SOC 0851 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Heroic Medicine
• Women, Doctors, Midwives, and Hormones
o Gender is important to the practice of medicine and healthcare
o Gender has been important in determining who occupies the jobs
that involve taking care of bodies, as well as in influencing the ways
in which narratives about feminine and masculine health are
constructed
o The tradition of medicine that primarily male, American doctors were
attempting to re-create in the United States was based on some
training in Latin and on reading the works of Greek and Roman
philosophers
▪ Doctors at the time were mostly male
▪ Up to the 18th century, when people in the United States
became sick or injured, they turned largely to women as
healers who learned their craft through centuries of
accumulated wisdom
▪ Many were prosecuted and murdered as witches in the 15th
and 16th centuries
▪ Female healers used gentle cures that largely encourages the
natural abilities of the body to heal itself
▪ Male doctors eployig heroic edicie such as
bloodletting and purging, often did more harm than good in
their quest to appear to be doing something rather dramatic to
heal the patient
▪ Bloodletting generally involved bleeding an individual until she
or he fainted or the pulse stopped, whichever happened first
• This was dramatic, but not generally as effective as the
remedies of female healers whose more subtle methods
did less harm to the sick patient
o Part of the reason male doctors engaged in dramatic and dangerous
practice of heroic medicine was to convince their patients that their
services were in fact worth the money to be paid
o Female healers were generally less likely to ask for money in return
for their services, because healing was considered to be a system of
reciprocity and community building
o The services provided by female healers were much more holistic
than the program male doctors had in mind
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