It was very much a calculated white, male, elite takeover. Yet the absence of therapeutic tools did not stop this “profession” which, working hand in hand with the church, identified many of the (predominantly) women healers as witches-subjecting them to arrest, torture, and sometimes death.Įnglish and Ehrenreich describe the crushing of the traditional healers, mainly women, by the new church-sanctioned class of doctors. Treatments were extreme: often including the administration of poisonous mercuric compounds that caused violent emissions from all of the body’s orifices, as well as skin blistering, and bleeding. Trained in Europe, they became known as “regular doctors.” Their diagnoses were based on ancient Greek theories. They used local, natural remedies and provided birthing care as midwives.Īt the same time, a new class of healers began to grow. Healers for the common people were usually women. MNW details the persecution of traditional lay healers in Europe and the United States from the 1600s through the 1800s. Passed from person to person, it became an underground classic, addressing power, misogyny, and class struggle in the evolution of American medicine and health care.
This book was originally published as a pamphlet. Professor Barbara Ehrenreich went on to become one of our most important cultural critics Professor Deirdre English, a prominent journalist, author, and an editor for Mother Jones. At SUNY Westbury the curriculum included alternative subjects, such as Women’s Studies, and served a student body of older, ethnically diverse and working class students. It was written in 1973 by two professors at State University of New York at Westbury, a new public college. Witches, Nurses, Midwives (WNM) is one of the seminal works of second-wave feminism.
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