women's history - Hektoen International

Conflict about the clitoris: Colombo versus Fallopio

March 27, 2023

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Anatomical theatre of Padua. Photo by Marco Bisello on Wikimedia. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde The clitoris, a female genital structure anatomically homologous to the penis, was known to the ancients. In 540 BC, the Greek Hipponax made one of the earliest references […]

Women in the medical profession: the trial of Jacoba Felicie de Almania

June 16, 2020

Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States A meeting of doctors at the university of Paris. From the “Chants royaux” manuscript, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. BNF, Français 1537, fol. 27v. Source In November 1322 a group of folk healers and empirics were put on trial by the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Paris. Their […]

Bloodletting and the treatment of menstrual disorders in early modern England

February 6, 2020

Rhianna Elliott Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom Figure 1. Title page: Culpeper’s school of physick (London, 1659). Wellcome Collection. Public domain. Bloodletting, also known as “phlebotomy,” was a common preventive and therapeutic medical practice in early modern England. Its theoretical foundation was in humorism, the ancient medical system where bodily health depended on the balance between […]

Red Cross humanitarianism and female volunteers in Australia

February 4, 2020

Ian Willis Camden, NSW, Austalia Red Cross volunteers assist people who were evacuated from Mallacoota to Hastings by Naval ship. Mallacoota was cut off by the bushfires that have been ravaging the east coast if Australia since late 2019. Source: Australian Red Cross with permission “There were a lot of people who had lost everything,” […]

Bloody women

January 30, 2020

M.K.K. Hague-Yearl Montréal, Québec, Canada Calendar depicting scenes relating to health. Both bloodletting scenes show a woman being bled. Bibliotheca Osleriana 7424A, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University. Source Sitting with little fanfare inside a twentieth-century red hardcover binding is a single leaf whose bibliographic record contains brackets of uncertainty: “[Calendar […]

A history of blood: hysteria, taboos, and evil

January 30, 2020

Danielle Dalechek Norfolk, Virginia, United States The witch no. 1. Joseph E Baker. c1892. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. “Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?” — Carl Jung Historically, the opposite of purity was often viewed and represented […]