses enjoyed greater freedom and additional rights, including the right of ban and representation at the imperial assembly.

However, the Cluniac reforms that began in the eleventh century and the subsequent concerns related to the cura monialium relegated religious women to a more subservient role, always under the watchful eye of a male confessor.²⁶ Around this same time several council decrees marked the beginning of the decline of monastic medicine. After 1163 monks and canons and in 1219 secular clergy were forbidden to leave the monastery to study medicine. Such bans would not have had an impact on religious women healers since there were no opportunities for religious women to pursue formal medical training in any case. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Between Magic and Medicine
• Part 2: The Emergence of Professionalism
• Notes on Contributors
• Index