Witches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers

Front Cover
The Feminist Press at CUNY, Jul 1, 2010 - Medical - 112 pages

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses examines how women-led healing was delegitimized to make way for patriarchy, capitalism, and the emerging medical industry.

As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the future of healthcare in the United States, we are reminded of the longevity of this crisis, and how firmly entrenched we are in a system that doesn't work.

First published by the Feminist Press in 1973, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunters. In this new and updated edition, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English delve into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposing our fears and fantasies. They build on their classic exposé on the demonization of women healers and the political and economic monopolization of medicine. This quick history brings us up-to-date, exploring today's changing attitudes toward childbirth, alternative medicine, and modern-day witches.

 

Selected pages

Contents

Witchcraft and Medicine
31
Women and the rise of the american
61
conclusion
99
Bibliography
105
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Witches, Midwives & Nurses: A History of Women Healers
Barbara Ehrenreich,Deirdre English
No preview available - 2010

Common terms and phrases

attacked BARBARA EHRENREICH calomel catholic church cures DEIRDRE ENGLISH devil Dorothea Dix England Europe European medical profession female healers female lay feminine feminist movement Flexner report formal training harriet hunt healing roles health system herbal historian hospital ignorance John Demos Kramer and sprenger lady lay heal lay healers lay practitioners licensing laws magic male doctors male medical profession male professionals Malleus Maleficarum medi medical education medical elite medical practice medical schools medical science medical training middle-class midwifery midwives monopoly mother nineteenth century nurs obstetrical organized patient peasant people’s medicine political Popular health Movement profes reform regular ruling class scientific sectarian sects set of healers sexism sexual sick sion sional struggle subservience suppression theory Thomas szasz tions today’s University university-trained doctors witch craze witch hunts witch trial witch-healers witchcraft woman women healers women health workers women’s health movement women’s movement

About the author (2010)

Barbara Ehrenreich is author of the 2002 New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. She has written nearly twenty books, and has been a columnist for Time magazine and the New York Times. She has contributed to The Progressive, Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., The New Republic, Z Magazine, In These Times, and Salon.com.

Deirdre English is the former editor of Mother Jones magazine. She has written for the Nation, New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Magazine, S.F. Chronicle Sunday Magazine, Vogue, and public radio and television. Currently, English is a professor at University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Bibliographic information

TitleWitches, Midwives, & Nurses (Second Edition): A History of Women Healers
Contemporary Classics
AuthorsBarbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English
Edition2, illustrated
PublisherThe Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010
ISBN155861690X, 9781558616905
Length112 pages
Subjects › 

Health & Fitness / Healing
Health & Fitness / Women's Health
Medical / History
Psychology / History
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan