Midwifery

Although surveys of medieval legislation, guild organization, and terminology used to designate different medical practitioners have demonstrated that numerous medical specialties were recognized in Europe during the Middle Ages, most historians continue to equate the term “woman medical practitioner,” wherever they encounter it in medieval records, with “midwife.” This common practice obscures were identified as midwives, while the rest practiced as physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, and other healers.

While preserving terminological distinctions somewhat increases the quality of the information extracted from medieval documents concerning women medical practitioners, scholars must also reopen the whole question of why documentary evidence for women medical practitioners comprises such a tiny fraction of the evidence historians of medieval medicine usually present. Is this due to on the legal and social fringes of medical practice, where most women would have been found.

The advantages of broadening the scope of such studies is immediately apparent in Pelling and Webster’s study of sixteenth-century London. Instead of focusing solely on officially recognized and licensed practitioners, the researchers defined a medical practitioner as “any individual whose occupation is basically concerned with the care of the sick.” Using this earlier survey identified only 28 women medical practitioners in all of England between 1330 and 1530.

Finally, such studies provide only statistical information about the variety and prevalence of women’s medical practice in medieval Europe. Future studies might also make profitable use of analyses developed in other areas of women’s history as a basis for exploring the social context of women’s medical practice. Information about economic rivalry in to our growing understanding of women medical practitioners’ role in medieval society.