Review

Calling women to heal

WOMEN HEALERS THROUGH HISTORY
Elisabeth Brooke
Women’s Press, 1993, £7.99

In Women Healers Through History, Elisabeth Brooke has attempted a huge project in a fairly short space. Starting from the premise that ‘women have always been healers’, she shows how orthodox history has distorted the image of women healers, so that they are seen as unprofessional ‘ministering angels’ instead of the empiricist, and knowledgeable practitioners that they were.

Through ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, she gives examples of women practitioners, concluding that the transition from women healer as norm, to women healer as subordinated and persecuted, began early in history. Christianity is identified as a powerful force in the spread of patriarchal attitudes, and the restriction of women healers during the Dark Ages. This culminated in the brutal witch hunts of the Middle Ages, when women were prevented from practising medicine and attending university. Further on, the author links up the threat to doctors such as Wendy Savage and Marietta Higgs with the persecution of women healers through history.

The book documents women’s skills as herbalists, midwives, spiritual healers, and scientists, and their acknowledgement of the psycho-social nature of health and illness. Women have also been responsible for founding many hospitals for poor people. The author notes the influence of the times in which women lived, for example popular belief in magic and the supernatural was played out in their practice.

As a history of women, the book is a political venture, and Elisabeth Brooke shows that in order to be active as healers, women also had to take a political stance, often challenging conventional roles. She attempts to make it a world-wide study, but the healers of Africa, India and South American go largely unmentioned. Whether this is to limit the book’s scope, or due to lack of historical records, we are not told.

Providing a historical overview of women healers is a necessary task that could well be expanded. The author’s perspective is one in which women’s supernatural powers of healing are taken for granted, and I found the ensuing discussions too simplistic. The book tends to go for the position of good women versus bad men. Feminist analysis must go deeper than such polarisations if we are to make sense of our history and find a way forward. On the other hand, many will welcome a study in which health is understood in a more holistic way than most medical books allow.