Medical Science - Blog Posts

Women Healers vs. Science

NO. 1

From the 16th century women were seen as healers, or the nurses, abortionists, counsellors, and midwives, whereas since the 19th century and onward male professionals have taken over the role. These roles today are seen as jobs, where the service is being paid for; before, under the tutelage of women, these roles were as a way of life. In healthcare, women are the majority, of course. But they are considered workers, (clerks, dietary aides, technician, maids), whereas the bosses of these industries are usually men. So what changed? What occurred for this major switch?

NO. 2

Women healers have always been the standard, history can attest to that fact. But unlike male doctors who care for the rich, and clung to untested doctrines, it was woman healers have cared for the sickly and the poor, and therein lies the problem. ‘‘The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first, in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general. The status of women healers has risen and fallen with the status of women. When women healers were attacked, they were attacked as women; when they fought back, they fought back in solidarity with all women. It was a political struggle, second, in that it was a part of a class struggle. Women Healers were people’s doctors, and their medicine was part of a people’s subculture. To this very day women’s medical practice has thrived in the midst of this rebellious lower class movements which have struggled to be free from the established authorities. Male professionals, on the other hands served the ruling class—both medically and politically, with interests with advanced by the universities, the philanthropic foundations by the law.’’

NO. 3

So the change began when the terminology changed. When healing the sick was seen not as a testament to their abilities, but as witchcraft. In the age of witch-hunting, from the late early fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, from Germany to England, which was also the age of feudalism and well lasted into the age of reason. Witches symbolized the political, religious and sexual threat against the Catholic and Protestant Church, as well as to the state, so the witch hunts were all a well organized and financed campaigns of violence against the female peasant population. ‘‘Women made up some 85% of those executed—old women, young women, and children. Their scope alone suggests that the witch hunts represented a deep—seated social phenomenon which goes far beyond the history of medicine. In locale and timing, the most virulent witch hunts were associated with periods of great social upheaval shanking feudalism at its roots—mass peasant uprisings and conspiracies, the beginnings of capitalism, and the rise of Protestantism. There is fragmentary evidence—which feminists ought to follow up—suggesting that in some areas witchcraft represented a female-led peasant rebellion.’’

NO. 4

Witches were seen as a rebellion not just of the Church, but from God himself. You see, witches consorted with the devil, and were therefore evil, and in the eyes of the Church, was derived through sexuality. Sexuality was always associated with women, and pleasure in sexuality was sin and evil, and her power was from sexuality. Even those who were good, and used her gifts of healing to help, were deserving of death, just as all witches deserved death. ‘‘Witch healers were often the general medical practitioners for a people who had no doctors, no hospitals, and were bitterly afflicted with poverty and disease. In particular, the association with the witch and the midwife was strong. When faced with the misery of the poor, the Church dogma that experience in the world fleeting and unimportant. The wise woman, or witch, had a host of remedies which had been tested in years of use. Many of the herbal use remedies developed by witches still have their place in modern pharmacology. They had pain killers, digestive aids and anti—inflammatory agents. The witch—healer’s methods were as great a threat( to the Catholic Church, if not the Protestant) her results, for the witch was a empiricist: She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, or cause and effect. She trusted in her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy, and childbirth. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. In short, her magic was the science of her time.‘‘