The Healer's Calling: Women and Medicine in Early New England

This book, the first to describe women medical practitioners other than midwives in the colonial period, emphasizes that medical care was part of every woman's work. The Healer's Calling uses memorable anecdotes, engaging characters, and medical oddities to tell the fascinating story of the practice of household medicine in early America.

Rebecca J. Tannenbaum points out that housewives provided much of the medical care available in the seventeenth century. Elite women cared for the indigen...