Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers

45 pp. "Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called "wise women" by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.... The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general... second, in that it was part of a class struggle.... This pamphlet represents a beginning of the research which will have to be done to recapture our history as health workers.... To know our history is to begin to see how to take up the struggle again."