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Thou shalt not suffer a woman to heal: An investigation

into perception of female ‘nature’, physiology, gender

roles, and their impact on female healing in

Renaissance Europe.

iBSc History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine

HPSC0053: Research Project

Student Number: 21003740

22nd April 2024

Word count: 10585

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Introduction

In 1249, a woman known as Hersend la ‘fiscieinne’ undertook the long and arduous journey

to the Holy Land with Louis IX’s crusade, where she treated the king and his soldiers on the

battlefield (Whaley, 2011, p.18). Female physicians like Hersend were not anomalous, nor

were they unique to periods of wartime crisis. As we turn our eyes gaze away from the

medical tents of the battlefield, we see that women were healing across medieval Western

Europe. From Katherine “la surgiene”, who worked in London in 1286 (Talbot and

Hammond, 1965, p.200), to ‘medicae’ sisters Matilda and Solicita Ford, women played an

integral role in the dispensation of medical treatment in European medieval society (Whaley,

2011, p.20). However, the extent to which female healers have been able to practise has

ebbed and flowed as beliefs and societal attitudes regarding female power, intellect and

gendered social roles have changed. As the Renaissance began, perceptions of women’s

ability and inherent nature shifted. At the same time, the attitude of the medical establishment

towards female healers, who subverted these ideas, began to sour.

Might this shift in the understanding of the female body and intellect have impacted the

change in medical perception and treatment of female healers? Investigating the potential

intellectual factors that led to this change may shed light on a new facet of the issue of female

healers’ ostracization.

In this essay I examine whether the intellectual changes of the Renaissance, namely the rise

of Humanism and its interaction with theological ideas of female inferiority, may have

impacted university-trained physicians’ perception of women’s nature and capabilities, and

hence, their attitude towards female healers.

My intention is neither to argue that the rise of Humanism and its passion for classical texts,

nor theological teachings about women inherited from Medieval Scholastic theology, were a

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direct cause for the exile of women from professional medicine; such a question is far too

complex to unravel in the space allowed.

Instead, I examine what ideas these movements contained regarding women, whether these

ideas are reflected in curriculum university physicians received during the late 15th to 16th

centuries, and if their influence can be detected in the contemporary medical writing on

women, and female healers.

What will be discussed:

This investigation will consist of four chapters. In the first chapter, I summarise the

secondary literature on medieval and renaissance healing, existing theories regarding

women’s ostracization from medicine to illustrate this essay’s position in the wider academic

literature.

I then identify the group being discussed by defining the role of women in medieval medicine

before these changes began, in chapter 2. This provides a better understanding of the group

under investigation in this essay, and context as to how female healers may have subverted

evolving ideas of female ‘nature’ as Renaissance doctor’s understanding of women began to

change.

In the third chapter, I examine the factors influencing the perception of women’s ‘nature’

during the 15th and 16th centuries, and what arguments they contained regarding female

inferiority. First, the theological doctrine on women is investigated, and then the intellectual

changes brought about by the Humanist movement, with its increase in readership of classical

texts, and provision of support to classical Scholastic ideas of women. I then examine

whether medical professionals would have been exposed to these narratives during their

education, by examining if the texts containing these ideas were present on the university

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curricula of the 15th and 16th centuries. These ideas may have been disseminated through

academia to medical professionals, potentially influencing their perception of women, and

their right to practise medicine.

Finally, in the fourth chapter, several Renaissance medical commentaries and court records

regarding female healers are examined, to investigate whether this changing understanding of

women’s capabilities and ‘natural’ roles in academia can be seen influencing doctors’

attitudes toward female healers.

I then summarise my findings to conclude whether there is sufficient evidence of these

Renaissance changes influencing medical perception of female healers.

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Chapter 1: An overview of the scholarship on female healing

To begin, I briefly outline the existing literature on female healing, and its relationship to the

formal medical community. This will provide an overview of the work that has already been

conducted and demonstrate the position of my thesis within this area of enquiry.

There are many avenues through which the complex phenomenon of women being ostracised

from formal medicine in the early modern period has been investigated. However, to

concretely examine, isolate and explain the mechanisms that led to a phenomenon spanning

several hundred years across most of Western Europe is far beyond the scope of this essay.

Fissel, Green, Strocchia, Watt, and Yoshikawa’s works contribute detailed analyses

documenting the broad range of roles, from wise woman, to surgeon, to domestic healer, that

women were able to practise in during the Middle Ages (Fissel, 2008; Green, 1989;

Strocchia, 2014; Watt, 2015; Yoshikawa). Whaley’s comprehensive analysis of female

healers’ activity provides a plethora of examples of these practitioners, who were diverse in

class, education, and marital status. From Whaley’s work it becomes apparent medical care

was practised not only by upper class wives such as the Margaret Paston, but by a broad

range of different statuses of women, from peasant lay healers like Alice Skedyngton, to

physician’s widows like Joan Lee (Whaley, 2011, p.19, 152). The nature of female healers’

employment and their involvement in society will be investigated further in chapter 2.

During the 15th and 16th centuries however, the nature of these women’s medical practice

came into conflict with stereotypes about women’s nature that were gaining support, through

their ability to earn a wage, provide for their family, exercise their judgement in patient care,

and maintain a career beyond the hearth and home. Whaley argues that these changing ideas

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about women’s ‘nature’ negatively “affected the prospects” of female healers, and their

ability to practise commercially (Whaley, 2011, p.67).

This change in perception of female healers may in part be due to the academic changes

occurring during the Renaissance, which produced new evidence to support existing ideas of

female inferiority (Whaley, 2011, p.48). The literature on Renaissance intellectual history

explains how classical ideas about women were revived by the rise of the Humanists, who

were “collecting editing, translating and publishing” newly recovered ancient texts, to great

academic excitement, during the period (Hirai, 2011, p.1; Kaufman, 1973; Ruether, 2014;

Wiesner, 2019).

Mercer, Maclean and Wiesner argue that a more negative, ‘biologically supported’ idea of

female inferiority became increasingly common following wider readership of these texts.

(Mercer, 2018; Wiesner, 2019; Maclean, 1980). The Humanist drive for inclusion of these

ancient texts on university curricula may have disseminated these arguments, exposing most

of the educated elite to the misogynistic beliefs and attitudes of ancient writers on women, as

they examined their work to learn rhetoric, philosophy, and oratory (Costello, 2013).

These classical arguments about women’s ‘natural’ inferiority had been unknown during the

Middle Ages, due to many of these classical texts being lost during late antiquity in the chaos

of the fall of Rome and decline in Greek literacy and interest in Europe (Mack, 2019). While

the medieval church officially maintained a woman’s place was theologically beneath man,

the socioeconomic demands of Medieval feudal society meant that “the family was the

productive economic unit and all were partners in the business of survival” (Kaufman, 1973,

p.147). Consequently, women’s essential participation in social and economic life led to "a

greater sense of the normal personality of woman” and her capabilities, than in the

Renaissance, through her “productive contributions” to the “social and economic” health of

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the community, whether domestically, or professionally (Kaufman, 1973, p.150). This in part

explains the more positive attitude towards female healers before the Renaissance.

Minkowski’s 1992 paper provides a broader historiography of medieval women’s diverse

medical roles as nurses, midwives, and folk healers in early modern Europe, in addition to the

theological and legal challenges they began to face during the Renaissance (Minkowski,

1992). However, there is an overemphasis of the significance of the Witch Trials in the loss

of women from the medical field, that is not supported, and is not considered in this paper.

The theory that disproportionate targeting of female healers and midwives in the European

witch hunts can explain the decrease of female practitioners was first proposed by Barbara

Ehrenreich and Deidre English, and quickly became popular among historians in the late 20th

century (Ehrenreich and English, 1973). However, this “early feminist reinterpretation” is

now widely discredited, due to its reliance on “romantic theories” and lack of substantial

evidence (Horsley and Horsley, 1987, p.2). Re-examination of trial records revealed that “in

few of the vast numbers of trials” were female practitioners prosecuted, with even fewer

accused in connection to their medical practise (Harley, 1990, p.1). It is now generally

believed that there is not “clear evidence” that female healers and midwives were persecuted

in “disproportionate numbers” to other female groups (Horsley and Horsley, 1987, p.13), and

not merely “caught in the witch hunters' dragnet” (Horsley, 1979, p.711).

Another explanation of what caused the persecution of women practitioners is the hypothesis

of competition. The works of Kibre, Siraisi, Strocchia, Green and Wiesner examine how the

rise of university medical schools, attended exclusively by male medical students, led to

legislation against women in medicine. They argue that universities perceived female healers

as threats to their financial security and standing in the community (Kibre, 1953; Green,

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1989; Siraisi, 1990; Strocchia, 2014; Wiesner, 2019). While there is much support for this

hypothesis, and it is further confirmed by the sources examined in this essay, the exclusion of

women due to medical competition has been thoroughly examined, and I have little to add on

the matter. However, it this theory is taken into consideration while analysing the

contemporary medical sources on female healers in chapter 4.

Considering the existing literature, it may therefore be productive to examine whether this

emerging academic narrative during the Renaissance may have influenced medical

practitioners’ perception of women, and their resulting attitudes towards female healers.

More recent studies have repeatedly observed a correlation between the narrative an

individual is exposed to surrounding a certain group, and their resulting perception of and

behaviour towards the discussed group (Reichl, Ali, and Uyeda, 2018; Rudman and Borgida,

1995; Soral, Wiktor et al., 2018). These correlations have been replicated across a diverse

range of groups and narratives, from exposure to hate speech and subsequent violence

towards ethnic minorities, and significantly, regarding exposure to sexist narratives and

treatment of women (Rudman and Borgida, 1995). These studies confirm relevance of

investigating the intellectual narrative doctors and scholars received regarding women, as it

may well have influenced their perception of gender roles, the nature of women, and as a

result, their perception of female healers’ right to practise, regardless of any personal

motivations that also drove them to actively seek prosecution of them.

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Chapter 2: The nature of Medieval women’s medical practice

To give the reader a better understanding of the community discussed in this essay, I have

briefly summarised the nature and extent of female healing in Medieval Europe. The

historiography of medieval medical practitioners has traditionally been centred around

university educated male physicians. However, more recently, historians have suggested that

female healers should be included under this descriptor of ‘medical practitioner’, given their

“central”, and in some cases, highly skilled healing roles in early modern society (Fissel,

2008, p.1).

In the Middle Ages, male physicians were by no means the sole providers of medical care for

most of the European population. A considerable share of this work was undertaken by

women, either professionally, or domestically, in their roles as wives and mothers (Whaley,

2011, p.25). If we do not consider the work of wise women, midwives, mothers, wives,

doctor’s widows, and nursing sisters to be ‘medical practice’, we do a disservice both to the

level of skill and learned experience they utilised in their consultations and nursing, acquired

through apprenticeship to female elders, via oral education, and from case experience. In

addition, Wiesner argues that we deny that historically the vast majority of medieval Europe

received any care at all: the attention of a male ‘physick’ was not available to much of the

European population, and this was mostly undertaken by female empirics and relatives

(Wiesner, 2019 p.129-130).

Minkowski has gone so far as to claim that in this period female healers “performed a service

virtually indistinguishable” from the work of university educated physicians, and indeed

“many used the same healing methods surgeons” and other formally trained specialties

employed (Minkowski, 1992, p.289). A multitude of diverse healthcare professionals existed,

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and before the Renaissance, Green and Fissel argue that women “were found scattered

throughout” this “broad medical community” (Green, 1989, p.439; Fissel, 2008, p.5).

Regrettably, there are few primary sources documenting these individuals, but some do

remain, albeit reflecting smaller numbers of women than it is believed were truly practising

(Whaley, 2011, p.33). Women have been estimated to have represented only 1.2% of

practitioners active between the 13th and 15th centuries, however, this scarcity of women in

the physical record can be anticipated, due to their lack of formal training, enrolment, or

possession of licencing documents (Siraisi, 1990, p.27). Hence, they rarely appear in the legal

record unless taken to court over some grievance or are referenced in a will or similar

document (Whaley, 2011, p.33). A survey by Pelling and Webster revealed at least 60 women

in London alone in 1560, by searching for “any individual whose occupation is basically

concerned with the care of the sick”, instead of the formal descriptor of ‘physician’ (Pelling

and Webster 1979, p.166). More women were likely practising without leaving any formal

documentation for such surveys to evaluate.

Even if they are scarce in formal legal records, in the historical literature, women can be

found treating unwell family members, assisting friends and female relatives in childbirth and

at deathbeds. Some treated the sick in the secular capacity of community ‘wise woman’ and

occasionally as ‘medicae’1, (Kealey, 1985, p.475). Others healed ecclesiastically as nursing

sisters, with examples like Abbess Euphemia (d.1257) and Hildegard of Bingen (Kealey,

1985, p.477; Minkowski, 1992, p.294). Others provided treatment and medicine to family

members as wives and mothers, as is seen in the Paston and Stoner families’ letter collections

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The term ‘medicus’ (f. medica) meant a “physician”, or “someone with training” in medicine (Whaley, 2011,
p.20). These practitioners were closer in knowledge and education to, but not the same as, the university-trained
physicians than to the lay empiric.

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(Ingram, 2019), or nursed, as Margery Kempe documents in her autobiography (Kempe,

1940, pp.179–81).

The Paston letters contain several examples of their matriarchs, most notably Margaret

Paston, providing medical expertise to friends and acquaintances. Her patients were diverse,

from their “seke” “cosyn Bernay”, (Davis, 1971, pp.370–1), to whom Margaret provided

advice and medicines in 1473, to individuals as distinguished as the “Kynges Attorney Jamys

Hobart” with “an ache in hys knee”, to whom Margery sent a “large playster of your flose

vngwentorum [a large compress of your best ointment]” in 1486 (Davis, 1971, p.628.).

The Paston women’s correspondence provides an insight into a world in which women were

involved and respected in healing roles from “nursing to treating ailments and to prescribing

and dispensing medicines” in their capacity as wives, mothers, and female friends (Watt,

2015, p.39). There is also little indication, as some Rowland claims, that they operated simply

within the remit of ‘women’s health’, cared for only female patients, or purely nursed the sick

(Rowland, 1981). Kaufman suggests that these examples underline the “startling discrepancy

between the viciously abusive or patronizingly idealized literary images and woman's actual

role as the greater part of the medieval world understood and accepted her”, in Medieval

society and medicine (Kaufman, 1973, p.141).

Such trust in female healers was not only extended the Paston women, nor was their practise

merely confined to the domestic setting. Professional female healers were also employed

conventionally by their communities, and even as far as the royal courts, as the case of

Margery Cobbe testifies. Cobbe was a Devon born ‘obstetrix’ who cared for the household of

King Edward IV and received a pension of £10 a year for her services (Bourdillon, 1988,

p.11).

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Having established the nature of female healing, their standing and role in Medieval society,

and the issues in identifying them in the historical record, we will now examine the potential

factors that altered perceptions of them as the Renaissance began.

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Chapter 3: Renaissance influences on perceptions of women

In this chapter I examine the doctrines of two ideologies central to the Renaissance

understanding of women. I then identify where Renaissance doctors may have been exposed

to these ideas, and how their perception of female healers may have been informed by them.

Through my research it appears the primary place doctors would have received these

narratives surrounding women’s ‘nature’ and abilities was through their university education,

which placed a heavy emphasis on classical authors. These authors proposed an anatomical

explanation for the Hierarchical Difference supported by church doctrine, which is discussed

in more detail below.

Women’s ability to participate in society outside of the home was significantly impacted by a

range of intellectual and social changes during the Renaissance, which altered the perception

of a woman’s rightful place in society, and her inherent nature (Whaley, 2011, p.48).

One of these factors was an increase in awareness of the concept of what Whaley refers to as

“biological difference”2, which “was propounded by classical philosophers and physicians”

rediscovered by the Humanist movement (Whaley, 2011, p.48). Another was the “Christian

worldview”, which at the time, was still significantly influenced by the work of the

Scholastics’ and their commentary on “the Patristics…[who] were influenced by the classical

biological justification of female inferiority” (ibid).

Both the idea of ‘biological’ difference in Humanism and the Renaissance Christian

worldview shared a notion of what Mercer calls “Hierarchical Difference”, or “the view that

2
This term is somewhat anachronistic; the concept of ‘biology’ was known to neither the classical authors
presenting these ideas, nor the Renaissance intellectuals reading their work. These arguments centre around
what would have been known as ‘natural philosophy’ during the 15-16th centuries, although today it is true they
would be considered ‘biological’, ‘physiological’ or ‘anatomical’ theories.

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female bodies are imperfect compared to male bodies from which it is supposed to follow

that women are morally inferior to men” (Mercer, 2018, p.185).

Mercer’s argument that “the remains of ancient arguments for HD form the backbone” of

Western misogynistic thought is eloquently argued, well substantiated, and supported in this

essay (ibid). This investigation of the Renaissance notion of ‘woman’ starts with the

theological beliefs about female inferiority in the Renaissance, and then examines the

influence of this classical revival, which may have subsequently reinforced them.

Women in Renaissance theological doctrine

As a period of intense religious turmoil and revaluation of tradition, doctrine and authority,

the Renaissance bore witness to the Protestant Reformation, and subsequent Catholic counter

reformation. Despite these changes, medieval church doctrines that hierarchized man over

woman persisted in both Catholic and Protestant denominations (Whaley, 2011, p.54;

Maclean, 1980, p.27). These doctrines utilised both the story of the Fall and the idea of Eve

being created from Adam’s rib to justify female subjugation to the church, and to man

(Kaufman, 1973). While Humanism did challenge this continuity with new ideas about the

nature of the human body, the presence of Hierarchical Difference in classical texts meant

that women were also relegated to a subordinate status within this new understanding-

supplementing, rather than overturning, the Scholastic conception of female inferiority

(Wiesner, 2019, p.23).

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The Fall

The Genesis story of ‘The Fall’ “was the primary ammunition used to subjugate women to

the authority of the Church, the state, and men” in Medieval and early modern Europe

(Achterberg, 1991, p.66), and can be understood as the trunk of misogynistic theological

thought, from which all branches on women’s inferiority stems. To remain as close to the

narrative familiar to Renaissance theologians, I will be quoting from the 1611 edition of the

King James Bible.

Having been tempted by a serpent to eat from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, Eve “took

the fruit thereof, and eate, and gaue also vnto her husband with her” (The Holy Bible:

Genesis. 3: 4-6). Both are expelled from the Garden of Eden as punishment, with Adam

forced to toil, ploughing the Earth, and Eve’s punishments being to “bring forth children” “in

sorrow”, and that her husband “shall rule over” her (The Holy Bible: Genesis. 3:16).

This narrative of women’s inherent weakness and inferiority is perpetuated elsewhere in the

Bible. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, we see that St. Paul’s argument for female inferiority, and

women’s need for subjugation, is rooted in this narrative. His desire that women do not

“usurp authority over the man,” but remain “in silence” is justified by the assertion that

“Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression” (The Holy

Bible: 1 Tim. 2:11-14). These teachings were used to supply divine support to their exclusion

of women from the church hierarchy by the Patristics, and later expanded upon and

reinforced by medieval Scholastics like Thomas Aquinas (Achterberg, 1991 p.68).

The temptation of Eve was used to demonstrate that woman was inherently more fallible,

more prone to sin, more susceptible to trickery, and morally weaker than man. Moreover, it

demonstrated the dangerous consequences if this natural fallibility was not regulated. Having

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brought forth the suffering of man through her weakness, it was deduced that “coercive

subjugation of woman to man” was needed, in order “to guard against woman's tendencies to

disobedience”, and the harm this disobedience could cause (Ruether, 2014, p.86).

Reuther summarises the logic of Church thinkers on the Fall, and its consequences as

follows:

“If Eve had persisted in the truth, she would not have been subjected to the rule

of her husband […] In this way Eve is punished” (Ruether, 1999, p.120)

From Adam, for Adam: ribs and subjugation

The second popular Renaissance argument for women’s inferiority stemmed from her

perceived divinely ordained position as beneath man, created to assist, obey, and bear his

children, having been formed from his rib. In Genesis 2, the Lord decides that from one of

Adam’s ribs He “will make him [Adam] an helpe” and taking one of his ribs ‘made hee a

woman & brought her vnto the man.” (The Holy Bible: Genesis. 2:18-22). This story was

used to separate male and female in their relationship to divinity: man was made ‘in the

image of God’, but woman, on the other hand, was made in the ‘image of man’, from his own

flesh, for his own flesh to benefit. We see this interpretation elsewhere in the Bible,

especially in the writing of the Apostles of the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians we hear St

Paul explain that women are “of the man” and created “for the man.” (The Holy Bible: 1Cor.

11:8-9). This belief was used to reinforce her duty to submit to both her husband, and within

the Church (Wiesner, 2019, p.240).

Paul insists in the New Testament that women must submit because “Adam was first formed,

then Eue” (The Holy Bible: 1Tim. 2:13-14). Here we see not only the role that this ‘Rib

Theory’ plays in the argument for the domination of women, but we also see how these two

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theological arguments, the Fall and creation from Rib, interacted with each other in the

theological perception of women.

Both narratives perpetuate the idea of women’s domination being both necessary, and

divinely ordained: God’s command that women be under the control of men is threefold: due

to her creation solely to obey and assist, due to her tendency to err, which needs to be curbed,

and due to its divine ordination as her punishment for the Fall. Not only does the Lord declare

that it is right, but He declares that it is necessary, and natural. Evidence to support this

teaching can be found in the original Old Testament teachings, but also in the work of the

Apostles, and as a result, in that of the Patristics, forming a solid evidential platform on

which the misogynistic teachings of the church could be constructed further into doctrine.

A mutilated male? The Classical Texts of Humanism

The arrival of Humanism in academia may be another key component in the change in

Renaissance women’s status. Classical literature was believed by the Humanists to reveal

virtues and aspects of human wisdom through its philosophy, dialectics, and oratory skill,

which had been lost during the ‘Dark Ages’ of medieval Europe (Grundin, 2024).

The social beliefs of individualism, human dignity and learning proposed by Humanism may

seem unlikely to have decreased the women’s status, indeed, the importance of education

might even have benefitted some aristocratic women (Grundin, 2024). However, the

invention of the printing press in the early 15th century allowed for the rapid dissemination of

the “ancient literary heritage” that Humanists were compiling and translating, to great

acclaim across Western Europe (Hirai, 2011, p.1). As a result, a “common philological

scholarship”, with a heavy emphasis on classical literature was common to intellectual

discourse across disciplines by the mid 16th century (Siraisi, 2004, p.30).

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Attending university following the regulatory decrees of Henry VIII in 1535 and Elizabeth I

in 1559, Renaissance undergraduates (Costello, 2013, p.41), would have followed a

curriculum rich in “dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geography, and music”, based primarily

around the reading and analysis of classical texts (ibid, p.10). In short, the undergraduate

syllabus was filled with the works of the ancients, that all university students, and

importantly, doctors (medicine was a postgraduate qualification) would have read. As a

result, students may have been passively exposed to ancient theories of female inferiority

from a plethora of ancient sources, from Aristotle to Galen, while studying the rhetoric and

philosophy of their authors (Whaley, 2011, p.48).

An example of this heavy classical emphasis in Renaissance education is provided in

Cambridge tutor Richard Holdsworth’s description of his undergraduate syllabus in 1613

(Costello, 2013, p.42). Across four years, his students at St John’s College would receive

instruction in logic, ethics, and metaphysics, through a variety of classical set texts. These

included, but were not limited to, Aristotle’s Organon, Physics, Ethica, De Anima and De

Coelo (Costello, 2013, p.42). This was coupled with instruction in rhetoric, classical oratory,

and history, centred around readings of Cicero, Erasmus, Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus,

Demosthenes and many more (ibid, p.43). We see in several preserved student notebooks

from the same period, that this curriculum was not unique to Holdsworth’s students, but

representative of undergraduate education at Oxford and Cambridge as a whole (Costello,

2013, p.37).

It has therefore been posited that Renaissance doctor’s schooling was “at least partly shaped

by the attention paid by Humanists […] to ancient writers” (Siraisi, 2004, p.4), with classical

works having taken “well-defined place” within both undergraduate arts and medical

curricula by the mid 1500s (ibid, p.30).

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While Humanism cannot be considered as the single factor lowering Renaissance women’s

status, the introduction of a wider classical base to university education may reinforced more

theologically based conceptions of female inferiority popularised by the earlier Scholastic

movement in academia. Reading of such texts during their education may well have shaped

powerful doctor’s conceptions of women, their capabilities, and hence their response to the

presence of female healers in the field. It seems more than a mere coincidence that perception

of women, and hence female healers, became far more negative, as the rediscovery of

‘ancient’ arguments for female inferiority like Hierarchical Difference were spreading

through academia, their practice a clear violation of these ‘natural’ sex differences that were

gaining support (Mercer, 2018, p.185). Next, I examine what several classical authors

rediscovered by the Humanist movement believed regarding women, to better understand the

narrative medical professionals would have been receiving regarding women during their

education.

The Hippocratic Corpus:

Becoming available in its entirety for the first time in Latin in Marco Fabio Calvi’s

translation of 1525, to great excitement, the Hippocratic Corpus “presented an

overwhelmingly negative view of the female” body (Whaley, 2011, p.49), providing the “first

clear differentiation of female and male bodies” (Mercer, 2018, pp.188, 199). Due to its

integrated position in the medical canon, the teachings of the Corpus were central to the

doctrine of the Renaissance medical community.

As a result of her “more porous” body taking in more of “what is being exhaled from her

cavity”, Hippocrates believed women menstruated due to an inability to regulate this excess

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internally (Hippocrates, Diseases of Women 1, 1.13ff). Men were superior since their “solider

flesh” took “in only as much (sc. blood) as is necessary”, while women’s physiology required

mechanisms to compensate for their poorer homeostasis (ibid).

Moreover, Hierarchical Difference emerges more prominently in Hippocrates’ recommended

treatments for women’s diseases. A woman’s womb endangered her to further dysregulation,

requiring regular intercourse to keep it either hydrated, or open to allow regulation by

menstruation (Hippocrates, Diseases of Women I, 2.15; Diseases of Women II, 28.309;

Nature of Women, 8.32.6-8).

If a woman was not sexually active, he argues, “the mouth of the exit does not open up” and

blood is “left with nowhere to flow out”, causing disease (Hippocrates, Girls, 8.466-468).

The author of Girls, for example, explains that unmarried young women become unwell

because “the blood springs up in its excess to the heart and the diaphragm. the heart becomes

stupefied, then …numb, and finally […] these women become deranged” (ibid). Lack of

intercourse, and implicitly, the lack of a husband over her, was believed to result in pain,

disease, and even mental defectiveness. Hippocrates goes so far as to state that this

dysregulation of fluid can lead to unmarried women becoming “murderous”, “afraid”, and

even that it “tempts them to evil”, “throw themselves down wells, or to hang themselves”

(Hippocrates, Girls, 1.1.468). Unfortunately, the solution to this illness is “to cohabit with

men as soon as they can: for if they become pregnant, they recover.” (Hippocrates, Girls,

1.1.470).

The Hippocratic cure for women’s inferior physiology is therefore subjugation to her

reproductive role, and significantly, to her husband physically. In this way, the Hippocratic

Corpus recommends the most reliable way to keep women in good health is to keep them

beneath their husbands, and pregnant. The repercussions of such a narrative being read by

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academics and taught to doctors cannot be understated. The Corpus “placed women in

bondage to their procreative powers and so …to their husbands” furthering the tradition of

“using women’s bodies as a means to justify differential treatment” (Mercer, 2018, p.191).

Depicting women as dependent on superior male bodies to maintain internal ‘balance’, may

have contributed to a narrative emerging from Humanist study of classical texts of women as

physiologically and socially inferior to men.

Aristotle:

However, the classical writer who came to dominate the university curriculum during this

period was Aristotle (Wiesner, 2019, p.27). In short, Aristotle argued eloquently,

‘scientifically’, and at length, about women’s subordinate position to men. Academic interest

in his work was rekindled by the first edition of his complete works in Greek being published

by Aldus Manutius in 1495-1498, which compiled and made his whole corpus widely

available for the first time (Kraye, 1995, p.201).

Several of Aristotle’s works were preserved in the Middle Ages and studied by the

Scholastics, who had taken great pain to try and unite his world view with their “one grand

philosophical system” and theology (Wiesner, 2019, p.29). However, copies were few, and

received far less widespread attention before Humanism. While some Aristotelian concepts

were challenged under Humanism, many of his key ideas remained accepted, either in their

original configuration, or in an adapted, improved or more expounded form in other writers,

like Galen or Humanist intellectuals’ works (Maclean, 1980, p.44). Either way, Aristotelian

worldview remained prominent in academic circles, and regardless of its changing

interpretation on certain matters, a wider selection of his texts became part of the curriculum,

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in part due to the educational reforms enacted by Henry VIII mentioned above, which

ordered universities to instruct arts students using “Aristotle primarily” (Costello, 2013, p.9-

10).

Aristotle’s teachings convey the idea that the “obstacles that women face arise from the

inferiority of their bodies, an inferiority that infects all aspects of their lives”, including their

minds, morals, and capabilities (Mercer, 2018, p.192). Since “what has a smaller share of

heat is weaker, and the female is just like that” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals 726b.30ff),

a woman “lacks the power to concoct semen out of the final state of the

nourishment…because of the coldness of its nature” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals,

728a.18-22). She passes this incomplete substance as menstrual blood, which “is semen,

though in an impure condition, i.e., it lacks one constituent, and one only, the principle of

Soul” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 737a.25ff). From this, he deduces she is “as it were,

a deformed male” (ibid).

We see the concept of Hierarchical Difference emerge once more in Aristotle: her lack of

‘seed’, indicating an inferior body, but also in the implying that not only her anatomical

contribution, but her spiritual contribution to her child, is less than that of a man. Man

contributes the seed, the active power (δυνάμεις’, or dynamis) (Aristotle, Generation of

Animals, 772a.8ff), and the soul (the most philosophically significant component of the

offspring); woman, merely the base flesh.

This narrative of physical inferiority causing mental or moral inferiority, is continued

throughout Aristotle’s works (Maclean, 1980, p.31). In History of Animals, Aristotle argues

that “nature makes a similar differentiation in the mental characteristics of the sexes”

(Aristotle, History of Animals, 9.608a.22-24). He argues the insufficient development that

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creates female bodies also causes women to be “less spirited than the males [...] softer, more

vicious, less simple, more impetuous” (Aristotle, History of Animals, 608a.35-b4).

But Aristotle does not stop here. Instead, he goes further, arguing that a woman is

“More compassionate than a husband and more given to tears, but also more jealous

and complaining and more apt to scold and fight […] more dispirited and despondent

[…] more shameless and lying, is readier to deceive […] more afraid of action, and in

general is less inclined to move” (Aristotle, History of Animals, 608b.9–16).

Due to these shortcomings, man is “by nature better fitted to command than the female”

(Aristotle, Politics, 1.1259b.4-5). As Whaley notes, women’s inherent mental and physical

weakness in Aristotelian thought “made it logical, and naturally predestined, that men

commanded, while women obeyed” (Whaley, 2011, p.51).

Galen

Perhaps the most influential classical source for the medical field specifically, was the

Galenic canon (Mercer, 2018, p.194), which became available in its entirety for the first time

in Diomede Bonardo’s 1490 Latin edition (Fortuna, 2019, p.437). The success of this

publication, and subsequent proliferation of interest in Galen’s works, is reflected in the sheer

quantity of editions in circulation during the period, with almost 600 editions of his writings

printed in the 16th century (Wiesner, 2019, p.29).

While Galen did propose new theories of his own, notably regarding anatomy, and the

physiological significance of the ‘Four Humours’, much of his writing on women

extrapolated and extended the ideas of his predecessors, Aristotle, and Hippocrates (Wiesner,

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2019, p.27). His key idea was once again that “the female is less perfect than the male for

one, principal reason- because she is colder.” (Galen, On the Usefulness of Parts, 14.6).

Interestingly, he unites a biological, and divine cause for this sex difference, that is seen in

the Renaissance medical literature, as classical texts became aligned with creation theology.

Women deemed inferior due to their lack of “Nature’s primary instrument”, heat, (Galen, On

the Usefulness of Parts, 14.6.299) but also “as part of the creator’s great design” (Mercer,

2018, p.196), not only in their bodies, but also in their minds and dispositions. Galen argues

that women are “less active, less powerful, and therefore less capable of attaining wisdom

and virtue” than men, leading them to “necessarily dominate”, echoing the concept of

Hierarchical Difference seen in Aristotle and Hippocrates (Mercer, 2018, p.196).

As Galenic texts, with their incorporated Hippocratic and Aristotelian ideas, came to “form

the core of the formal study of medicine” (ibid, p.199) in the late 15th century, they brought

with them the patriarchal understanding of women’s bodies and minds of the ancient world to

the curriculum.

The Uniting of theological and classical doctrines

The Renaissance assimilation of classical teachings on women may have been possible due to

“legacy from antiquity” contained in early modern church teachings (Kaufman, 1973, p.142).

Church doctrine perpetuated ancient ideas surrounding women, domesticity, and male

dominance through both the New Testament’s classical patriarchal influence, and the work of

the Scholastics. The tone of theological work in the early Renaissance, therefore, was similar

in nature to the work on women emerging from Humanist scholarship, centred around

Hierarchical Difference and natural gender difference, but with a divinely ordained origin.

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Operating from the 12th century to the beginning of the Renaissance, the Scholastics

attempted to create “one grand philosophical system” in which ancient philosophy, and

theology were compatible (Wiesner, 2019, p.29). This tradition of uniting ancient works with

Christian theology may have eased the change in perception of women as Renaissance

scholars uncovered more classical works, which seemed to support traditional church

doctrine on women.

One place this compatibility can be seen is in the blend of Christian cosmology and Galenic

theory found in the works of The Trotula, which “firmly reifies the original Genesis ictum

that the female is indeed subject to the male”, through its “recasting” into “Galenic

physiological terms” (Green, 2002, p.36).

According to the prologue of On the Conditions of Women “He (God) endowed their

complexions with a certain pleasing commixtion [...] so that the stronger qualities, that is the

heat and the dryness, should rule the man, who is the stronger and more worthy person”

(Green, 2002, p.65). This Galenic retelling of Genesis allows the author to prove that

“women are by nature weaker than men”, not only through ancient ideas about their anatomy,

but also through God’s will (ibid).

While this 13th century text predates the period under examination, it nonetheless highlights

a compatibility between ancient medical texts and Medieval theology, regarding Hierarchical

Difference. This may tentatively be extended to suggest Scholastic doctrine on women was

reinforced by the fresh ‘evidence’ emerging from the newly translated Humanist texts in the

Renaissance. Likewise, the teachings of these ancients were given intellectual credibility due

to their concordance with theological, and hence, societal, beliefs about women.

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This trend of uniting classical and theological doctrines can be seen to continue into the

Renaissance, in the work of Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534) who expressed his

thoughts in 1539 on ‘Rib Theory’ and its relation to classical philosopher’s teachings:

“what philosophers have said about the production of woman [that she is a botched

male] is recounted metaphorically by Moses [...] the former considered the production

of woman only in relation to sex, whereas Moses considered the production of woman

not only as it concerns sex but also with regard to moral behaviour as a whole

[universam vitam moralem] [...] a deep sleep is sent by God into the man […] and

this defect of male power bears a likeness from which woman is naturally produced.

For a sleeping man is only half a man; similarly, the principle creating woman is only

semi-virile. It is for this reason that woman is called an imperfect version of the male

by philosophers” ( De Vio, 1539, p. 25).

Classical and theological doctrine on women, therefore, were clearly considered concurrent

on women as inferior to men by de Vio, much as they were by the Scholastics. Additional

evidence of this harmony between religious doctrine and classical text will be provided in the

investigation of the primary literature below.

During this period therefore, the “Church not only dismissed women as daughters of Eve”,

but also explained their weakness by means of classical theory. (Yoshikawa, 2015, p.17).

Supporting these philosophical and proto-medical theories allowed theologians to perpetuate

“stereotypes of female inferiority and disseminate such misogynistic ideas throughout

Christendom” (ibid).

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Having examined the intellectual influences on the nature of women during the Renaissance,

we begin to perceive a landscape that was inherently hostile to the idea of an independent,

intelligent woman. The female healer, with her broad engagement in the wider community,

her potential for financial independence from her male relatives, and her execution of

judgement and experience in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, would have come into

direct contrast with both the religious and classical elements of the Renaissance

understanding of a woman’s ‘natural’ abilities, and her subordinate, domestic status relative

to her male equivalent.

The ideas contained in both the church teachings and rediscovered classical texts of this

period, while not explicitly prohibitive to women practising medicine, portray the woman as

if not inherently incapable, then at the very least, less suited than her male equivalent to

practise medicine.

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Chapter 4: Primary Sources

But can this derogatory attitude towards women be identified in the historical literature on

regulating the medical field? In this chapter I examine a number of primary sources for

indications of the beliefs discussed above influencing doctors’ attitudes towards women, and

their perceived place in the medical field. This established a defensible connection between

the declining perception of women’s ‘nature’ during the Renaissance, and the ostracization of

female healers. There is a wealth of sources to examine on women from the period, and a

substantial body relating to female healers specifically. The four main texts examined date

from the period of 1550 to 1654, evaluating both where we can see the presence of these

classical and theological arguments’ influence on those writing on medical matters, and how

women are perceived within this context.

I have extended my literature analysis into the mid 1650s to accommodate for a potential lag

between the introduction of texts supporting biological and theological inferiority of women

to the curricula, and these arguments becoming more commonplace.

The four main authors under examination are John Securis, John Cotta, James Primrose, and

Richard Whitlock. Goodall’s Proceedings against empiricks also provides a source for

investigating the prosecution of female healers by the Royal College of Physicians, and their

attitudes towards them in the courtroom (Goodall, 1684). All these men were practising

university-trained ‘physicians’, educated at either Cambridge, Oxford, or the French

powerhouse that was the Paris Medical school, or in some cases, a number of these

institutions, as is the case with Whitlock, Securis and Primrose3. In short, these men have a

3
For more information on the careers and education of the doctors featured in this chapter, see Birken, 2004;
Elmer, 2004; Moore, 2004 and Bentley, 1974.

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similar intellectual background to the physicians who would have been petitioning for,

implementing, and utilising the new legislation that affected female healers.

All these authors, while not equally misogynistic in their overt content, reveal a narrative

surrounding women in medical discourse that seemingly relies on a set of assumptions about

the nature of women as domestic, submissive, and intellectually inferior. Beyond the

outwardly misogynistic satire of Whitlock’s Zootomia, and the fears of “the dishonour of

womanhood’ made by Cotta, the language and tone in the examined texts reveals the possible

influence of the changing institutional beliefs mentioned above on women’s capability, and

concerns regarding their independence and ‘natural’ sphere of engagement (Cotta, 1619,

p.26).

Some texts contain overt references to classical authors and ideas (Securis, 1566). All,

however, utilise ideas about women’s domesticity and subordination that, while seemingly

theological and social in their argumentation, suggest the influence of Hierarchical Difference

reinforcing their religious ideas of womanhood. It seems likely, having examined the

curricula these authors received, that this Hierarchical Difference supporting their arguments

may trace its origins back to the classical readings of their academic careers. The

argumentation in these primary sources seems to pull away from a purely religious

understanding of women’s natural inferiority seen in Scholasticism, to a broader social one,

suggesting these classical arguments of Hierarchical Difference may have been augmenting

the perception of women beyond the purely spiritual to include the ‘natural’.

Underlying motivations

Before beginning to seek intellectual influences in these sources, it is worth noting their

confirmation that a primary motivator of the ostracization of the female healer was likely

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elimination of competition. Threatening the income and standing of the university-trained

physicians, Siraisi, Fissel and Green argue that underlying this increased demand for

regulation were “fierce tensions between physicians trained in the universities [...] and

empirics” in the fight for both patients’ trust, and more cynically, their fees (Green, 1989,

p.447).

In Securis’ work, for example, it is clear he perceives empirics and female healers as a threat

to the reputation of the formally educated element of the profession at large, but also to the

financial compensation that he believes women are depriving them of, lamenting:

“O tempora, O mores, O Deum immortalem, To what purpose haue the vniuersities

ben erected & founded in tymes paste…when euery man, woman, and chyld that lyst,

may practise and vse phisike [...] and so, many tymes not only hinder and defraud vs

of our laufull stipende & gaynes: but [...]shall put many in hasarde of their lyfe”

(Securis, 1566, n.p.)

It is interesting to note that the ‘defrauding’ and deprivation of ‘gaynes’ to university doctors

arises in his argument for prosecuting empirics before his concern for the loss of life that may

result from incompetent practice.

Whaley’s assertion that university physicians were “keen to keep competitors out of the

profession” (Whaley, 2011, p.54), seems supported by both Securis’ discontent with the

situation, and likewise du Breil’s explicit call upon the king to “carry out the policing,

regulation, and reformation” of the field of the “detestable and execrable abuses 4” conducted

by such practitioners. (du Breil, 1580, n.p.). However, this does not undermine the influence

4
“proceder à la police, reglement, et reformation…detestables et execrables abus” (du Breil, 1580, n.p.).

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of Renaissance education on medical perception and regulation of female healers. These texts

still reveal key aspects of the understanding of women’s nature by the medical profession,

through the arguments the put forth.

John Securis’ A detection and querimonie of the daily enormities and abuses

co[m]mitted in physick…

The earliest text under analysis is A detection and querimonie of the daily enormities and

abuses co[m]mitted in physick… written by John Securis in 1566. Educated at the

Universities of both Paris and Oxford in the mid 1500s, Securis attended university at a time

described as when the “dividing line between the medieval and modern university” was

drawn in the mid 1500s (Bowker, 1975 p.xvii). During this period, Humanistic educational

changes began to introduce more classical texts into the general undergraduate curriculum,

even in more ‘traditional’, Scholastically allied institutions like Oxford (Mack, 2019, p.33).

and hence is a good case study for examining the influence of the Renaissance university

curriculum of ancient authors and scholastic theology on medical thought.

In his writing much evidence is provided of the intersection of classical writing and church

doctrine in these Renaissance writers’ minds, with Securis claiming his refutation of

falsehood and ‘sophistry’ “appereth playnly in Aristotle and Galen, ye and in the holy

doctours of the churche” (Securis, 1566, n.p.). A reverence for classical writers seems to

reflect the influence of Humanist texts on his education, as he praises “that excellente man

and Greek clerk Aristoteles” and his “incomparable doctrine” as “the prince of philosophers”

(Securis, 1566, n.p.). The importance, of having “peruse[d] naturall Philosophie” “as Plato

counsayleth” during one’s medical education is reinforced with the support of classical

scholars, illustrating both the reverence paid to these ancients and their teachings.

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Securis is clearly well acquainted with and holds a deep respect for the ideas of the classical

authors his university education would have contained. Given this, it seems unlikely that he

would have disputed the re-popularised and scientifically argued rationale for Hierarchical

Difference they proposed. While we cannot extrapolate Securis’ admiration for classical

philosophy to confirm his approval of the classical thought on women, it seems difficult to

dispute the impact that their authors clearly had upon him. Moreover, his emphasis on the

importance of a well-rounded university education to create a ‘good doctor’, elevated by the

documented support of respected philosophers, would doubtless have impacted his perception

of community based, apprenticeship trained female empirics, who were denied such

privileges and university enrolment due to their gender.

John Cotta’s A short discouerie of seuerall sorts of ignorant and vnconsiderate

practisers of physicke in England

John Cotta’s 1619 text continues to reflect the potential influence of these ideas, but in this

case, in direct relation to women and their “practise about the sicke” (Cotta, 1619, p.25).

Cotta’s work demonstrates how classical ideas of Hierarchical Difference may have been

reinforcing patristically influenced theology regarding women during the 17th century. Cotta

asserts confidently that “neither hath God and nature made them commissioners in the

sessions of learned reason and vnderstanding” (Cotta, 1619, p.25), and, going into more

detail, that “modestie, nature, law, and their owne sexe hath euer exempted” them from

“matters of so great and dangerous consequent” as medicine (Cotta, 1619, p.25).

While ancient theory on women’s inferior nature is not cited outright in Cotta’s work, it may

well be impacting the broader understanding of women, through its reinforcement of

theological ideas of female domesticity and natural ‘weakness’.

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There is a sense of Hierarchical Difference and theology intermingling in Cotta’s

argumentation that “modestie”, “nature” and “God” ordained women’s inferiority (ibid). Not

only should a good Christian woman remain at home for the sake of “modestie”, but,

according to Cotta, this inherent domesticity is also naturally ordained, by her own body, and

divinely orchestrated, with God holding the graces of “reason and vnderstanding” beyond her

grasp (Cotta, 1619, p.25). Hence, we see the concept of women’s inherent weakness has

evolved: it is no longer argued along purely theological lines, but now, also ‘natural’ ones.

This is further demonstrated in the descriptions of her “vnconsiderate hast of abundant

affection” and her “lame and carelesse pace”, her “busie medling” and “curious forbearance”,

which consequently (and it seems, naturally, from Cotta’s tone) prevent her from exerting

“the excellent vertues of prudence, discretion and knowledge” needed to practise medicine

(Cotta, 1619, p.26). On the one hand, we see a projection of virtues and Christian morality

onto the issue of woman and her place in the respectable domestic sphere as a helpmeet, as he

argues it is “unto the dishonour of womanhood” for women to have “their hands so

commonly in other mishaps” (Cotta, 1619, p.26). On the other, we see the concept of

women’s inferiority separating away from a purely theological understanding grounded in

‘Original Sin’ and ‘Rib Theory’, to a broader, social one of her ‘natural’ inferiority- her

inherent ‘silliness’, ‘carelessness’ and weakness.

James Primrose’s Of Women that meddle in Physick and Surgery

James Primrose, in his 1651 work Of Women that meddle in Physick and Surgery, seems of a

similar position to Cotta, with his assertions of women’s talents and natural place being

within the home, and far from “rashly and adventurously” intermeddle[ing]” in medicine. His

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work is congruent with the ideas of female domesticity and Hierarchical Difference seen in

Cotta and Whitlock’s argumentation. While writing almost a century after Securis’

Querimonie, it seems his education would have remained very similar in classical content. In

the same decade as Primrose’s publication, James Duport, a prominent tutor at Trinity

college, was still advocating use of the “Authority of Aristotle” and “his owne words” and

“owne language” to his students in their argumentation (Costello, 2013, p.9). The Humanist

influence on education was clearly not confined to the early Renaissance period.

Primrose’s explanation for women’s inherent domestic tendencies is not elaborated on in

depth, or backed with evidence, indeed his tract on women runs to only three very short

pages. It is presumed anyone reading his work would agree that their talent lies in knowing

“how to make a bed well, boyle pottage, cullices, barley broth, and make Almond milke”, not

activities outside the home (Primrose, 1651, p.19). His argument that women are “borne for

the care and service of men”, does not run along purely theological lines justified by the ‘Rib

Theory’ narrative however- in fact, his argument for women’s position in the domestic sphere

seems eerily reminiscent of Plato’s argument that women’s natural talent lies in “weaving

and watching over rising cakes and boiling pots” (Plato, Republic, 5.455c). This designated

position as ‘helpmeet’ seems to operate on the social assumptions that natural order dictates

female domesticity, not only God. The concurrence between Primrose and Securis that

women are lacking the key qualities needed for medical practice through naturally occurring

differences suggests that classical ideas of Hierarchical Difference had spread beyond purely

academic circles and were becoming a commonplace in wider society.

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Richard Whitlock’s The Quacking Hermaphrodite, OR Petticoat

Practitioner, Stript and Whipt

In his 1654 work the Petticoat Practitioner, Stript and Whipt, Richard Whitlock, a fellow of

All Souls College, Oxford, provides yet more evidence of this understanding of women as

naturally disposed to mindless, domestic activity and submission, to illustrate female healers’

unsuitability for medical practise (Whaley, 2011, p.57). However, in Whitlock’s writing,

there is a distinctly scathing tone towards the female practitioner that the above texts lack.

There is not so much a concern for patient safety or securing fees here, as a vitriolic (and

unfortunately, incredibly witty) hatred towards women healers and their “cooling slopps”,

with Whitlock focussing on the inherent unsuitability of such prideful and ignorant women

overstepping the bounds of their nature (Whitlock, 1654, p.49).

The influence of theological teachings on female sin and necessary subordination is clear,

with Whitlock opening by asserting “a practising Rib shall kill more than the jaw-bone of an

Asse” (Whitlock, 1654, p.61). Criticising them for “still nibling at forbidden knowledge” like

their “Grandmother Eve” who “kil'd us all at one blow”, we see that theological narratives of

Hierarchical Difference still play a central role in the argument for female inferiority

(Whitlock, 1654, p.46). This biblically supported narrative of women’s foolish desire for

knowledge, rightfully forbidden, endangering man continues throughout Whitlock’s work, as

he razes their body of empirical experience and orally communicated wisdom to the ground,

believing them to be full of “pertinacious ignorance” (Whitlock, 1654, p.52-53). As the

condemner of humanity to sin, a woman’s desire for knowledge is written off as “begun in

vain glory”, since “pride sticketh to them as close as their skinnes.” (Whitlock 1654, p.54).

There is a clear sense in Whitlock’s work of the dangers of the weaker female intellect

overstepping its capabilities, their foolishness and moral corruptibility kept in check only by

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male dominance and domestication of these weaker, “know-nothings” who struggle like

“blinde Fencers” to understand the complexities of medicine (Whitlock, 1654, p.48).

Whitlock also condemns female healers as not suited to practise medicine, through his use of

the narrative of the woman as ‘helpmeet’, designed by God to stay at home. They are better

suited to “making Shirts and Smocks […] Managery of their Needle or Wheele”, and other

such “employments commendably within their owne Sphear” (Whitlock, 1654, p.54).

While there is less evidence of a classical influence on Whitlock’s thinking than earlier

works, his argument hinges on the preconception that women are inherently stupider, more

foolish, and more suited to domestic engagement. It is possible to suggest, as we look

chronologically through the primary sources, that as time progressed, these arguments for

female inferiority cite the likes of Aristotle increasingly scarcely, yet the argument for

Hierarchical Difference remains intermingled with social and religious ideas about women,

either in content, supposition, or tone. Writing almost 150 years after the first complete

translation of the Hippocratic Corpus, it seems these classical aphorisms and beliefs about

women may have evolved into commonplaces and general attitudes towards women,

separating away from the texts they emerged from.

Goodall’s An historical account of the College's proceedings against empiricks

and unlicensed practisers

This understanding of women’s inferior position to men, and their ignorant and domestically

inclined ‘nature’ can be detected in the Royal College of Physicians’ trial records (Goodall,

1684). Of Margaret Kennix, a lower-class woman who stood trial in 1581 for “curing of

diseases and woundes, by the meanes of certain Simples”, the college declared “her weakness

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and insufficiency is such, as is rather to be pitied of all” (Goodall, 1684, p.318). Similarly,

Tomazine Scarlet, an empiric with “hundreds under her cure” was likewise described as

“egregiously ignorant”, ordered to “give a bond with good security that she would not

practise for the future”, and later sentenced to prison on three separate occasions for

continuing her practise in contempt of the College’s sentence (Goodall, 1684, p.326). The

trial records continue in this manner, with the cases of Emme Baxter, “an impudent and

ignorant woman” only released from prison for medical practise when her husband paid a

bond promising she would stop, and an unnamed woman’s trial, simply described as the

“wife of Thomas Thumwood” (Goodall, 1684, p.319). Thumwood also entered “into a penal

bond of 20l. to the College” on behalf of his wife (ibid).

There is much that could be said of the way in which these women are documented by the

college: the focus on their ignorance seems in contradiction to the claims that they had

“hundreds” of patients under their care, and suggestive of an underlying assumption that they

were naturally ‘stupid’ (Goodall, 1684, p.326). It is also interesting to note the more

prominent position their male superiors, where they existed, take in several of the trials.

These women were trialled within the context of their relationship to their husband, who took

legal and financial responsibility for their practise, and even their place in the physical record,

being brought to court as merely the “wife of” a man, leaving them nameless to history. It

could be said this subordinate position of female healers in the trial record suggests an

understanding of their position as naturally beneath their male relatives, returning them to the

domestic sphere of wives and mothers by having their husbands answer for them in court.

Summary of findings

It must be appreciated that these sources cannot not be taken as conclusive evidence that the

ostracization of female healers resulted from changes in the intellectual understanding of

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women’s ‘nature’. However, while they do not explicitly cite the theories of Hierarchical

Difference found in Humanist texts, they do demonstrate the emergence of a hybrid theory of

theological and ‘natural’ ideas concerning women’s inferiority and domestic role in

Renaissance medical circles. This implies potential exposure to classical and theological

theories of Hierarchical Difference. The argument of these medical writers often runs along

notably similar lines to Aristotle’s logic that “because the woman is inferior in nature, and her

irrational side dominated”, “thus her capacities for work are limited and she must be kept

indoors”, away from intellectual stimulation, away from influence, and away from

independence (Whaley, 2011, p.51). They therefore establish a defensible connection

between the key ideological narratives surrounding women discussed in this essay, and the

decline in perception of female healers. This may provide a starting point for further study

into the extent of the role these ideas played in the overall reduction of women in early

modern medicine.

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Chapter 5: Conclusion

In this essay, I have demonstrated that the perception of female healers by the Renaissance

medical profession was, at least in part, informed by changing notions of the ‘nature’ of

women in intellectual circles. I achieved this by conducting my investigation into female

healing and its early modern perception in the following way:

In the first chapter, I examined the previous historiographical approaches taken in

investigating the female healer and her relationship to the formal medical profession. This

historiography tended to investigate how she practised, how she was perceived in different

eras, or how she became ostracised from formal medicine during the late medieval and early

modern period. Through my analysis of the secondary literature, I identified a potential

phenomenon correlated with the declining perception of female healers: the intellectual

changes associated with the Renaissance, and their role of their ideas in the declining status

of women during the 15th and 16th centuries.

In the second chapter, I summarised the nature of female healing during the medieval and

early modern period, to identify the group under investigation in this essay more thoroughly.

Through this, it was proven that women formed a significant part of the medical profession

before these changes occurred. In the third chapter, I then proceeded to investigate what the

predominant academic changes of the Renaissance were, and what they believed about

women’s ‘nature’. A narrative of Hierarchical Difference was identified to be common to the

two major academic movements of the Renaissance, namely Humanism and Scholastic

theology. These movements formed a key component of Renaissance doctor’s education,

thereby supporting the hypothesis that exposure to ideas of female inferiority present in these

movements may have contributed to the declining medical perception of female healers.

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Finally, in the fourth chapter, I examined several contemporary medical sources for evidence

to support this hypothesis. The narrative of Renaissance medical literature reflected the

discussed ideas of Hierarchical Difference, depicting female healers as rejecting their

‘natural’ roles as home keepers, mothers and ‘helpmeets’, and as dangerous due to the

inherent weakness, stupidity, and irrationality that their female ‘nature’ engendered. Deemed

too weak to work outside the home, too ignorant to heal safely, and too independent to please

God’s natural order, it seems these doctors’ arguments denote the influence of theories of

female inferiority that were present in the Renaissance academic trends examined.

Through this investigation, light has now begun to be shed on whether Renaissance changes

to the notion of women’s nature informed the negative medical perception of female healers.

While not able to conclusively verify this hypothesis, this dissertation solidifies the

connection between the intellectual changes of early modern Europe and the ostracization of

female healers, providing a solid foundation for further investigation of relationship between

these phenomena. This investigation was limited in its ability to further consolidate this

relationship through scope and word count and translational challenges (many of the primary

sources from this period are entirely in Latin). Future studies would be beneficial to examine

additional contemporary sources for evidence of these intellectual changes’ influence upon

the female healer’s exile from early modern medical practise.

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