2023/02/06 by Elaine G. Breslaw · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Medicine · #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #History of Science and Medicine #Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices #Traditional medicine #Medicine #Alternative medicine #Family medicine
paper · doi:10.1093/shm/hkac058
openalex publication_date 2023/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This is an intensive study of the role of women in medicine among the Quakers in early American history. It was a time when the unregulated and unlicensed medical world allowed for greater female as well as African American participation in the healing trades with no legal barriers to their work. Susan Brandt concentrates on the Quaker-dominated area of the Delaware Valley that included parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, exploring the legacy of women who not only provided health care, but experimented with medical procedures and suggesting that they contributed to early medical knowledge through the blending of African, Indigenous and European practices. Few apparently were involved in midwifery. Brandt found little documentary evidence that these educated women dealt with childbirth or female medical problems. Her greatest emphasis is on the gender equality and education promoted by Quaker values during the colonial era that offered more opportunities for women healers in those places at a time when women practitioners elsewhere were becoming marginalised. Many of the women involved in this early medical world, she says, achieved recognition in their time but their names have been lost to history and it was the author’s intent to revive their contributions.