Women and Medical Books in Print

Often drawing on their experience as medical practitioners, women’s medical writing in print included both practical texts focused on remedies and more theoretical (or “speculative,” to use Jane Sharp’s word) texts that deal with medical ideas. The earliest form of women’s medical writing in print was recipes. The Countess of Kent and Queen Henrietta Maria had their recipes published by others, while non-elite women such as Hannah Woolley published their recipes in recipe books and, as for Sarah Jinner, Mary Holden, and Dorothy Partridge, in almanacs. Jane Sharp approaches more speculative knowledge in her midwifery book, placing it alongside practical instructions, while Elizabeth Cellier used midwifery’s history to support her argument for a college of midwives. Mary Trye and Margaret Cavendish engaged in contemporary scientific debates about the body, health, and disease, with Trye supporting her arguments with advertisements for her practice, another form in which women displayed their medical knowledge in print. Women’s printed medical texts show how educational history, the class status of patients and witnesses, historical precedents for female practitioners, and the value of the cures themselves combined with evidence of practical experience to forge women’s authority as medical practitioners and helped to create a space for women in print culture as medical writers.