The magic of women with healing ways

MEDICINE has always been the most powerful force known to man or

woman, the power of life over death. Historically women healers were

regarded as equally effective as men, and certainly emotional factors

were regarded as just as important as physical symptoms. But as men

found that money could be made from healing, women found it more and

more difficult to be accepted in medicine.

Next year the medical school at Edinburgh University will have the

opportunity to celebrate the centenary of the admittance of the first

female medical students. It is an anniversary worth remembering, a hard

battle fought by a handful of stubborn and talented women. Yet the

obstacles and hardships were nothing compared to those that confronted

the equally dedicated women who ministered to the sick for generations.

Elisabeth Brooke, who has worked as a qualified herbalist for 17

years, is convinced that women are still suffering at the hands of

male-dominated health authorities. ''Women, and often their female

patients, come out of conflicts badly because they do not receive the

same support from their profession as their male colleagues.

''Obstetrician Wendy Savage came through her ordeal because of support

from the local community rather than from her male colleagues.

Independent midwives have to battle against male-dominated authorities.

Only a few years ago seven of the 20 registered midwives in London were

subject to disciplinary action. Perhaps there is professional jealousy

and fear of women having too much autonomy and power in a field where

traditional male values hold sway and men make all the decisions.''

In Women Healers Through History (Women's Press, #7.99), Elisabeth

shows that women have always been the most loyal supporters of

traditional gentle holistic attitudes to medicine, acknowledging that

the mind and spirit are as important as the body. We even talk about

''poor souls'' when referring to people who are in poor health.

The importance of myths, legends, and symbols may have been gradually

supplanted by more scientific guides to health but the appreciation of

the importance of the psychology of illness is only now beginning to be

recognised again.

Priestess healers in ancient Egypt wielded tremendous power. Female

obstetricians took care of women in labour; ''women sat on warmed stones

and were given healing massages to ease the pain and relax the uterus.''

Only women treated women's ailments. Priestess healers were responsible

for cultivating the medicinal gardens and preparing remedies in the

pharmacies.

In pre-Christian times there were women medics around the world, in

Islamic countries, in France, in Britain. By the Middle Ages men had

begun to resent women practitioners. The famous school at Salerno in

Italy ''tolerated'' women, the only one during the eleventh century even

to do that.

THE few women's voices that have been recorded for history, like the

famous Hildegard of Bingen, were not only strong characters of great

intellectual stature, and of course noble birth, but had to be

acceptable to the Church. ''Men in medieval times set about debasing and

belittling the power of women and, backed by the Christian Church,

taught of their inherent wickedness. In order to steal their power the

Church, and that meant men, created a mythology of their sinfulness and

evil intent.''

Now we had witches instead of intuitive healers whose powers were as

much spiritual as medicinal. Four hundred years ago a Scottish

noblewomen, Eufame Macalyne, was burned alive for asking a midwife,

claimed to be a witch, for drugs to ease her labour pains.

Scotland was particularly zealous, the best in Europe, at killing

witches. Four thousand women were killed during the seventeenth and

early eighteenth century according to Norman Nichol's Life In Scotland.

Over the next two centuries women were squeezed out of public life

generally and retreated into midwifery and nursing which were considered

unimportant. ''Registered practitioners were mostly concerned with

blood-letting, whereas unlicensed women healers continued their age-old

traditions of preventive medicine, herbal remedies, and dietary

therapy.''

Male practioners started becoming more involved in midwifery as the

financial rewards became more worthwhile.

It was the dynamism and determination of Victorian women like

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and the lesser known but more politically

controversial Sophia Jex-Blake that thrust women into the limelight

again. Sophia and her tiny group of students were subjected to continual

abuse, threat of violence, sexual harassments, and obscene letters which

culminated in the famous Riot of Surgeons' Hall in Edinburgh when a mob

tried to stop them entering the extramural classes which they had hoped

would lead to a degree.

Holistic principles are now becoming normal practice and as many women

as men are qualifying as doctors although, as in most areas of society,

they are less likely to attain senior posts. But we have come a long

way.

It is merely a century since an editorial in The Lancet declared:

''Woman as nurse is the natural help of man. Woman as doctor is a

conceit contrary to nature, and doomed to end in disappointment to both

the physician and the sick.''

Opinions have changed about that but even today there are still women

healers practising as they have done for hundreds of years.

Elisabeth met some of them in the last two years when she spent the

most traumatic time of her life researching the new book. Her first

book, A Woman's Book of Herbs, was a success and she decided to travel

and research the new book.

She discovered American Indians still using traditional herbs and

consciousness-raising to cure patients, and Serbian women -- ''only the

post-menopausal women'' -- who calmed patients by performing rituals and

used herbs and nutritional cures to facilitate the healing process.

Eventually she found herself in the Dominican Republic, fell in love

with a local Haitian man, and her world fell apart when he was shot and

killed -- she still does now know why -- by local police. ''Apart from

the actual shock, or maybe because of it, I became quite ill and I don't

think I'd be here if it hadn't been for the support of my lover's family

and friends. Somehow, with an awful lot of help from my friends back

here, the book was finished.''

It is an incredible story, but so is the one she has written. As

Elisabeth says: ''Part of the Indian treatment is to ask the patient why

she or he is sick. As a healer myself I have discovered that most people

know why they are ill -- they just need to be given the opportunity to

think about it.''

Holistic medicine, once thought of as feminine silliness, will have

become the normal approach by the turn of the century, and the history

of the suffragettes of the medical profession reflects the struggle of

the whole women's movements. Let's hope that next year's centenary

celebrations do justice to the memory of the women who simply wanted to

heal the sick.