Overview

Throughout history more than half of the people involved in health care and healing have been women. More than half of the patients have also been women. Historically, the disproportionate fame and recognition given to male practitioners is largely due to the fact that surviving manuscripts from earlier times were written by men, and because women generally were not accepted into medical schools. Women have long practiced medicine, but dealt primarily with childbirth and conditions of the female reproductive system—women took care of women.

During the Renaissance, the period of intellectual and cultural revival that marks the end of the Middle Ages in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, women had a freer life, but living conditions were still poor and life was cheap. The use of herbs and...