Gender, Religion, and Medicine in Enlightenment Germany: Dorothea Christiane Leporin’s Treatise on the Education of Women

The essay argues for the recognition of Dorothea Christiane Leporin as the first female physician in eighteenth-century Germany and her treatise on the education of women as an important contribution to feminist thinking prior to the emergence of a tradition of feminist theories since the nineteenth century. The essay addresses questions concerning the conceptual distinctions made in Enlightenment thought between reason and emotion as well as mind and body and investigates the consequences that these dualisms had for discussions about women’s education. It discusses Leporin’s treatise as a feminist challenge to established knowledge about gender in theology and the natural sciences by relating new and unorthodox approaches in medical philosophy and the spiritual practices of Pietism to women’s demand for education.