1998/04/01 by Doreen A Evenden, Doreen Evenden
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · #Medical History and Innovations #Medicine and Dermatology Studies History #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0025727300063675
This paper will examine differences in the roles played in the practice of surgery by males and females associated with the Barber-Surgeons Company in seventeenth-century London. It will also look at the ecclesiastical licensing process as it related to the licensing of male and female surgeons.1 The evidence will show that gender differences in both the guild and ecclesiastical routes to becoming a surgeon ensured that relatively few women obtained "official" standing as surgeons in the seventeenth century.2 Moreover, although female surgeons who obtained licences might demonstrate a higher degree of empirical success than many of their male counterparts, they generally carried out their work within circumscribed limits not imposed upon male surgeons.