Witches, midwives, and nurses: A history of women healers [Unknown Binding]

Barbara Ehrenreich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1971

   Women have always been healers, and medicine has always been an arena of struggle between female practitioners and male professionals. This pamphlet explores two important phases in the male takeover of health care: the suppression of witches in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the United States. The authors conclude that despite efforts to exclude them, the resurgence of women as healers should be a long-range goal of the women’s movement.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This dandy little booklet quickly and concisely explains why it is that 93% of the doctors in this country are men even though women make up 70% of all healthcare workers. If you assumed that men are the doctors because they were the pioneers of the healing arts, then this booklet will open your eyes. Barbara Ehrenrich and Deirdre English show how, for reasons of class politics, women's suppression and naked greed, wealthy men discredited, persecuted and outright killed the wisewomen healers, leaving themselves to be the sole practitioners of their "scientific" medicine. The information presented here gives a whole new perspective to medical history and points to some of the causes underlying our current healthcare mess. -- From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by FGP --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Barbara Ehrenreich is author of the 2002 New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. She has written nearly twenty books, and has been a columnist for Time magazine and the New York Times. She has contributed to The Progressive, Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., The New Republic, Z Magazine, In These Times, and Salon.com. Deirdre English is the former editor of Mother Jones magazine. She has written for the Nation, New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Magazine, S.F. Chronicle Sunday Magazine, Vogue, and public radio and television. Currently, English is a professor at University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 45 pages
• Publisher: Glass Mountain Pamphlets (1971)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006VZMWY
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,599,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that is old but still dear to my heart, February 21, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets) (Paperback)

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses hardly qualifies as a `book;' it's more like a large booklet. But in its brevity, it manages to explain part of the answer to how our current health care disaster has come to pass. Written in 1973, this book was perfectly timed to coincide with the era of feminism, drastic changes in women's health, and the rise of midwifery as a once-again quasi-respected profession in the US. I am a nurse and a midwife, and I recently attended a book signing for Ehrenreich's Nickle and Dimed. When I set my dog-eared copy of WMN in front of her, she folded her hands in her lap and sat still. Then she placed her hand flat on the book, looked up at me with glistening eyes, and said, "Oh. Oh, my dear. This is - and probably always will be - my favorite of all the things I've written."
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is a scholarly history of how male doctors came to take over power and control of the healing arts, traditionally the domain of women. In their concerted efforts to become the sole practitioners of `scientific medicine,' the male `barber-surgeons' discredited, persecuted, and often killed the wisewomen healers. Spanning the time from the medieval years to the Sixties, it throws the entire course of medical history into a new light.
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is a MUST READ for anyone remotely involved in health care - and that includes everyone, because we are all consumers, if not practitioners. My 80yo father ate it up one afternoon, and that's saying a lot.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I would recommend it highly to anyone., February 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets) (Paperback)

The small size of this pamphlet belies its content. Far from being unsubstantiated and poorly researched, it has an annotated bibliography of 16 sources, spanning from the medieval "Malleus Malificarum" to "American Medicine and the Public Interest" (from Yale University Press). This little book is a consice and scholarly work of history, drwing connections between established events that throws the entire course of medical history into a striking new light. A MUST read for anyone even marginally involved in the health field; even more so for Doctors or health practitioners who wish to know more clearly the roots of their field.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Small, important, scholarly, historical summary., November 3, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets) (Paperback)

This document is a small seminal "must-read" for feminist-scholars, midwives, nurses, and witches. This small book presents a powerful history of the tragic loss of traditional feminist knowledge relating to birth by patriarchal religious powers during Europe's dark ages. The book came out of the authors' doctoral research. The historical nature of this book, negates any concern relating to the publication date. I strongly recommend it to eco-feminists, nurses, wicans, midwives, and birth-historians.