Women and Medicine in US History: Women as Patients, Healers and Doctors

This course explores ideas about women's bodies in sickness and health, as well as women's encounters with lay and professional healers in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. We begin with healthy women and explore ideas about women's life cycle in the past, including women's sexuality, the history of birth control, abortion, childbirth, and aging. We then turn to the history of women healers including midwives, lay physicians, professional physicians and nurses. Finally, we examine women's illnesses and their treatment as well as the lives of women with disabilities in the past. We will examine differences in women's experience with medicine on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexuality and class. We will relate this history to issues in contemporary medicine, and consider the efforts of women to gain control of their bodies and health care throughout US history.