Physician-Writers, Women Healers and the Suffering Body: Symphorien Champier, François Rabelais, Agrippa von Nettesheim and Francisco Delicado

Abstract

In early modern times, the possibilities for a woman to practice a health care profession were rather restricted. The attitude in the medical ranks towards female professionals was quite ambivalent: While physicians such as Andrés Laguna or Paracelsus recommend learning from women healers, other doctors have a negative perception of women practicing medicine because they consider an academic background and knowledge of Latin and Greek indispensable for the healing arts. Of particular interest are the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology. This time I will study the fictionalization of this controversy in literary works of physician-writers like François Rabelais, Symphorien Champier who was particularly involved in the Querelle des femmes or Francisco Delicado who, in his Lozana Andaluza, creates the character of a female healer who, thanks to her orally acquired practical knowledge, seriously competes with academic medical practitioners.