WITCHES

MIDWIVES
AND NURSES

Quiver distro
2009
Santa Cruz, California
Witehes, Midwives, and Nurses
A Histor31 of Women Healers
by Barbara Ehrenreich
and Deirdre English
 About the Authors
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English teach at the College at
Old Westbury, State University of New York, and are active in
the health and women's movements.

Publishing History:

Glass Mountain Pamphlets - 1970

The Feminist Press - 1973
Quiver distro (Reprint & PDF) - 2009

ISBN 0-912-670-13-4
Second Edition, Third Printing
 Introduction

Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed

doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists,
nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing
herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were mid-
wives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For
centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from
books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on
experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter.
They were called "wise wornen'Lbv the people, witches or
charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as
women, our history, our birthright.
Today, however, -health care is the property of male
professionals. Ninety-three percent of the doctors in the US are
men; and almost all the top directors and administrators of health
institutions. Women are still' in the overall majority- 70 percent of
health workers are women-but we have been incorporated as
workers into an industry where the bosses are men. We are no
longer independent practitioners, known by our own names, for
our own work. We are, for the most part, institutional fixtures,
filling faceless job slots: clerk, dietary aide, technician, maid.
When we are allowed to participate in the healing process, we
can do so only nurses. And nurses of every rank from aide up are
just "anclllarv workers" in relation to the doctors (from the Latin
ancilla, maid servant). From the nurses' aide, whose menial tasks
are spelled out with industrial precision, to the "professional"
nurse, who translates the doctors' orders into the aide's tasks,
nurses share the status of a uniformed maid service to the
dominant male professionals.
Our subservience is reinforced by our ignorance, and our
ignorance is enforced. Nurses are taught not to question, not to
challenge. liThe doctor knows best." He is the shaman, in touch
with the forbidden, mystically complex world of Science which we
have been taught is beyond our grasp. Women health workersare
alienated from the scientific substance of their work, restricted to
the "womanly" business of nurturing and housekeeping-a
passive, silent majority.
We are told that our subservience is biologically ordained:
women are inherently nurse-like and not doctor-like. Sometimes
 The Formation of the American Medical Profession: The Role of
we even try to console ourselves with the theory that we were Institutions, 1780-1860, by Joseph Kett. Yale University Press,
defeated by anatomy before we were defeated by men, that 1968. Conservative point of view, but full of scattered information
women have been so trapped by the cycles of menstruation and on lay healers. He discusses the politically radical nature of the
reproduction that they have never been free and creative agents Popular Health Movement in Chapter Four.
outside-their homes. Another myth, fostered by conventional
medical histories, is that male professionals won out on the Medicine in Americe: Historical Essays, by Richard H. Shryock.
strength of their superior technology. According to these ac- , Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. A readable, wide-ranging and fairly
counts, (male) science more or less automatically replaced (female) liberal book. See especially the chapters on "Women in American
superstition-which from then on was called "old wives' tales." Medicine" and liThe Popular Health Movement."
But history belies these theories. Women have been
autonomous healers, often the only healers for women and the American Medicine and the Public Interest, by Rosemary Stevens.
poor. And we found, in the periods we have studied, that, if Yale University Press 1971. Long and dry, but useful for the early
anything, it was the male professionals who clung to untested chapters on the formation of the American medical profession and
doctrines and ritualistic practices-and it was the women healers the role of the foundations.
who represented a more humane, empirical approach to healing.
Our position in the health system today is not "natural." It is a Medical Education in the US and Canada, by Abraham Flexner,
condition which has to be explained. In this pamphlet we have Carnegie Foundation, 1910. (Available from University
asked: How did we arrive at our present position of subservience Microfilms,Ltd., Ann Arbor.) The famous "Flexner Report" that
from our former position of leadership? changed the face of American medical education. Some
We learned this much: That the suppression of women health reasonable proposals, but amazing elitism, racism and sexism.
workers and the rise to dominance of male professionals was not a
"natural" process, resulting automatically from changes in medical The History of Nursing, by Richard Shryock. N.B. Saunders, 1959.
science, nor was it the "result of women's failure to take on healing
Better-than most nursing histories-which are usually glorifications
work. It was an active takeover by male professionals. And it was
of nursing by nursing educators-but much worse than Shyrock's
not science that enabled men to win out: The critical battles took
medical histories.
place long before the development of modern scientific
technology.
The stakes of the struggle were high: Political and economic Lonely Crusader: The Life of Florence Nightingale, by Cecil
monopolization of medicine meant control over its institutional Woodham-Smith. McGraw Hill, 1951. A richly detailed biography
organizations, its theory and practice, its profits and prestige. And which puts nursing in the context of the oppression of upper class
the stakes are even higher today, when total control of medicine Victorian women.
means potential power to determine who will live and will die, who
is fertile and who is sterile, who is "mad" and who sane. Glances and Glimpses, by Harriet K. Hunt. Source Book Press,
The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment 1970. Rambling autobiography of a feminist and "irregular"
was a political struggle, first, in that it is part of the history of sex woman doctor of the mid-19th century. It's useful for its
struggle in general. The status of women healers has risen and descriptions of the state of medical practice at the time.
fallen with the status of women When women healers were at-
tacked, they were attacked as Women; when they fought back, "The American Midwife Controversy: A Crisis of
they fought back in solldarltvwith all women. Professionalization," by Frances E. Kobrin. Bulletin of the History
It was a political struggle, second, in that it was part of a class of Medicine, July-August 1966, p. 350. Restrained and scholarly
struggle. Women healers were people's doctors, and their account of the outlawing of American midwives. Very worthwhile
reading.
medicine was part of a people's subculture. To this very day

43
2
 Bibliography
women's medical practice has thrived in the midst of rebellious
The Manufacture of Madness, by Thomas Szasz, M.D., Delta lower class movements which have struggled to be free from the
Books, 1971. Szasz asserts that institutional phychiatry is the established authorities. Male professionals, on the other hand,
modern version of the witch-hunts, with the patient in the role of served the ruling class-both medically and politically. Their in-
the witch. We are indebted to him for first presenting witchcraft in terests have been advanced by the universities, the philanthropic
the context of the struggle between professionals and lay healers. foundations and the law. They owe their victory-not so much to
See especially the chapter on "The Witch as Healer." their own efforts-but to the intervention of the ruling class they
served.
Satanism and Witchcraft, by Jules Michelet. The Citadel Press, This pamphlet represents a beginning of the research which will
1939. A mid-nineteenth century work by a famous French have to be done to recapture our history as health workers. It is a
historian. A vivid book on the Middle Ages, superstition and the fragmentary account, assembled from sources which were usually
Church, with a discussion of "satan as physician." sketchy and' often biased, by women who are in no sense
"professional" historians. We confined ourselves to western
The Malleus Maleficarum, by Heinrich Kramer and James history, since the institutions we confront today are the products of
Sprenger, translated by Rev. Montague Summers. The Pushkin western civilization. We are far from being able to present a
Press, London, 1928. Difficult medieval writing, but by far the best complete chronological history. Instead, we looked at two
source for the day-to-day operations of the witch-hunts, and for separate, important phases in the male takeover of health care: the
insights into the mentality of the witch-hunter. suppression of witches in medieval Europe, and the rise of the male
medical profession in 19th century America.
The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, by Rev. Montague To know our history is to begin to see how to take up the
Summers. University Books, New York, 1956. Written in the 1920's struggle again.
by a Catholic priest and defender-really! -of the witch-hunts.
Attacks the witch as "heretic," "anarchist," and "bawd."

Witchcraft, by Pennethrone Hughes. Penguin Books, 1952. A

general introduction and survey.

Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literature, by Muriel Joy

Hughes. Books for Libraries Press, Freeport, New York, 1943. A
conservatively written book, with good information on the state of
academic medicine and on women lay doctors and midwives.
Unfortunately, it dismisses the whole question of witchcraft.

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, by Margaret Alice Murray.

Oxford University Press, 1921. Dr. Murray was the first person to
present the anthropological view, now widely accepted, that
witchcraft represented, in part, the survival among the people of a
pre-Christian religion.

A Mirror of Witchcraft, by Christina Hole. Chatto and Wind us,

London, 1957. A source-book of extracts from trial reports and
other writings, mostly from English witch trials of the 16th and 17th
centuries.

42 3
 Witchcraft and Medicine in the Middle Ages
women's needs as workers, workers in touch with women's needs
as consumers. Women workers can play a leadership role in
collective self-help and self-teaching projects, and in attacks on
Witches lived and were burned long before the development of health institutions. But they need support and solidarity from a
modern medical technology. The great majority of them were lay strong women's consumer movement.
healers serving the peasant population, and their suppression
marks one of the opening struggles in the history of man's sup-
pression of women as healers. D Our oppression as women health workers today is inextricably
The other side of the suppression of witches as healers was the linked to our oppression as women. Nursing, our predominate role
creation of a new male medical profession, under the protection in the health system, is simply a workplace extension of our roles as
and patronage of the ruling classes. This new European medical wife and mother. The nurse is socialized to believe that rebellion
profession played an important role in the witch-hunts, supporting violates not only her " professionalism," but her very femininity.
the witches' persecutors with "medical" reasoning: This means that the male medical elite has a very special stake in
the maintenance of sexism in the society at large: Doctors are the
.... Because the Medieval Church, with the support of kings, princes
and secular authorities, controlled medical education and practice, the bosses in an industry where the workers are primarily women.
Inquisition [witch-hunts] constitutes, among other things, an early Sexism in the society at large insures that the female majority of
instance of the "professional" repudiating the skills and interfering with the health workforce are /./ good" workers- docile and passive.
the rights of the "nonprofessional" to minister to the poor. (Thomas
Szasz, The Manufacture of Madness) Take away sexism and you take away one of the mainstays of the
health hierarchy.
The witch-hunts left a lasting effect: An aspect of the female has
What this means to us in practice is that in the health system
ever since been associated with the witch, and an aura of con-
there is no way to separate worker organizing from feminist
tamination has remained-especially around the midwife and other
organizing. To reach out to women health workers as workers is to
women healers. This early and devastating exclusion of women
reach out to them as women.
from independent healing roles was a violent precedent and a
warning: It was to become a theme of our history. The women's
health movement of today has ancient roots in the medieval
covens, and its opponents have as their ancestors those who
ruthlessly forced the elimination of witches.

, Witch healing
. peasants
. -_: (Brueghel) 41
4
 ~~-
'fo"'~""
chauvinism: It is the whole class system which enabled male, upper
class healers to win out and which forced us into subservience.
Institutional sexism is sustained by a class system which supports
male power.

o There is no historically consistent justification for the exclusion

of women from healing roles. Witches_ were attacked for being
pragmatic, empirical and immoral. But in the 19th century the
rhetoric reversed: Women became too unscientific, delicate and
sentimental. The stereotypes change to suit male convenience-
we don't, and there is nothing in our "innate feminine nature" to
justify our present subservience.

o Men maintain their power in the health system through their

monopoly of scientific knowledge. We are mystified by science,
taught to believe that it is hopelessly beyond our grasp. In our
frustration, we are sometimes tempted to reject science, rather
than to challenge the men who hoard it. But medical science could
be a liberatinq force, giving us real control over our own bodies and
power in our lives as health workers. At this point in our history, The Witch Craze
every effort to take hold of and share medical knowledge is a The age of witch-hunting spanned more than four centuries
critical part of the struggle- know-your-body courses and (from the 14th to the 17th century) in its sweep from Germany to
literature, self-help projects, counselling, women's free clinics. England. It was born in feudalism and lasted-gaining in
virulence-well into the "aqe of reason." The witch-craze took
different forms at different times and places, but never lost its
o Professionalism in medicine is nothing more than the in- essential character: that of a ruling class campaign of terror
stitutionalization of a male upper class monopoly. We must never directed against the female peasant population. Witches
confuse professionalism with expertise. Expertise is something to represented a political, religious and sexual threat to the Protestant
work for and to share; professionalism is - by definition - elitist and and Catholic churches alike, as well as to the state.
exclusive, sexist, racist and classist. In the American past, women The extent of the witch-craze is startling: In the late fifteenth and
who sought formal medical training were too ready to accept the early sixteenth centuries there were thousands upon thousands of
professionalism that went with it. They made their gains in executions-usually live burnings at the stake-in Germany, Italy
status-but only on the backs of their less privileged sisters- and other countries. In the mid-sixteenth century the terror spread
midwives, nurses and lay healers. Our goal today should never be to France, and finally to England. One writer has estimated the
to open up the exclusive medical profession to women, but to open number of executions at an average of 600 a year for certain
up medicine-to all women. German cities-or two a day, "leavinq out Sundays". Nine-
hundred witches were destroyed in a single year in the Wertzberg
area, and 1000 in and around Como. At Toulouse, four-hundred
o This means that we must begin to break down the distinctions
were put to death in a day. In the Bishopric of Trier, in 1585, two
and barriers between women health workers and women con-
villages were left with only one female inhabitant each. Many
sumers. We should build shared concerns: Consumers aware of
writers have estimated the total number killed to have been in the

40 5
 Three wi tches hanging,
from the ti tie page of a
~'JJJt:.~=:::x:;==t"'" I contemporary pamphlet on
the third Chelmsford wi tch
1--------...,;;;;;;;;;,;;....-------- trial, 1 5 8 9

millions. Women made up some 85 percent of those executed-old "profession." They may call for more male nurses to change the
women, young women and children. * "i.mage," insist that nursing requires almost as much academic
Their scope alone suggests that the witch hunts represent a preparation as medicine, and so on. But the drive to
deep-seated social phenomenon which goes far beyond the history "professionalize" nursing is, at best, a flight from the reality of
of medicine. In locale and timing, the most virulent witch hunts sexism in the health system. At worst, it is sexist itself, deepening
were associated with periods of great social upheaval shaking the division among women health workers and bolstering a
feudalism at its roots-mass peesent uprisinqs and conspiracies, heirarchy controlled by men.
the beginnings of capitalism, and the rise of Protestantism. There is
fragmentary evidence-which feminists ought to follow up- Conclusion
suggesting that in some areas witchcraft represented a female-led
peasant rebellion. Here we can't attempt to explore the historical We have our own moment of history to work out, our own
context of the witch hunts in any depth. But we do have to get struggles. What can we learn from the past that will help us-in a
beyond some common myths about the witch-craze-myths Women's Health Movement-today?
which rob the "witch' of any dignity and put the blame on her and These are some of our conclusions:
the peasants she served.
Unfortunately, the witch herself-poor and illiterate-did not o We have not been passive bystanders in the -history of
leave us her story. It was recorded, like all history, by the educated medicine. The present system was born in and shaped by the
elite, so that today we know the witch only through the eyes of her competition between male and female healers. The medical
persecutors. profession in particular is not just another institution which hap-
Two of the most common theories of the witch hunts are pens to discriminate against us: It is a fortress designed and
basically medical interpretations, attributing the witch craze to erected to exclude us. This means to us that the sexism of the
unexplainable outbreaks of mass hysteria. One version has it that health system is not incidental, not just the reflection of the sexism
the peasantry went mad. According to this, the witch-craze was an of society in general or the sexism of individual doctors. It is
historically older than medical science itself; it is deep-rooted,
* We are omitting from this discussion any mention of the New institutional sexism.
England witch trials in the 1600's. These trials occurred on a relatively
small scale, very late in the history of witch-hunts, and in an entirely
o Our enemy is not just limen" or their individual male
different social context than the earlier European witch-craze.

6 39
 needed a patient, obedient helper, someone who was not above epidemic of mass hatred and panic cast in images of a blood-lusty
the most menial tasks, in short, a nurse. peasant mob bearing flaming torches. Another psychiatric in-
Healing, in its fullest sense, consists of both curing and caring, terpretation holds that the witches themselves were insane. One
doctoring and nursing. The old lay healers of an earlier time had authoritative psychiatric historian, Gregory Zilboorg, wrote that:
combined both functions. and were valued for both. (For example, ...millions of witches, sorcerers, possessed and obsessed were an
midwives not only presided at the delivery, but lived in until the enormous mass of severe neurotics [and] psychotics...for many years
new mother was ready to resume care of her children.) But with the world looked like a veritable insane asylum...
the development of scientific medicine, and the modern medical
But, in fact, the witch-craze was neither a lynching party nor a
profession, the two functions were split irrevocably. Curing
mass suicide by hysterical women. Rather, it followed well-
became the exclusive province of the doctor; caring was relegated
ordered, legalistic procedures. The witch-hunts were well-
to the nurse. All credit for the patient's recovery went to the doctor
organized campaigns, initiated, financed and executed by
and his "quick fix," for only the doctor participated in the mystique
Church and State. To Catholic and Protestant witch-hunters alike,
of Science.' The nurse's activities, on the other hand, were barely
the unquestioned authority on how to conduct a witch hunt was
distinguishable from those of a servant. She had no power, no
the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, written in 1484
magic, and no claim to the credit.
by the Reverends Kramer and Sprenger (the "beloved sons" of
Doctoring and nursing arose as complementary functions, and
Pope Innocent VIII.) For three centuries this sadistic book lay on
the society which defined nursing as feminine could readily see
the bench of every judge, every witch-hunter. In a long section on
doctoring as intrinsically "masculine." If the nurse was idealized
judicial proceedings, the instructions make it clear how the
Woman, the doctor was idealized Man-combining intellect and
"hysteria" was set off:
action, abstract theory and hard-headed pragmatism. The very
The job of initiating a witch trial was to be performed by either
qualities which fitted Woman for nursing barred her from doc-
the Vicart priest) or Judge of the County, who was to post a notice
toring, and vice versa. Her tenderness and innate spirituality were
to
out of place in the harsh, linear world of science. His decisiveness
direct, command, require and admonish that within the space of
and curiosity made him unfit for long hours of patient nurturing.
twelve days...that they should reveal it unto us if anyone know, see or
These sterotypes have proved to be almost unbreakable. have heard that any person is reported to be a heretic or a witch, or if
Today's leaders of the American Nursing Association may insist any is suspected especially of such practices as cause injury to men,
that nursing is no longer a feminine vocation but a neuter cattle, or the fruits of the earth, to the loss of the State.
Anyone failing to report a witch faced both excommunication and
a long list of temporal punishments.

38 7
 If this threatening notice exposed at least one witch, her trial
could be used to unearth several more. Kramer and Sprenger gave
detailed instructions about the use of tortures to force confessions
and further accusations. Commonly, the accused was stripped
naked and shaved of all her body hair, then subjected to thumb-
screws and the rack, spikes and bone-crushing "boots," starvation
and beatings. The point is obvious: The witch-craze did not arise
spontaneously in the peasantry. It was a calculated ruling class
campaign of terrorization.

The Crimes of the Witches

Who were the witches, then, and what were their " crim es" that
could arouse such vicious upper class suppression? Undoubtedly,
over the centuries of witch hunting, the charge of " witchcraft"
came to cover a multitude of sins ranging from political subversion
and religious heresy to lewdness and blasphemy. But three central
accusations emerge repeatedly in the history of witchcraft
throughout northern Europe: First, witches are accused of every
conceivable sexual crime aqainst men. Quite simply, they are The Doctor Needs a Nurse
"accused" of female sexuality. Second, they are accused of being
organized. Third, they are accused of having magical powers af- Of course, the women's movement was not in a position to
fecting health-of harming, but also of healing. They were often decide on the future of nursing anyway. Only the medical
charged specifically with possessing medical and obstetrical skills. profession was. At first, male doctors were a little skeptical about
First, consider the charge of sexual crimes. The medieval the new Niqhtlnqale nurses- perhaps suspecting that this was just
Catholic Church elevated sexism to a point of principle: The one more feminine attempt to infiltrate medicine. But they were
Malleus declares, "When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil." soon won over by the nurses' unflagging obedience. (Nightingale
The misogyny of the Church, if not proved by the witch-craze was a little obsessive on this point. When she arrived in the Crimea
itself, is demonstrated by its teaching that in intercourse the male with her newly trained nurses, the doctors at first ignored them all.
deposits in the female a homunculus, or "little person," complete Nightingale refused to let her women lift a finger to help the
thousands of sick and, wounded soldiers until the doctors gave an
order. Impressed, the doctors finally relented and set the nurses to
cleaning up the hospital.) To the beleaguered doctors of the 19th
century,.. nursing was aqodsend: Here at last was a kind of health
worker who did not want to.compete with the "requlars," did not
have a medical doctrine to push, and who seemed to have no other
mission in life but to serve.
While the average regular doctor was making nurses welcome,
the new scientific practitioners of the early 20th century were
making them necesserv. The new, post-Flexner physician, was
even less likely than his predecessors to stand around and watch
the progress of his "cures." He diagnosed, he prescribed, he
moved on. He could not waste his talents, or his expensive
, Devil seducing a witch academic training in the tedious details of bedside care. For this he

8 37
 Mother Nature." (Victor Robinson, MD. White Caps, The Story of
Nursing) If women were instinctive nurses, they were not, in the
Nightingale view, instinctive doctors. She wrote of the few female
physicians of her time: "They have only tried to be men, and they
have succeeded only in being third-rate men." Indeed, as the
number of nursing students rose in the late 19th century, the
number of female medical students began to decline. Woman had
found her place in the health system.
Just as the feminist movement had not opposed the rise of
medical professionalism, it did not challenge nursing as an op-
pressive female role. In fact, feminists of the late 19th century were
themselves beginning to celebrate the nurse/mother image of
femininity. The American women's movement had given up the
struggle for full sexual equality to focus exclusively on the vote, Witch-esand
and to get it, they were ready to adopt the most sexist tenets of demons dancing
in a ring
Victorian ideology: Women need the vote, they argued, not
because they are human, but because they are Mothers. "Woman
with soul, which is simply housed in the womb for nine months,
is the mother of the race," gushed Boston feminist Julia Ward
without acquiring any attributes of the mother. The homunculus is
Howe, lithe guardian of its helpless infancy, its earliest teacher, its
not really safe, however, until it reaches male hands again, when
most zealous cha.mpion. Woman is also the homemaker, upon her
a priest baptises it, ensuring the salvation of its immortal soul.
devolve the details which bless and beautify family life." And so on
Another depressing fantasy of some medieval religious thinkers
in paeans too painful to quote.
The women's movement dropped its earlier emphasis on was that upon resurrection all human beings would be reborn as
opening up the professions to women: Why foresake Motherhood men!
for the petty pursuits of males? And of course the impetus to at- The Church associated women with sex, and all pleasure in sex
tack professionalism itself as inherently sexist and elitist was long was condemned, because it could only come from _the devil.
since dead. Instead, they turned to professionalizing women's Witches were supposed to have gotten pleasure from copulation
natural functions. Housework was glamorized in the new discipline with the devil (despite the icy-cold organ he was reputed to
of "domestic science." Motherhood was held out as a vocation possess) and they in turn infected men. Lust in either man or wife,
requiring much the same preparation and skill as nursing or then, was blamed on the female. On the other hand, witches were
teaching. accused of making men impotent and of causing their penises to
So while some women were professionalizing women's disappear. As for female sexuality, witches were accused, in effect,
domestic roles, others were "domesticizing" professional roles, like of giving contraceptive aid and of performing abortions:
nursing, teaching and, later, social work. For the woman who Now there are, as it is said in the Papal Bull, seven methods by which
chose to express her feminine drives outside of the. home, these they infect with witchcraft the venereal act and the conception of the
womb: First, by inclining the minds of men to inordinate passion;
occupations were presented as simple extensions of women's second, by obstructing their generative force; third, by removing the
"natural" domestic role. Conversely the woman who remained at members accommodated to that act; fourth, by changing men into
home was encouraged to see herself as a kind of nurse, teacher beasts by their magic act; fifth, by destroying the generative force in.
women; sixth, by procuring abortion; seventh, by offering children to
and counsellor practicing within the limits of the family. And so the the devils, besides other animals and fruits of the earth with which they
middle class feminists of the late 1800's dissolved away some of work much harm ...
the harsher contradictions of sexism. ( Malleus Maleficarum)

In the eyes of the Church, all-the witches' power was ultimately

derived from her sexuality. Her career began with sexual in-
36
9
 brought the selfless devotion of a mother. To the lower level
tercourse with the devil. Each witch was confirmed at a general
hospital employees, she brought the firm but kindly discipline of a
meeting (the witches' Sabbath) at which the devil presided, often
household manager accustomed to dealing with servants.
in the form of a goat, and had intercourse with the neophytes. In
But, despite the glamorous "ladv with the lamp" image, most of
return for her powers, the witch promised to serve him faithfully.
nursing work was just low-paid, heavy-duty housework. Before
(In the im.agination of the Church even evil could only be thought
long, most nursing schools were attracting only women from
of as ultimately male-directed I) As the Malleus makes clear, the
working class and lower middle class homes, whose only other
devil almost always acts through the female, just as he did in Eden:
options were factory or clerical work. But the philosophy of nursing
All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is in- education did not change-after all, the educators were still middle
satiable ... Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort and upper class women. If anything, they toughened their in-
with devils ... it is sufficiently clear that it is no matter for wonder that
there are more women than 'men found infected with the heresy of sistence on lady-like character development, and the socialization
witchcraft... And blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the of nurses became what it has been for most of the 20th century:
male sex from so great a crime ... the imposition of upper class cultural values on working class
women. (For example, until recently, most nursing students were
Not only were the witches women-they were women who
taught such upper class graces as tea pouring, art appreciation,
seemed to be organized into an enormous secret society. A witch
etc. Practical nurses are still taught to wear girdles, use make-up,
who was a proved member of the "Devil's party" was more
and in general mimic the behavior of a "better" class of women.)
dreadful than one who had acted alone, and the witch-hunting
But the Nightingale nurse was not just the projection of upper
literature is obsessed with the question of what went on at the
class ladyhood onto the working world: She embodied the very
witches' "Sabbaths." (Eating of unbaptised babies? Bestialism and
spirit of femininity as defined by sexist Victorian society-she was
mass orgies? So went their lurid speculations ...)
Woman. The inventors of nursing saw it as a natural vocation for
In fact, there is evidence that women accused of being witches
women, second only to motherhood. When a group of English
did meet locally in small groups and that these groups came
nurses proposed that nursing model itself after the medical
together in crowds of hundreds or thousands on festival days.
profession, with exams and licensing, Nightingale. responded that
Some writers speculate that the meetings were occasions for
" ...nurses cannot be registered and examined any more than
pagan religious worship. Undoubtedly the meetings were also
mothers."[Emphasis added.l Or, as one historian of nursing put it,
occasions for trading herbal lore and passing on the news. We
nearly a century later, "Woman is an instinctive nurse, taught by
have little evidence about the political significance of the witches' 35
organizations, but it's hard to imagine that they weren't connected
to the peasant rebellions of the time. Any peasant organization,
just by being an organization, would attract dissidents, increase
communication between villages, and build a spirit of collectivity
and autonomy among the peasants.

Witches as Healers
We come now to the most fantastic accusation of all: The witch
is accused not only of murdering and poisoning, sex crimes and
conspiracy-but of helping and healing. As a leading English
witch-hunter put it:
For this must always be remembered, as a conclusion, that by witches
we understand not only those which kill and torment, but all Diviners,
Charmers, Jugglers, all Wizards, commonly called wise men and wise
women ... and in the same number we reckon all good Witches, which

10
 In fact, the first American nursing schools did their best to recruit
actual upper class women as students. Miss Euphemia Van
Rensselear, of an old aristocratic New York family, graced
Bellevue's first class. And at Johns Hopkins, where Isabel Hamp-
ton trained nurses in the University Hospital, a leading doctor could
only complain that:
Miss Hampton has been most successful in getting probationers
[students 1 of the upper class; but unfortunately, she selects them
altogether for their good looks and the House staff is by this time in a
sad state.

Let us look a little more closely at the women who invented

nursing, because, in a very real sense, nursing ·as we know it today
is the product of their oppression as upper class Victorian women.
Dorothea Dix was an heiress of substantial means. Florence
Nightingale and Louisa Schuyler (the moving force behind the
creation of America's first Nightingale-style nursing school) were
genuine aristocrats. They were refugees from the enforced leisure Witch preparing a potion
of Victorian ladyhood. Dix and Nightingale did not begin to carve
out their reform careers until they were in their thirties, and faced do no hurt but good, which do not spoil and destroy, but save and
deliver. .. lt were a thousand times better for the land if all Wltches, but
with the prospect of a long, useless spinsterhood. They focused especially the blessinq Witch, might suffer death.
their energies on the care of the sick because this was a "natural"
and acceptable interest for ladies of their class. Witch-healers were often the only general medical practitioners
Nightingale and her immediate disciples left nursing with the for a people who had no doctors and no hospitals and who were
indelible stamp of their own class biases. Training emphasized bitterly afflicted with poverty and disease. In particular, the
character, not skills. The finished products, the Nightingale nurse, association of the witch and the midwife was strong: IINo one does
was simply the ideal Lady, transplanted from home to the. hospital, more harm to the Catholic Church than midwives," wrote witch-
and absolved of reproductive responsibilities. To the doctor, she hunters Kramer and Sprenger.
brought the wifely virtue of absolute obedience. To the patient, she The Church itself had little to offer the suffering peasantry:
On Sundays, after Mass, the sick came in scores, crying for help,-and
words were all they got: "You have sinned, and God is afflicting you.
Thank him; you will suffer so much the less torment in the life to come.
Endure, suffer, die. Has not the Church its prayers for the dead?"

(Jules Michelet, Setenism and Witchcraft)

When faced with the misery of the poor, the Church turned to the
dogma that experience in this world is fleeting and unimportant.
But there was a double standard at work, for the Church was not
against medical care for the upper class. Kings and nobles had their
court physicians who were men, sometimes even priests. The real
issue was control: Male upper class healing under the auspices of
the Church was acceptable, female healing as part of a peasant
subculture was not.
The Church saw its attack on peasant healers as an attack on
magic, not medicine. The devil was believed to have real power on

34 11
 invented. In the early 19th century, a " nu.rse" was simply a woman
earth, and the use of that power by peasant women-whether for who happened to be nursing someone-a sick child or an aging
good or evil-was frightening to the Church and State. The greater relative. There were hospitals, and they did employ nurses. But the
their satanic powers to help themselves, the less they were hospitals of the time served largely as refuges for the dying poor,
dependent on God and the Church and the more they were with only token care provided. Hospital nurses, history has it, were
potentially able to use their powers against God's order. Magic a disreputable lot, prone to drunkenness, prostitution and thievery.
charms were thought to be at least as effective as prayer in healing And conditions in the hospitals were often scandalous. In the late
the sick, but prayer was Church-sanctioned and controlled while 1870's a committee investigating New York's Bellevue Hopital
incantations and charms were not. Thus magic cures, even when could not find a bar of soap on the premises.
successful, were an accursed interference with the will of God, If nursing was not exactly an attractive field to women workers,
achieved .with the help of the devil, and the cure itself was evil. it was a wide open arena for women reformers. To reform hospital
There was no problem in distinguishing God's cures from the care, you had to reform nursing, and to make nursing acceptable to
devil's, for obviously the Lord would work through priests and doctors and to women of "good character," it had to be given a
doctors rather than through peasant women. completely new image. Florence Nightingale got her change in the
The wise woman, or witch, had a host of remedies which had battle-front hospitals of the Crimean War, where she replaced the
been tested in years of use. Many of the herbal remedies developed old camp-follower "nurses" with a bevy of disciplined, sober,
by witches still have their place in modern pharmacology. They had middle-aged ladles. Dorothea Dix, an American hospital reformer,
pain-killers, digestive aids and ariti-inflammatory agents. They used introduced the new breed of nurses in the Union hospitals of the
ergot for the pain of labor at a time when the Church held that pain Civil War.
in labor was the Lord's just punishment for Eve's original sin. Ergot The new nurse-lithe lady with the lamp," selflessly tending
derivatives are the principal drugs used today to hasten labor and the wounded-caught the popular imagination. Real nursing
aid in the recovery from childbirth. Belladonna-still used today as schools began to appear in England· right after the Crimean War,
an anti-spasmodic-was used by the witch-healers to inhibit and in the US right after the Civil War. At the same time, the
uterine contractions when miscarriage threatened. Digitalis, still an number of hospitals began to increase to keep pace with the needs
important drug in treating heart ailments, is said to have been of medical education. Medical students needed hospitals to train
discovered by an English witch. Undoubtedly many of the with- in; good hospitals, as the doctors were learning, needed good
ches' othe.r remedies were purely magical, and owed their ef- nurses.
fectiveness-if they had any-to their reputation.
The witch-healer's methods .were as great a threat (to the
Catholic Church, if not the Prctestant) asher results, for the witch
was an empiricist: She relied on her senses rather than on faith or
doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her at-
titude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She
trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and
childbirth-whether through medications or charms, In short, her
magic was the science of her time.
The Church, by contrast, was deeply anti-empirical. It
discredited the value of the material world, and had a profound
distrust of the senses. There was no point in looking for natural
laws that govern physical phenomena, for the world is created
anew by God in every instant. Kramer and Sprenger, in the
Malleus, quote St. Augustine on the deceptiveness of the senses:
. . .Now the motive of the win is something perceived through the
senses or the intellect, both of which are subject to the power of the

12 33
 devil. For St. Augustine says in Book 83: This evil, which is of the devil,
wasted on ignorant midwives. Besides which, poor women were creeps in by all the sensual approaches; he places himself in figures, he
spending an estimated $5 million a year on midwives-$5 million adapts himself to colors, he attaches himself to sounds, he lurks in
which could have been going to p.r:ofessionals. "
II
angry and wrongful conversation, he abides in smells, he impregnates
with flavours and fills with certain exhalations all the channels of the
Publicly, however, the obstetricians launched their attacks on understanding.
midwives in the name of science and reform. Midwives were
The senses are the devil's playground, the arena into which he will
ridiculed as "hopelessly dirty, ignorant and incompetent."
try to lure men away from Faith "and into the conceits of the in-
Specifically, they were held responsible for the prevalence of
tellect or the delusions of carnality.
puerperal sepsis (uterine infections) and neonatal ophthalmia
In the persecution of the witch, the anti-empiricist and the
(blindness due to parental infection with gonorrhea). Both con-
misogynist, anti-sexual obsessions of the Church coincide: Em-
ditions were easily preventable by techniques well within the grasp
piricism and sexuality both represent a surrender to the senses, a
of the least literate midwife (hand-washing for puerperal sepsis,
betrayal of faith. The witch was a triple threat to the Church: She
and eye drops for the ophthalmla.) So the obvious solution for a
was a woman, and not ashamed of it. She appeared to be part of
truly public-spirited obstetrical profession would have been to
an organized underground of peasant women. And she was a
make the appropriate preventive techniques known and available
healer whose practice was based in empirical study. In the face of
to the mass of midwives. This is in fact what happened in England,
the repressive fatalism of Christianity, she held out the hope of
Germany and most other European nations: Midwifery was
change in this world.
upgraded through training to become an established, independent
occupation. The Rise of the European Medical Profession
But the American obstetricians had no real commitment to
While witches practiced among the people, the ruling classes
improved obstetrical care. In fact, a study by Johns Hopkins
were cultivating their own breed of secular healers: the university-
professor in 1912 indicated that most American doctors were less
trained physicians. In the century that preceded the beginning of
competent than the midwives. Not only were the doctors them-
the "witch-craze" -the thirteenth century- European medicine
selves unreliable about preventing sepsis and ophthalmia but they
became firmly established as a secular science and a profession.
also tended to be too ready to use surgical techniques which
The medical profession was actively engaged in the elimination of
endangered mother or child. If anyone, then, deserved a legal
female healers-their exclusion from the universities, for exam-
monopoly on obstetrical care, it was the midwives, not the MD's.
ple-long before the witch-hunts began.
But the doctors had power, the midwives didn't. Under intense
For eight long centuries, from the fifth to the thirteenth, the
pressure from the medical profession, state after state passed laws other-wordly, anti-medical 'stance of the Church had stood in the
outlawing midwifery and restrictinq the practice of obstetrics to way of the development of medicine as a respectable profession.
doctors. For poor and working class women, this actually meant Then, in the 13th century, there was a revival of learning, touched
worse-or no-obstetrical care. (For instance, a study of infant off by contact with the Arab world. Medical schools appeared in
mortality rates in Washington showed :anincrease in infant
mortality in the years immediately following the passage of the law
The humors: sanguine, melancholy, hot-tempered, sluggish
forbidding midwifery.) For the new, male medical profession, the
ban on midwives meant one -less source of competition. Women
had been routed from their last foothold as independent prac-
titioners.

The Lady with the Lamp

The only remaining occupation for women 'in health was nursing.
Nursing had not always existed as a paid occupation - it had to be

32 13
 necessary. But Flexner and the foundations had no intention of
making such traininq available to the great mass of lay healers and
"irreqular" doctors. Instead, doors were slammed shut to blacks,
to the majority of women and to poor white men. (Flexner in his
report bewailed the fact that any crude boy or jaded clerk" had
II

been able to seek medical traininq.) Medicine had become a white,

male, middle class occupation
But it was metre than an occupation. It had become, at last, a
profession. To be more precise, one particular group of healers, the
"regular" doctors, was now the medical profession. Their victory
was not based on any skills of their own: The run-of-the-mill
"regular" doctor did not suddenly acquire a knowledge of medical
THE BENEFITS OF BLEEDING science with the publication of the Flexner. report. But he did
acquire the mystique of science. So what if his own alma mater
had been condemned in the Flexner report; wasn't he a member of
the universities, and more and more young men of means sought
medical training. The church imposed strict controls on the new the AMA, and wasn't it in the forefront of scientific reform? The
profession, and allowed it to develop only within the terms set by doctor had become-thanks to some foreign scientists and eastern
Catholic doctrine. University-trained physicians were not permitted foundations-the "man of science": beyond criticism, beyond
to practice without calling in a priest to aid and advise them, or to regulation, very nearly beyond competition.
treat a patient who refused confession. By the fourteenth century
their practice was in demand among the wealthy, as long as they Outlawing the Midwives
continued to take pains to show that their attentions to the body
did not jeopardize the soul. In fact, accounts of their medical In state after state, new, tough, licensing laws sealed the doc-
training make it seem more likely that they jeopardized the body. tor's monopoly on medical practice. All that was left was to drive
There was nothing in late medieval medical training that con- out the last holdouts of the old people's medicine-the midwives.
flicted with church doctrine, and little that we would recognize as In 1910, about 50 percent of all babies were delivered by mid-
"science." Medical students, like other scholarly young gentlemen, wives- most were blacks or working class immigrants. It was an
spent years studying Plato, Aristotle and Christian theology. Their intolerable situation to the newly emerging obstetrical specialty:
medical theory was largely restricted to the works of Galen, the For one thing, every poor woman who went to a midwife was one
ancient Roman physician who stressed the theory of " com - more case lost to academic teaching and research. America's vast
plexions" or "temperaments" of men, "wherefore the choleric are lower class resources of obstetrical "teachinq material" were being
wrathful, the sanguine are kindly, the melancholy are envious,"
and so on. While a 'student, a doctor rarely saw any patients at all,
and no experimentation of any kind was taught. Medicine was
sharply differentiated from surgery, which was almost everywhere
considered a degrading, menial craft, and the dissection of bodies
was almost unheard of.
Confronted with a sick person, the university-trained physician
had ·little to go on but superstition. Bleeding was a common
practice, especially in the case of wounds. Leeches were applied
according to the time, the hour, the air, and other similar con-
siderations. Medical theories were often grounded more in Illogic"
than in observation: "Some foods brought on good humours, and
others, evil humours. For example, nasturtium, mustard, and garlic

14 31
 produced reddish bile; lentils, cabbage and the meat of old goats
and beeves begot black bile." Incantations, and quasi-religious
rituals were thought to be effective: The physician to Edward II,
who held a bachelor's degree in theology and a doctorate in
medicine 'from Oxford, prescribed for toothache writing on the
jaws of the patient, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost, Amen," or touching a needle to a caterpillar and then
to the tooth. A frequent treatment for leprosy was a broth made of
the flesh of a black snake caught in a dry land among stones.
Such was the state of medical t'science" at the time when witch-
healers were persecuted for being practitioners of "rnaqic". It was
witches who developed an extensive understanding of bones and
muscles, herbs and drugs, while physicians were still deriving their
prognoses from astrology and alchemists were trying to turn lead
into gold. So great was the witches' knowledge that in 1527,
Paracelsus, considered the "father of modern medicine," burned
his text on pharmaceuticals, confessing that he "had learned from
the Sorceress all he knew."

The Suppression of Women Healers

The establishment of medicine as a profession, requmnq
clear: Conform to the Johns Hopkins model or close. To get the university training, made it easy to bar women legally from
message across, the Carnegie Corporation sent a staff man, practice. With few exceptions, the universities were closed to
Abraham Flexner, out on a national tour of medical schools-from women (even to upper class women who could afford them), and
Harvard right down to the last third-rate commercial schools. licensing laws were established to prohibit all but university-trained
Flexner almost singlehandedly decided which schools would get doctors from practice. It was impossible to enforce the licensing
the money-and hence survive. For the bigger and better schools laws consistently since there was only a handful of university-
(i.e, those which already had enough money to begin to institute trained doctors compared to the great mass of lay healers. But the
the prescribed reforms), there was the promise of fat foundation laws could be used selectively. Their first target was not the
grants. Harvard was one of the lucky winners, and its president peasant healer, but the better off, literate woman healer who,
could say smugly in 1907, "Gentlemen, the way to get en-
dowments for medicine is to improve medical education." As for
the smaller, poorer schools, which Included most of the sectarian
schools and special schools for blacks and women- Flexner did
not consider them worth saving. Their options were to close, or to
remain open and face public denunciation in the report Flexner was
preparing.
The Flexner Report, published in 1910, was the foundations'
ultimatum to American medicine. In its wake, medical schools
closed by the score, including six of America's eight black medical
schools and the majority of the "irreqular" schools which had been
a haven for female students. Medicine was established
once and for all as a branch of "hiqher" learning, accessible only
through lengthy and expensive university training. It's certainly

~....;;; ,,~"'~;< .• . _(i~II'".1.

true that as medical knowledge grew, lengthier training did become
Woman treating dislocated jaw
30 15
 As far as curriculum was' concerned, the big innovation at
competed for the same urban clientele as that of the university- Hopkins was integrating lab work in basic science with expanded
trained doctors. clinical training. Other reforms included hiring full time faculty,
Take, for example, the case of Jacoba Felicie, brought to trial in emphasizing research, and closely associating the medical school
1322 by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, on with a full university. Johns Hopkins also introduced the modern
charges of illegal practice. Jacoba was literate and had received pattern of medical education--four years of medical school
some unspecified "special training" in medicine. That her patients following four years of college-which of course barred most
were well off is evident from the fact that (as they testified in court) working class and poor people from the possibility of a medical
they had consulted well-known university-trained physicians education.
before turning to her. The primary accusations brought against her Meanwhile the US was emerging as the industrial leader of the
were that world. Fortunes built on oil, coal and the ruthless exploitation of
. . .she would cure her patient of internal illness and wounds or of
external abscesses. She would visit the sick assiduously and continue American workers were maturing into financial empires. For the
to examine the urine in the manner of physicians, feel the pulse, and first time in American history, there were sufficient 'concentrations
touch the body and limbs. of corporate wealth to allow for massive, organized philanthropy,
Six witnesses affirmed that Jacoba had cured them, even after . Le., organized ruling class intervention in the social, cultural and
numerous doctors had given up, and one patient declared that she political life of the nation. Foundations were created, as the lasting
was wiser in the art of surgery and medicine than any master Instruments of this lntervention-vthe Rockefeller and Carnegie
physician or ·surgeon in Paris. But these testimonials were used foundations appeared in the first decade of the 20th century. One
of the earliest and highest items on their agenda was medical
"reform," the creation of a respectable, scientific American
medical profession.
The group of American medical practitioners that the foun-
dations chose to put their money behind was, naturally enough,
the scientific elite of the "regular" doctors. (Many of these men
were themselves ruling class, and all were urbane, university-
trained gentlemen.) Starting in 1903, foundation money began to
pour into medical schools by the millions. The conditions were

THE L_\.DY AS PHYSICIAN. Medical diploma mill

29
16
 likely to seek formal medical training at this time were middle class. against her, for the charge was not that she was incompetent, but
They must have found it easier to identify with the middle class that-as a woman-she dared to cure at all.
"regular" doctors than with lower class women healers or with the Along the same lines, English physicians sent a petition to
sectarian medical groups (which had earlier been identified with Parliament bewailing the " worthless and presumptuous women
radical movements.) The shift in allegiance was probably made all who usurped the profession" and asking the imposition of fines
the easier by the fact that, in the cities, female lay practitioners and "Iong imprisonment" on any woman who attempted to "use
were increasingly likely to be immigrants. (At the same time, the the practyse of Fisyk." By the 14th century, the medical
possibilities for a cross-class women's movement on any issue profession's campaign against urban, educated women healers
were vanishing as working class women went into the factories was virtually complete throughout Europe. Male doctors had won a
and middle class women settled into Victorian ladyhood.) clear monopoly over the practice of medicine among the upper
Whatever the exact explanation, the result was that middle class classes (except for obstetrics, which remained the province of
women had given up the substantive attack on male medicine, and female midwives even among the upper classes for another three
accepted the terms set by the emerging male medical profession. centuries.) They were ready to take on a key role in the elimination
of the great mass of female healers-the, "witches."
Professional Victory The partnership between Church, State and medical profession
The "regulars" were still in no condition to make another bid for reached full bloom in the witch trials. The doctor was held up the
medical monopoly. For one thing, they still couldn't claim to have medical " e.xpe rt ," giving an aura' of science to the whole
any uniquely effective methods or special body of knowledge. proceeding. He was asked to make judgments about whether
Besides, an occupational group doesn't gain a professional. certain women were witches and whether certain afflictions had
monopoly on the basis of technical superiority alone. A recognized been caused by witchcraft. The MalleiJs says: IJAnd if it is asked
profession is not justa group of self-proclaimed experts; it is a how it is possible to distinguish whether an illness is caused by
group which has authority in the law to select its own members witchcraft or by some natural physical defect, we answer that the
first [way] is by 'means of the judgement of doctors..." [Emphasis
and regulate their practice, Le., to monopolize a certain field
added]. In the witch-hunts, the Church explicitly legitimized the
without outside interference. How does a particular group gain full
professional status? In the words of sociologist Elliot Freidson:
doctors' professionalism, denouncing non-professional healing as
equivalent to heresy: "If a woman dare to cure without having
A profession attains and maintains its position by virtue of the
protection and patronage of some elite segment of society which has
studied she is a witch and must die." (Of course, there wasn't any
been persuaded that there is some special value in its work. way for a woman to studv.) Finally, the witch craze provided a
handy excuse for the doctor's failings in everyday practice:
In other words, professions are the creation of a ruling class. To
Anything he couldn't cure was obviously the result of sorcery.
become the medical profession, the "reg.ular" doctors needed,
The distinction between "female" superstition and " male"
above all, ruling class patronage.
medicine was made final by the very roles of the doctor and the
By a lucky coincidence for the "requlars," both the science and
witch at the trial. The trial in one stroke established the male
the patronage became available around the same time, at the turn
physician on a moral and intellectual plane vastly above the female
of the century. French and especially German scientists brought
healer he was called to judge. It placed him on the side of God and
forth the germ theory of disease which provided, for the first time
Law, a professional on par with lawyers and theologians, while it
in human history, a rational basis for disease prevention and
placed her on the side of darkness,' evil and magic. He owed his
therapy. While the run-of-the-mill American doctor was still
new status not to medical or scientific achievements of his own,
mumbling about "humors" and dosing people with calomel, a tiny
but to the Church and State he served so well.
medical elite was travelling to German universities to learn the new
science. They returned to the US filled with reformist zeal. In -1893
The Aftermath
German-trained doctors (funded by local philanthropists) set up
Witch hunts did not eliminate the lower class woman healer, but
the first American German-style medical school, Johns Hopkins.
they branded her forever as superstitious and possibly malevolent.

28 17
 The rare woman who did make it into a "reqular" medical school
faced one sexist hurdle after another. First there was the con-
tinuous harassment-often lewd-by the male students. There
were professors who wouldn't discuss anatomy with a lady
present. There were textbooks like a well-known 1848 obstetrical
text which stated, IIShe [Woman] has a head almost too small for
intellect but just big enough for love." There were respectable
gynecological theories of the injurious effects of intellectual activity
on the female reproductive organs.
Having completed her academic work, the would-be woman
doctor usually found the next steps blocked. Hospitals were usually
closed to women doctors, and even if they weren't, the internships
were not open to women. If she did finally make it into practice,
she found her brother "requlars" unwilling to refer patients to her
and absolutely opposed to her membership in their medical
societies.
And so it is all the stranger to us, and all the sadder, that what we
might call the "women's health movement" began, in the late 19th
century, to dissociate itself from its Popular Health Movement past
and to strive for respectability. Members of irregular sects were
purged from the faculties of the women's medical colleges. Female
medical leaders such as Elizabeth Blackwell joined male "requlars"
in demanding an' end to lay midwifery and "a complete medical
education" for all who practiced obstetrics. All this at a time when
the "regulars" still had little or no "scientific" advantage over the
sect doctors or lay healers.
Doctor delivering The explanation, we suppose, was that the women who were
under a sheet, for

!t,:\l'IP~m~ )1 i' 11\t,\M~~itf:ilm;~~r~1~!F~111 i,r ')~I: i tIll' .:" ,,~'~ 1; l\,'111\~ I t~1t~~~~~~f~~1' l
modesty's sake
III:'~/
"1'1
~."\U""
"
~H I' "
•• _.:......-. --- .• ,
~I I'll -:"'~.~
"1,1I I . II It l i l t , II' I, I '
1
~~~~~~~.:':~:'-.:\5.r:x~,\
I.

::.:-3-~"::-~\~-';_ ••\I,:'
So thoroughly was she discredited among the emerging middle . ....-=-.. -~ I
I
......
l'\ II
It : .
~~
..
:.:".~~~'C. .... ;).

classes that in the 17th and 18th centuries it was possible for male ~ j . ~ 1-' '~'.::':A~ I; ·1,:~. I 1'1\:; j\I~:,111I Ir)rj~~, I! 11~1;1 II': I ~~~:~~\~~~I'
~-fr.i J:. t';1I~. JI I I 1)1 .~i'l~; '., I~' ~i' .c-..~~~~:~:. ~'\~~ I
"~ ': I !{I~'I')' :'~ilj'~ /I~:!I., II Ii:·' '~I ,I.' j.~~;: ~~'-"'~:::'~ ~ ~ ,
Ij, - '

practitioners to make serious inroads into that last preserve of 1', I I • ;);'/: ",1'1'
female healing-midwifery. Nonprofessional male practitioners- I I II
,.II~
' .
,\!'\' " I
'I
'i:, :i I
I!
'1 I
;~i!1 Ii '
I!'~,'
jl'II ~
I
ItI
.
\ "
,', 1::11111
I· .
· .'
',lld:\"" I '.
"barber-surqeons" -led the assault in England, claiming technical
superiority on the basis of their use of the obstetrical forceps. (The ']~111(
.-

~!t,...-.II!'~~
••
'I'

.»

\)'
r,·~.)~''''it.;~
I,
'
,-=C
~ . ..
I

/1
-:-_J-
r'~"
· ••

,
"I' fr~
i·' 1',"1
'.
III
...
I :1· ~ ~ ,
t•

1',1'
'::"-
>
.. '~\
forceps were legally classified as a surgical instrument, and women ~ . ~ 1ft ~: -:" ~ --t.-:'··l :~/~ ~ I
'. ,
\r "" .
were legally barred from surgical practice.) In the hands of the ~~l'ILjr"-"'1 ,~ ~~l 1';
barber surgeons, obstetrical practice among the middle class was '~::. - • .i " ~ -
1'\ .,

_! . .-J;,- -~ ~
•• .
I
quickly transformed from a neighborly service into a lucrative ~.=~- -r ~~·'·-:;t;
business, which real physicians entered in force in the 18th cen-
tury. Female midwives in England organized and charged the male
intruders with commercialism and dangerous misuse of the for- ~~-"IJJ'::-~-:;::'-,:<€--=:.:
---...... ;:-.:~.>'
----...;::
ceps. But it was too late-the women were easily put down as ---~
-...:;

ignorant " o ld wives" clinging to the superstitions of the past. 32. Dr. Meilanion Jones, finding himself outstripped in the race for patients by the fair Doctor-
ess Atalanta Robinson, gallantly throws her a wedding ring and wins the day.
Punch Almanack 1877
18 27
 offensive. In 1848, they pulled together their first national
organization, pretentiously named the American Medical Women and the Rise of the American Medical Profession
Association (AMA.) County and state medical societies, many of
which had practically disbanded during the height of medical
anarchy in the '30s and '4Os, began to reform.
Throughout the latter part of the 19th century, the "requlars"
In the US the male takeover of healing roles.started later than in
relentlessly attacked lay practitioners, sectarian doctors and
England or France, but ultimately went much further. There is
women practitioners in general. The attacks were linked: Women
probably no industrialized country with a lower percentage of
practitioners could be attacked because of their sectarian leanings;
women doctors than the US today: England has 24 percent; Russia
sects could be attacked because of their openness' to women. The
has 75 percent; the US has only seven percent. And while mid-
arguments against women doctors ranged from the paternalistic
wifery - female midwifery - is still a thriving occupation in
(how could a respectable woman travel at night to a medical
Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the' Netherlands, etc., it has
emergency?) to the hardcore sexist. In his presidential address to
been virtually outlawed here since the early twentieth century. By
the AMA in 1871, Dr. Alfred Stille, said:
Certain women seek to rival men in manly sports... and the
the turn of the century, medicine here was closed to all but a tiny
strongminded ape them in all things, even in dress. In doing so they minority of necessarily tough and well-heeled women. What was
may command a sort of admiration such as all monstrous productions left was nursing, and this was in no way a substitute for the
inspire, especially when they aim towards a higher type than their own.
autonomous roles women had enjoyed as midwives and general
The virulence of the American. sexist opposition to women in
healers.
medicine has no parallel in Europe. This is probably because: First,
The question is not so much how women got "left out" of
fewer European women were aspiring to medical careers at this
medicine and left with nursing, but how did these cateqoriesarise
time. Second, feminist movements were nowhere as strong as in
at all? To put it another way: How did one particular set of healers,
the US, and here the male doctors rightly associated the entrance
who happened to be male, white and middle class, manage to oust
of women into medicine with organized feminism. And, third, the
all the competing folk healers, midwives and other practitioners
European medical profession was already more firmly established
who had dominated the American medical scene in the early
and hence less afraid of competition.
1800's?
The conventional answer given by medical historians is, of
course, that there always was one true American medical
profession-a small band of men whose scientific and moral
authority flowed in an unbroken stream from Hippocrates, Galen
and the great European medical scholars. In frontier America these
doctors had to combat, not only the routine problems of sickness
'and death, but the abuses of a host of lay practitioners-usually
depicted as women, ex-slaves, Indians and drunken patent
medicine salesmen. Fortunately for the medical profession, in the
late 19th century the American public suddenly developed a
healthy respect for the doctors' scientific knowledge, outgrew its
earlier faith in quacks, and granted the true medical profession a
lasting monopoly of the healing arts.
THE COMING RACE
Doctor Evangeline. 'BY THE BYE, MR SAWYER, ARE YOU
ENGAGED TOMORROW AFTERNOON? I HAVE RATHER
But the real answer is not in this made-up drama of science
A TICKLISH OPERATION TO PERFORM-AN AMPU-
TATION, YOU KNOW: versus ignorance and superstition. It's part of the 19th century's
Mr Sawyer. 'I SHALL BE VERY HAPPY TO DO IT FOR
YOU:
Dr Evangeline. '0, NO, NOT THAT! BUT WILL YOU
long story of class and sex struggles for power in all areas of life.
KINDLY COME AND ADMINISTER THE CHLOROFORM
FOR ME?' 14.9. 1872

26 19
 The new medical sects' schools did, in fact, open their doors to
women at a time when "reqular" medical training was all but
closed to them. For example, Harriet Hunt was denied admission to
Harvard Medical College, and instead went to a sectarian school
for her formal training. (Actually, the Harvard faculty had voted to
admit, her-along with some black male students- but the
students threatened to riot if they came.) The "regular" physicians
could take the credit for training Elizabeth Blackwell, America's
first female "reqular," but her alma mater (a small school in upstate
New York) quickly passed a resolution barring further female
students. The first generally co-ed medical school was the
"irreqular" Eclectic Central Medical College of New York, in
Syracuse. Finally, the first two all-female medical colleges, one in
Boston and one in Philadelphia, were themselves "irregular."

When women had a place in medicine, it was in a people's Feminist researchers should really find out more about the
medicine. When that people's medicine was, destroyed, there was Popular Health Movement. From the perspective of our movement
no place for women-except in the subservient role of nurses. The today, it's probably more relevant than the women's suffrage
set of healers who became the medical profession was struggle. To us, the most' tantalizing aspects of the Movement are:
distinguished not so much by its associations with modern (1) That it represented both class struggle and feminist struggle:
science as by its associations with the emerging American Today, it's stylish in some quarters to write off purely feminist
business establishment. With all due respect-to Pasteur, Koch and issues as middle class concerns. But in the Popular Health
the other great Europeanmedical researchers of the 19th century, Movement we see a coming together of feminist and working class
it was the Carnegies and RockefeUers who intervened to secure the energies. Is this because the Popular Health Movement naturally
- final victory of the American medical profession .. attracted dissidents of all kinds, or was there some deeper identity
The US in 1800 could hardly have been a more unpromising of purpose? (2) The Popular Health Movement was not just a
environment for the development.of a medical profession, or any movement for more and better medical care, but for a radically
profession, for that matter. Few formally trained physicians had different kind of health care: It was a substantive challenge to the
emigrated' here from Europe. There, were very few schools of prevailing medical dogma, practice and theory. Today we tend to
medicine in America and very few institutions of higher learning confine our critiques to the organization of medical care, and
altogether. The general public, fresh from a war of national assume that the scientific substratum of medicine is unassailable.
liberation, was hostile to professionalism and "foreign" elitisms of We too should be developing the capability for the critical study of
any type. medical "science't-eet least as it relates to women.
In Western Europe, university-trained physicians already had a
centuries' old monopoly over the right to heal. But in America, Doctors on the Offensive
medical practice was traditionally open to anyone who could At its height in the 1830's and 1840's, the Popular Health
demonstrate healing skills- regardless of formal training, race or Movement had the "regular" doctors-the professional ancestors
sex. Ann Hutchinson, the dissenting religious leader of the 1600's, of today's physicians-running scared. Later in the 19th century,
was a practitioner of "qeneral physik," as were many other as the grassroots energy ebbed and the Movement degenerated
ministers and their wives. The medical historian Joseph Kett into a set of competing sects, the "requlars" went back on the
reports that one of the most respected medical men in late 18th
II

25
20
 century Windsor, Connecticut, for example, was a freed Negro
called "Dr, Primus." In New Jersey, medical practice, except in
extraordinary cases, was mainly in the hands of women as late as
1818..."
Women frequently went into joint practices with their husbands:
The husband handling the surgery, the wife the midwifery and
gynecology, and everything else shared. Or a woman might go into
practice after developing skills through caring for family members
or through an apprenticeship with a relative or other established
healer. For example, Harriet Hunt, one of America's first trained
female doctors, became interested in medicine during her sister's
less as an overpaid "profession." From the moderate wing came a
illness, worked for a while with a husband-wife "doctor" team,
host of new medical philosophies, or sects, to compete with the
then simply hung out her own shingle. (Only later did she un-
"regulars" on their own terms: Eclecticism, Grahamism, dertake formal training.)
Homeopathy, plus many minor ones. The new sects set up their
own medical schools, (emphasizing preventive care and mild herbal
cures), and started graduating their own doctors. In this context of Enter the Doctor
medical ferment, the old "regulars" began to look like just another In the early 1800's there was also a growing number of formally
sect, a sect whose particular philosophy happened to lean towards trained -doctors who took great pains to distinguish themselves
calomel, bleeding and the other stand-by's of "h.eroic" medicine. It from the host of lay practitioners. The most important real
was impossible to tell who were the "real" doctors, and by the distinction was that the formally trained, or "reqular" doctors as
1840's, medical licensing laws had been repealed in almost all of they called themselves, were male, usually middle class, and almost
the states. always more expensive than the lay competition.The "regulars' "
The peak of the Popular Health Movement coincided with the practices were largely confined to middle and upper class people
beginnings of an organized feminist movement, and the two were who could afford the prestige of being treated by a "qentleman" of
so closely linked that it's hard t9 tell where one began and the other their own class. By 1800, fashion even dictated that upper and
left off. "This crusade for women's health [the Popular Health middle class women employ male "regular" doctors for obstetrical
Movement] was related both in cause and effect to the demand for care-a custom which plainer people regarded as grossly indecent.
women's rights in general, and the health and feminist movements In terms of medical skills and theory, the so-called "regulars"
become indistinguishable at this point," according to Richard had nothing to recommend them over the lay practitioners. Their
Shryock, the well-known medical historian. The health movement "formal training" meant little even by European standards of the
was concerned with women's rights in general,and the women's time: Medical programs varied in length from a few months to two
movement was particularly concerned with health and with years; many medical schools had no clinical facilities; high school
women's access to medical training. diplomas were not required for admission to medical schools. Not
In fact, leaders of both groups used the prevailing sex that serious academic training would have helped much anyway-
stereotypes to argue that women were even better equipped to be there was no body of medical science to be trained in. Instead, the
doctors than men. "We cannot deny that women possess superior "regulars" were taught to treat most ills by "heroic" measures:
capacities for the science of medicine," wrote Samuel Thomson, massive bleeding, huge doses of laxatives, calomel (a laxative
a Health Movement leader, in 1834. (However, he felt surgery and containing mercury) and, later, opium. (The European medical
the care of males should be reserved for male practitioners.) profession had little better to offer at this time either.) There is no
Feminists, like Sarah Hale, went further, exclaiming in 1852: "Talk doubt that these cures" were often either fatal or more in-
II

about this [medicine] being the appropriate sphere for man and his jurious than the original disease. In the judgement- of Oliver
alone! With tenfold more plausibility and reason we say it is the Wendell Holmes, Sr., himself a distinguished physician, if all the
appropriate sphere for woman, and hers alone."

21
24
 medicines used by the "reqular" doctors in the US were thrown
into the ocean, it would be so much the better for mankind and so
much the worse for the fishes.
The lay practitioners were undoubtedly safer and more effective
than the "requlars." They preferred mild herbal medications,
dietary changes and hand-holding to heroic interventions. Maybe
they didn't know any more than the "regulars," but at least they
were less likely to do the patient harm. Left alone, they might well
have displaced the "reqular" doctors with even middle class
consumers in time. But they didn't know the right people. The
"regulars," with their close ties to the upper class, had legislative
clout. By 1830, 13 states had passed medical licensing laws
outlawing "irreqular" practice and establishing the "regulars" as
the only legal healers. Gynecological exam
It was a premature move. There was no popular support for the
idea of medical professlonalisrn, much less for the particular set of Movement. "Ladies Physiological Societles." the equivalent of our
healers who claimed it. And there was no way to enforce the new know-your-body courses, sprang up everywhere, bringing rapt
laws: The trusted healers of the common people could not be just audiences simple instruction in anatomy and personal hygiene. The
legislated out of practice. Worse still-for the "regulars" -this emphasis was on preventive care, as opposed to the murderous
early grab for medical monopoly inspired mass indignation in the "cures" practiced by the "reqular" doctors. The Movement ran up
form of a radical, popular health movement which came close to the banner for frequent bathing (regarded as a' vice by many
smashing medical elitism inAmerica once and for all. "regular" doctors of the time), loose-fitting female clothing, whole
grain cereals, temperance, and a host of other issues women could
The Popular Health Movement relate to. And, at about the time that Margaret Sanger's mother
The Popular Health Movement of the 1.830's and 40's is usually was a little girl, some elements of the Movement were already
dismissed in conventional medical histories as the high-tide of pushing birth control.
quackery and medical cultism. In reality it was the medical front of The Movement was a radical assault on medical elitism, and an
a general social upheaval stirred up by feminist and working class affirmation of the traditional people's medicine. "Every man his
movements. Women were the backbone of the Popular Health own doctor," was the slogan of one wing of the Movement, and.
they made it very clear that they meant every woman too. The
"Requlsr" doctors try water treatment "regular," licensed, doctors were attacked as members of the
"parasitic, non-producing classes," who survived only because of
the upper class' "lurid taste" for calomel and bleeding. Universities
(where the elite of the "reqular" doctors were trained) were
denounced as places where students "learn to look upon labor as
servile and demeaning" and to identify with the upper class.
Working class radicals rallied to the cause, linking King-craft,
II

Priest-craft, Lawyer-craft and Doctor- craft" as the four great evils

of the time. In New York State, the Movement was represented in
the legislature by a member of the Workingman's Party, who took
every opportunity to assaiil theYprivileqed doctors."

The "reqular" doctors quickly found themselves outnumbered

and cornered. From the left-wing of the Popular Health Movement
came a total rejection of doctoring" as a paid occupation - much
II

22 23