Overview

This book examines the contributions of women to the history of philosophy and medicine, as well as the traditional medical knowledge that has been employed in households. Women have played integral roles in the history of medicine, often serving as healers, caretakers, midwives and guardians of traditional knowledge surrounding food, plants, remedies, and healing practices. However, women’s writings are often overlooked or marginalized in mainstream narratives because they did not write in the scientific language of Latin, and because their writings were not in the conventional form of a published book. The work, therefore, considers a diverse range of women, from Hildegard von Bingen and Oliva Sabuco to Maria Deraismes in the 19th century, midwives in Germany and numerous other women in European households. It demonstrates the significant influence of female knowledge and practices in the field of medicine, remedies, chemistry and healing practices. The chapters predominantly reflect on plants, food and practical remedies used and tested by women. Those engaged in research or teaching on the history of philosophy and medicine will find this collection invaluable, as it offers insights into a domain that has been relatively unexplored and lacks a substantial corpus of documented evidence.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jil Muller
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
ISBN:  

9783032177650

ISBN 10:   3032177650
Pages:   356
Publication Date:   15 May 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

1 Women’s Ideas in the History of Medicine: An Outline (Fabrizio Bigotti).- Part I: Cosmological, Medical Philosophy.- 2 From Body to Soul: Mental Disorders in Hildegard of Bingen’s Cause et Cure (Giulia Guidara).- 3 Health and Medicine in Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias (Valentina García Ortega).- 4 Food and Remedies in Oliva Sabuco’s New Philosophy of Human Nature (Jil Muller).- Part II: Practical Household Medicine.- 5 Keeping the Household Healthy: Gentry Women and Domestic Medicine in Late Medieval England (Caitlin Williams).- 6 Female Diseases and Domestic Medical Care in Seventeenth-Century England (Tommy Šmerda).- 7 Seasonality and Slaughter: Sourcing Animal-Ingredients in Seventeenth-Century Household Medicine (Madeleine Sheahan).- 8 Women and Household Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Finland (Charlotte Cederbom).- Part III: Female Case-Studies.- 9 “Mrs Clutton Apothecary at the Sign of the Unicorn Holbourn”: Tracing Women’s Roles in Medicine Through the Archives of the Society of Apothecaries of London, c. 1650-c. 1750 (Anna Simmons).- 10 Rivals or Partners? Women’s Knowledge and Experiences in Early Modern German Obstetric Manuals (Hana Jadrná Matějková).- 11 A woman’s touch: tracing female practice in an 18th century medical notebook (Julia Nurse).- 12 Do Animal Experiments Advance Human Therapeutics? Maria Deraismes (1828-1894) and the Antivivisectionist Challenge to Claude Bernard’s Medical Science (Iris Derzelle).- Part IV: Folk Medicine in the 20th century.- 13 Healers and “magare”: Women’s knowledge in twentieth-century Calabrian folk medicine (S. Simone Spinelli).- 14 Healing the nation through recipes: Jewish settler women in early 20th century Palestine (Erela Teharlev Ben-Shachar).- 15 Female Network of Medical Knowledge: Translating, Producing, and Disseminating Modern Medicine in South China, 1899-1936 (Kim Girouard).- 16 Mapping the Literary History of Women Healthcare Writers: A Study of Women’s Print Culture in Colonial North India (Suman Yadav).- 17 Medical Pluralism in Antenatal Care Practices in Villa Maria Maternity Ward in Uganda, 1902-1980s (Ivana Zečević ).- Index.

Reviews

Author Information

Jil Muller is Postdoctoral Fellow at Paderborn University and Deputy Head of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists in Paderborn, Germany. Her research is twofold: on the one hand, she is interested in the medical traditions of 16th and 17th century women and men philosophers and scientists and their understanding of the body, mechanism and humourism. She has published articles on Descartes’ physiology and anatomy, on his correspondence with Elisabeth of Bohemia and on Montaigne’s illness. On the other hand, she works on the moral theories of women philosophers and scientists of the early modern period, such as Marie de Gournay, Sophie Germain and Émilie du Châtelet. In her work, she always tries to combine both fields of research. She recently has edited two books Women and their Body (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter 2025) and Automata, Cyborgs and Mutants: Eccentric Bodies from Humanism to Transhumanism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan forthcoming).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions