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Witches, midwives, and nurses: A history of women healers

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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.

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.

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.

This is a short book on a history of women healers. It was recommended reading in a graduate nursing course on nursing knowledge development. It gave an overview of women healers including witches and midwives up until present-day nursing. The book is written from a feminist perspective, which adds new insights. I recommend that all nurses read this book to challenge themselves. Although written in the 1970's, it is worthwhile to read another's passionate point of view.

For any one interested in women's history and in the real idea of "total history" from the Annales school, this book is a must. Of course is not perfect, what it is? However it is time to recover our past, and for that we have to depart from a different perspective, even if it is threatening and contested by some.

Originally published in 1973 and now in a second edition, "Witches Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers" is a paperback account of feminist healers' history in Western Civilisation from the Middle Ages through the early 70's. The first publication was written in "An angry blaze" of feminine outrage, but the original "pamphlet" became an underground best-seller in the 70's according to the "Village Voice." Re-issuing the book today invites some re-examination of the same feminist issues that prompted its original publication, and the authors conclude: "We have not been passive bystanders in the history of medicine...Our enemy is not just 'men' or their individual male chauvinism: it is the whole class system that 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: There is no historically consistent justification for the exclusion of women from healing roles...Men maintain their power in the health system through their monopoly of scientific knowledge...Professionalism in medicine is nothing more than the institutionalization of male upper-class monopoly...we must begin to break down the distinctions and barriers between women health workers and women consumers....Our oppression as women health workers today is inextricably linked to our oppression as women (pp. 99-102)." "Witches Midwives & Nurses" includes the original bibliography of the 1973 edition. Published literature in the area was scant at that time. Lest we become complacent, "Witches Midwives and Nurses" reminds us that though we may have come far in the progression of feminist ideas and enlightened health practices and education by and for women, there is yet quite some distance to go.

The history of the medical profession before 1900 is not a pleasant one. It was generally an all-male group that resisted all change, even that which was obviously of benefit. One specific example was the generally female profession of midwifery, where the women that assisted birth had a much better record of keeping mother and child alive than the doctors. Yet, the medical profession did nearly all it could to legally declare the midwives as medically incompetent.

I completely agree with Isaac Asimov when he pushed the position that many years ago elderly women were very rare due to the generally low life expectancy and the dangers of childbirth. He also noted that such women had a lifetime of experience in dealing with illnesses and they had as a group amassed a great deal of knowledge about natural remedies that actually worked. His thesis was that the rarity of such people made it easy for the response of the males in power to proclaim such women as witches and to persecute them in the harshest possible ways.

This book is a brief history of the caring medical profession as expressed in the actions of women and the generally hostile response of males in positions of authority. Unfortunately, the story is one of failures on many levels as the medical profession continued to expound "cures" that did more to improve the strength of the disease than to cure it.

While the authors occasionally move into the area of using feminist jargon when simple statements would do, overall this is a book that is historically accurate. It took centuries for women to be allowed into the medical profession as full practitioners and some of the more egregious examples of resistance are chronicled here.

This is a feminist's view of women in medicine over the centuries. It is interesting but out-of-date, having been written forty years ago. The situation for women in medical school has changed markedly. When I was in med school (class of 1960) four out of 133 student were women. Last year when our daughter graduated from med school 56% were women. Women in top positions in medicine has also changed but there is still need for progress. The remote history covered in the book is, however, accurate. The book is readable by both professional and non-professionals alike.

J. Garber MD, PhD

Love it! I retold parts of this books for months! It is beautifully organized and explains well how medicine has veered so far off what it should be.

This book was good but I had no idea it was to small. I was expecting something a bit more substantial. All in all it was a good read but I would never pay full price for this.