Author Topic: women in medicine area (Read 1402 times)

EvIL_DhoCThoR · « **on:** April 29, 2012, 10:11:40 AM »

Women finally were accepted as full-fledged medical practitioners in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but not without a struggle.

Of course women had been highly regarded as comforting healers for a long, long time; there probably were female practitioners in ancient Sumeria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and in Pre-Columbian America. In the Middle Ages the chief medical activities of women were as midwives, but there were also skillful female doctors practicing secretly or openly. Many of the women in medicine were the wives or daughters of lower-order wound surgeons, and in Christian religious orders women treated the sick throughout the medieval period. Although we may observe a part played by women in medicine throughout history, we may also note that their activities often were undertaken to the accompaniment of disapproval and at times of outright antagonism from the populace—not only from male physicians.

During most of the world's history licensure was not required, so it was principally public acceptance that would enable someone to perform medical functions regularly. When in the fourteenth century examinations began to be required for anyone to practice medicine, both sexes were theoretically equal. At the end of the fourteenth century in Germany, there were fifteen licensed female practitioners. In the fifteenth century the number had increased markedly, but only because the emperor had hired women to treat the indigent sick since male physicians were not available on the same terms. Although the advance of women into medicine was inexorable, it was slow.

In one field alone throughout history were women always accepted and even preferred: midwifery. Among the outstanding midwives to have received historical attention was Mme Boursier in seventeenth-century France, who may have been the first midwife to publish a scientific book on her specialty. For her services to Marie de Medicis (1573-1642), the second wife of Henry IV, she collected handsomely although she never received the pension the king promised. In England Elizabeth Cellier, after examining statistics on deaths after childbirth and abortion, concluded that two-thirds of the deaths were due to the midwife's lack of knowledge. She persuaded James II to agree to a special hospital for women, but her outspoken criticisms of many people (including the king himself) landed her in the pillory and her books on the bonfire. Other volumes on training midwives continued to appear, but they were usually written by men.

Women continued to find it well-nigh impossible to be accepted for training and practice as full-fledged doctors, except perhaps in Italy where women had received medical education for centuries and had even occupied prestigious university chairs.

The career of Dr. James Barry (1797-1865), a medical officer in the British army who enjoyed a high reputation for fifty years as a skillful surgeon, may serve to reflect the prevailing attitudes. Of slight stature, squeaky voice, and beardless face, Barry evidently aroused no suspicion—possibly because of an aggressive manner and a reputation as an accurate marksman. When an autopsy revealed that Barry was a woman, the war department and the medical association were so embarrassed that the findings were, hidden and Dr. Barry was officially buried as a man.

NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE :- (women)

2009
Elizabeth H. Blackburn
2009
Carol W. Greider
2008
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi
2004
Linda B. Buck
1995
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
1988
Gertrude B. Elion
1986
Rita Levi-Montalcini
1983
Barbara McClintock
1977
Rosalyn Yalow
1947
Gerty Cori

Author Topic: women in medicine area (Read 1402 times)

EvIL_DhoCThoR

women in medicine area

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