Women as Healers part 2

By DONNA ALLEN
ROCKINGHAM — Part 1 of Elayne Clift’s talk on The History of Women as Healers left us with women going from respected healers to a threat of established order. Continuing –

From around 2000 BC, in Sumer, now Iraq, we find women as powerful priestesses who influenced the healing arts. Carried through trade routes to the Phoenicians, Egyptians and Greeks, the Sumerian legacy of healing provided theories of body function and disease. The oldest medical text in existence came from this period, which lasted for 2 or 3 thousand years, and women were practicing healing without restriction.

But by 700 BC procreation and birth were no longer seen as a miracle, but more as a shameful, degrading activity.

Although in Denmark, Bronze Age women were shamans who practiced healing with herbal remedies until about 500 BC.

But it was Greek traditions that formed what was considered to be the epitome of healing practices in Western civilization until about 400 years ago. Helen of Troy along with Demeter, Persephone, and Medea and other mythic women healers – many of whom are credited with the Hippocratic Oath – enjoyed high praise from 2000 BC to about 146 BC. But by 1000 BC masculine gods were on the rise. Eventually, more men were attracted to medicine and women were edged out of the healing professions.

During the first few centuries after the birth of Christ, women regained power and respectability as healers, largely thanks to Jesus himself, who had no time for patriarchy.

During the Middle Ages, when bubonic plague and smallpox flourished in Europe, women healers of all social classes tended the sick as well as pregnant women

During the 13thcentury there was a serious silencing of women by the Church. Three Christian Doctrines were seen as true: God as Masculine,

Original Sin, and Devil Worship o rWitchcraft! The Witch-hunt era gave way to the 14th– 17thcenturies.

This was a time of deep misogyny and distrust of women with midwives most persecuted. What happened to women healers during this time was unspeakable and perverse. During these years, women healers were tortured horribly and finally edged out by guilds, surgeons and apothecaries, their work prohibited by law in every European country. The Inquisition and Christian theology was used to exclude women as independent practitioners; later science and the laws of nature would be invoked for the same purpose.

From about 1450 to 1900, woman were midwives only, a role more related to age/deportment than skill. Mostly poor, illiterate “dishonorable” women; birthing was seen as private, objectionable, nasty, and disgusting.

Within 100 yrs of midwives being licensed in England, men called man-midwives were attending “difficult” labors – so long as the patient could afford the fee. By 1700 they were attending normal deliveries as well.

What made the profession suddenly so attractive to men? Financial reward from a growing middle class!

And FORCEPS! By 1750 several versions of these “extraction tools” were in use and male surgeons had claimed childbirth as their domain. Nevermind that more women died while having children if they were under the care of man-midwives and surgeons than if attended by midwives.

Part 3 next week.