Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets)
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List Price: $6.95
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Manufacturer: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Written By: Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 610.69
EAN: 9780912670133
ISBN: 0912670134
Label: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Manufacturer: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 48
Publication Date: 1993-01-01
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Studio: The Feminist Press at CUNY
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Editorial Reviews for Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets)
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Women have always been healers, and medicine has always been an arena of struggle between female practitioners and male professionals. This pamphlet explores two important phases in the male takeover of health care: the suppression of witches in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the United States. The authors conclude that despite efforts to exclude them, the resurgence of women as healers should be a long-range goal of the women's movement.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: disappointing
Comment: I purchased this book looking for an historical perspective of women healers. Although this book does provide a history it is extremely biased towards the feminist idealogy. The book was written in the 70's and it shows with it's bias and underlying anger. The good thing about reading this is to realise how far women and the health system have come in the equality debate.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Outdated and Flawed Thesis
Comment: Ehrenreich and English's book has been highly influential in some feminist and New Age circles since its publication in the early 70s. Its thesis - that the women persecuted as "witches" in the Witch Craze tended to be midwives and healers - fits neatly with some ideological views of the suppression of women and has since been seen as historical confirmation of a patriarchal desire to control science and medicine and maintain control over birth, healing and women's bodies.
As a result, their thesis has become orthodoxy in these circles and has recently been given a popular boost via Dan Brown's pseudo historical thriller, *The Da Vinci Code*.
Unfortunately, Ehrenreich and English's research was selective, incomplete and ultimately false. Their study was subjected to critical analysis in later decades and found to be deeply flawed. Ehrenrich and English had taken a few isolated cases, assumed they were the norm and then extrapolated from them to conclude that healers and midwives were a particular target of the Witch Crazes. In fact, the evidence indicates otherwise.
David Harley systematically examined the evidence in his article "Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife-Witch" (Social History of Medicine 3 (1990), pp. 1-26.) and found that being a midwife actually *decreased* the chances of being charged with witchcraft. Many accusations of witchcraft centred on still-births and infant deaths, with the blame for these occurrences being put on the malicious magic of witches. Far from being more likely to be accused of witchcraft, midwives and village healers were more likely to be the accusers, or to be witnesses summoned to support such accusations. In *The Witch in History*, feminist historian Diane Purkiss writes "midwives were more likely to be found helping witch-hunters" than as victims of their inquiries.
As a result, this book's value lies mainly in its indication of how some early feminist views of history were marked more by ideology and enthusiasm than rigor, comprehensive analysis of the data and objective methodology. It's value as a work of history is minimal.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great easy read
Comment: It's less than 50 pages long, but it's a great short history about witches, midwives, and nurses. It tells about how the profession began and why there aren't more women in the field today. It's good to learn the history of things that is rarely talked about. I would highly recommend this book to whoever may be interested!
Customer Rating:
Summary: interesting bit of history
Comment: As a witch and a labor/delivery nurse, of course I had to check out this pamphlet. History is the key word in the title. This pamphlet was published in the early 1970's as a propaganda tool for the feminist women's liberation movement. The history it works through is mostly valid, entertaining (the pics especially), and informative. The discussion on the current state of health care may have been the case in the early 1970's, but in no way represents modern times. Gone are the days where female nurses blindly follow the male doctor's orders. I work with just as many female doctors (if not more) than male, and when I was in another specialty, I worked with several male nurses. It's also the sign of a poor nurse not to question all orders (at least to her/himself) first before carrying any out. If the order is valid, and non-harmful to the patient, then I proceed, but I've caught too many errors and suggested too many alternatives to blindly follow the page-- this is also the case for just about every other nurse working today, with our levels of training/schooling/experience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic and worth reading
Comment: For any one interested in women's history and in the real idea of "total history" from the Annales school, this book is a must. Of course is not perfect, what it is? However it is time to recover our past, and for that we have to depart from a different perspective, even if it is threatening and contested by some.
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