Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy

by Sharon T. Strocchia

Overview

A new history uncovers the crucial role women played in the great transformations of medical science and health care that accompanied the Italian Renaissance.

In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life—from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries—drove the Italian medical economy. In convent pharmacies, pox hospitals, girls’ shelters, and homes, women were practitioners and purveyors of knowledge about health and healing, making significant contributions to early modern medicine.

Sharon Strocchia offers a wealth of new evidence about how illness was diagnosed and treated, whether by noblewomen living at court or poor nurses living in hospitals. She finds that women expanded on their roles as health care providers by participating in empirical work and the development of scientific knowledge. Nuns, in particular, were among the most prominent manufacturers and vendors of pharmaceutical products. Their experiments with materials and techniques added greatly to the era’s understanding of medical care. Thanks to their excellence in medicine urban Italian women had greater access to commerce than perhaps any other women in Europe.

Forgotten Healers provides a more accurate picture of the pursuit of health in Renaissance Italy. More broadly, by emphasizing that the frontlines of medical care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Strocchia encourages us to rethink the history of medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674241749
Publisher:	Harvard
Publication date:	12/17/2019
Series:	I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History , #24
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	701,007
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sharon T. Strocchia is Professor of History at Emory University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of Renaissance Italy, gender and sexuality in early modern Europe, and the history of health and medicine. She is the author of Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence, which won the Marraro Prize for the best book on Italian history from the American Catholic Historical Association.

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

A Note on Dates and Currency xi

Introduction 1

1 The Politics of Health at the Early Medici Court 14

2 Gifts of Health 50

Medical Exchanges between Court and Convent

3 The Business of Health 85

Convent Pharmacies in Renaissance Italy

4 Agents of Health 130

Nun Apothecaries and Ways of Knowing

5 Restoring Health 179

Care and Cure in Renaissance Pox Hospitals

Conclusion

Abbreviations 227

Notes 229

Bibliography 289

Acknowledgments 319

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

Makes a vital contribution to the history of medicine, gender studies, and Renaissance studies. With plentiful excursuses throughout that reward curiosity with delightful explanations, and lucid and engaging prose, Strocchia showcases the various roles carried out by women in the provision of health care in early modern Italy.

Sheila Barker

Impeccably researched and highly readable, Forgotten Healers is the most comprehensive study of early modern women’s involvement in medicine to date. A remarkable book with fresh perspectives that significantly advances our understanding of the distinctive ways of learning and knowing that characterized the early modern age.

Sandra Cavallo

Beautifully illuminates the many ways in which women acted as medical agents and became medical artisans in Renaissance Florence and beyond. Strocchia’s deeply researched study reveals how Medici women, controversial saintly healers, nun apothecaries, and hospital nurses in an age of syphilis all participated in a political economy of family, faith, health, and charity. Essential reading for anyone interested in gender and medicine in the early modern era.

Paula Findlen

This superbly researched and elegantly written study of women’s roles in the pursuit of health in late Renaissance Italy puts women back in the center of medical knowledge and medical practices during a major turning point in European history.

Judith Brown

Forgotten Healers defines medical work to include the activities of people beyond professional physicians and surgeons. This broader understanding of early modern medical knowledge and practice underwrites Strocchia’s powerful rethinking of early modern medicine, making women and women’s contributions not only integral but central.

Katharine Park

Based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature, this clearly written book demonstrates that women played a large role in Italian Renaissance health care.

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