Women Healers Through History: Revised and Expanded Edition

by Elisabeth Brooke

Overview

A powerful exploration of women's role as healers through the ages and their continuing fight for recognition.

This expanded and updated edition of the classic 1993 title, traces a lineage that spans the centuries in a revisionist history that celebrates women in medicine from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the present day.

Drawing on primary sources, the lives of revolutionary healers are explored in this comprehensive overview - from Trotula to Hildegard von Bingen, Mary Seacole to Wendy Savage.

Informed by the author's appreciation of the politics of medicine, this revised edition features brand-new sections on community medicine; indigenous healers; end-of-life care and twentieth-century pioneers such as Rosemary Gladstar, Ina May Gaskin and Louise Hay.

 

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781911597230
Publisher:	Aeon Books
Publication date:	04/30/2020
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Elisabeth Brooke qualified as a Medical Herbalist with the National Institute of Medical Herbalists in 1980. She has a private practice in London and teaches and lectures worldwide. She teaches workshops all over the world, teaching subjects such as herbalism and astrology. She is a guest tutor at Heartwood School of Herbal Medicine and has also tutored in Medical Astrology for the Company and produced articles for their Magazine. Elisabeth has a BA (Hons,) in Classical Studies and is studying for a MA, looking a Greek creation myths.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xv

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1 Healing in antiquity 1

Chapter 2 Medicine in the early Middle Ages 25

Chapter 3 Trotula of Salerno 37

Chapter 4 Hildegard of Bingen 49

Chapter 5 Women physicians in the late Middle Ages 67

Chapter 6 The struggle to practise: women healers under threat 85

Chapter 7 Women healers from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century 111

Chapter 8 Women enter the profession: the struggles of nineteenth-century women doctors 145

Chapter 9 Persecution through committee 185

Chapter 10 Women shamans and conjurers 205

Chapter 11 Radical resistance-women of colour 217

Chapter 12 Twentieth-century pioneers 233

Chapter 13 Community medicine-pioneering projects 261

Chapter 14 End of life care 277

Conclusion 295

Notes 299

Resources 311

Bibliography 313

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

A powerful exploration of women's role as healers through the ages and their continuing fight for recognition.

From the Publisher