Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy by Sharon T. Strocchia (review)

In this meticulous and beautifully expressed book, Sharon Strocchia reveals cultures and practices of medicine that were created, maintained, and communicated by women from across the social spectrum during the Renaissance. Gendered forms of medical care—including bodywork, consolation, and gift giving—lie at the heart of three important sites for healing practices in late Renaissance Florence: the Medici court, convent pharmacies, and the city's pox hospital.

Strocchia makes three vital contributions to our understanding of gender and health in the early modern period. First, she recreates a vivid, multisensory history of women's medical work and responsibilities, from the oppressive heat of the convent pharmacy to the sight and smells of the blossomed, espaliered orange trees in San Dominico. Second, Strocchia reveals the "capillary nature" of early modern knowledge networks. Links with institutions, patrons, and artisans beyond the walls were essential to the success and development of the institutional medical cultures considered here. Finally, Strocchia draws attention to women's varied contributions to medical practice and experimental "ways of knowing." From the epistolary practice of elite women, through the commercially vital pharmaceutical expertise within the convent, and into the practical and often long-term service of nurses, Strocchia restores the place of female healers within the medical economy of the Renaissance. By considering contributions from across the social spectrum, she provides the richest account to date of the significance, value, and nature of early modern Italian women's medical practice.

The book consists of five chapters and draws principally on material from Florence (but includes comparative examples from Bologna and Rome) between 1500 and 1630. The structure of the volume reinforces the significance of space for understanding female medical practice. Chapter 1 focuses on the early Medici court and the expertise of Maria Salviati and Eleonora of Toledo whose work included the specialist care for infants and children but extended across the household. Female elite networks of patronage and charity could be transnational as well as local, as demonstrated in chapter 2, which explores affective healing through the material culture of gifts. An enduring commercial exchange, for example, between the Portuguese queen and Florentine nuns involved the valuable supply of sugar in return for handmade gifts, which were intended to protect and heal both body and soul. Chapter 3, "The Business of Health," reveals how convent pharmacies dovetailed with artistic workshops (pp. 98–99) and explores craft synergies and occupational clustering. Chapter 4, "Agents of Health," reveals the fascinating occupational and kinship networks that crossed the boundaries of the Renaissance convent. The final chapter highlights the important role of nurses within Renaissance pox hospitals. Throughout, Strocchia emphasizes the permeable walls of her medical spaces, as well as the connections between them. She demonstrates the ways in which they were shaped by the broader political and economic context of Renaissance Florence, including the Medici state's regulation of competition between pharmacies and its administration of hospitals.

This volume argues convincingly for female medical spaces as sites of innovation. The considerable investment of time and money in convent pharmacies, for example, including the extraordinary distillation furnace of the Murate (p. 154), allowed the nuns to meet the demand for new and distinctive products. The Court too was a site for emerging trends in herbal medicines, like watermelon distillate (p. 41). Hospitals were locations for new inventions, such as machines for boiling laundry (pp. 211–12), in line with the wider culture of ingenuity in Italian Renaissance cities.

This volume also highlights ways in which these medical sites were distinct. The obvious association between convent pharmacies and morality led consumers to associate these spaces with trust, as well as professional expertise (p. 25). Analogies between moral and physical cleanliness affected the range of products sold by convent pharmacies as well as the young age of those...