Abstract

Abstract:

The article discusses the slow withdrawal of women from medical and scientific communities in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Condemnation of women healers by professional, institutional, and moral authorities separated women from this medical work and practice, providing legal and religious justification that prevented the participation of women within the narrowing institutional boundaries of legal medicinal practice. Despite the waning presence of women within a public and scientific community, there exist remnants among them that prove a continued intellectual curiosity in healthcare and wellbeing. The empirical practice detailed in cookbooks and health manuals demonstrates the abundant use of ingredients provided from home gardens; these homegrown practices disclose a continued female tradition of medical practice, as many of these ingredients were used in medical treatments and ointments. Facilitated by the home garden, women were able to maintain ties to the scientific and medical communities increasingly dominated by a professional, masculine elite.

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