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Women have long been crucial to the provision of medical services, both in the treatment of sickness and in maintaining health. In this study, Susan Broomhall situates the practices and perceptions of women’s medical work in France in the context of the sixteenth century and its medical evolution and innovations. She argues that early modern understandings of medical practice and authority were highly flexible and subject to change. She furthermore examines how a focus on female practitioners, who cut across most sectors of early modern medical practice, can reveal the multifaceted phenomenon of these negotiations for authority.
This new paperback edition of Women's medical work in early modern France skilfully combines detailed research with a clear presentation of the existing literature of women’s medical work, making it invaluable to students of gender and medical history.
She is able to put together a coherent and impressive picture of women in health care, women functioning and writing about it for both male and female readerships.
Chronique
Acknowledgements
Notes on text
Introduction
1. Women and the medical guilds
2. The university: women and the Faculty of Medicine in Paris
3. Hospital nursing by women religious: the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris
4. Female healing before the law
5. The book trades: female medical practice in print
6. Nursing, caring, curing: women’s work in municipal child care
7. The world of the court: women serving the royal family
8. French women and reproductive knowledge at the Spanish court
9. Elite women and reproductive knowledge: the Nassau sisters
Afterword
Bibliography
Index