Female Patients in Early Modern Britain

This investigation contributes to the existing scholarship on women and medicine in early modern Britain by examining the diagnosis and treatment of female patients by male professional medical practitioners from 1590 to 1740. In order to obtain a clearer understanding of female illness and medicine during this period, this study examines ailments that were specific and unique to female patients as well as illnesses and conditions that afflicted both female and male patients. Through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of practitioners' records and patients' writings - such as casebooks, diaries and letters - an emphasis is placed on medical practice. Despite the prevalence of females amongst many physicians' casebooks and the existence of sex-based differences in the consultations, diagnoses and treatments of patients, there is no evidence to indicate that either the health or the medical care of females was distinctly disadvantaged by the actions of male practitioners. Instead, the diagnoses and treatments of women were premised on a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of the female body than has previously been implied within the historiography. In turn, their awareness and appreciation of the unique features of female anatomy and physiology meant that male practitioners were sympathetic and accommodating to the needs of individual female patients during this pivotal period in British medicine.

'This is a well-written and important work that contributes to the historiographical debates about sex differences in early modern medicine. It is also a model of how careful research in archives can lead to a thought-provoking and powerful revelation of medical history from below.' The Historian 'Wendy D. Churchill provides a refreshingly careful and substantially more nuanced account of the relationship between patients' gender and medical practice from the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries.' Early Modern Women Journal 'Meticulously researched and presented, Female Patients represents a landmark in the historiography of sex difference.' Social History of Medicine 'In this fine book, the continuities across the period from 1590 to 1740 in patient-centred health care, dependence on the two-sex model and the diagnosis of sex-specific diseases such as female hysteria are made plain. The key from start to finish is meticulous research driven on by work in the archives. This book is to be welcomed as a crucial and original addition to the literature, written with poise and clarity.' History 'Overall this is a useful addition to the genre and will be appreciated by historians working in the fields of early modern medical practice and gender studies.' Parergon 'The contribution that Churchill makes to the theory-versus-practice debate in early modern medical history is significant. Her conclusions about the significance of menstruation as a barometer of health, and as an aid in effecting cures of certain ailments, moves the discussion of female medical care in a new direction, and nuance the dominant 'medical marketplace' model which is used to explain early modern health care... the book represents a new and exciting venture into the history of medical encounters in the early modern period.' English Historical Review

Wendy D. Churchill is Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada. Her research and publications in the social history of medicine have focused on the themes of gender, race, and class in the context of early modern Britain and its empire.