Date Thesis Awarded
5-2009
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Modern Languages and Literatures
Advisor
George D. Greenia
Committee Members
Jonathan Arries
Lu Ann Homza
Abstract
Women provided important healing services in late medieval and early modern Aragon. They were rarely "professionals" in the sense that they had received a university education or had been licensed by a civil authority, but they were respected and employed by king and commoner. Their healing services were affordable, traditional and popular. Under humoral theory, food, drink and sexual activity were thought to regulate the body's health, so women were naturally considered to be healers. Evidence for their healing practices is found in law codes, medical texts, and women's own recipe collections. I analyze these medieval and early modern sources to show that women remained important providers of health care throughout this period. Because they were never "professional" healers, the move towards profesionalization did not affect them.
Recommended Citation
Harman, Alice Conner, "Midwives and Medical Texts: Women's Healing Practices in the Crown of Aragón, 1300-1600" (2009). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 279.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/279
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.