Women healers and the medical marketplace of 16th-century Lyon

Abstract

Although women's legal and marital status make them almost invisible in archival documents, what traces remain suggest that women participated in Lyon's medical marketplace in various ways and under various guises. At Lyon's municipally-funded poor hospital, the Hotel-Dieu, widows and wives of surgeons, repentant prostitutes, birth attendants, and <<women>> cared for the destitute and sick of Lyon, in the capacity of midwives, physicians, surgeons, and barbers. Though the records almost always identify women practitioners simply as <<women>> or by their first and last name, many of them engaged in the identical tasks as male practitioners. Outside of the hospital, wives acted as barbers or surgeons alongside or in place of their husbands when widowed. In the final analysis, municipal authorities accepted the help of female healers on the basis of their traditional medical knowledge, joint work identity with their practitioner-husbands, and proven skill.