Title Forgotten healers women and the pursuit of health in Late Renaissance Italy Sharon T. Strocchia

Published Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press 2019

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 330 pages) illustrations, map Series I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history. Contents The politics of health at the early Medici court -- Gifts of health: medical exchanges between court and convent -- The business of health: convent pharmacies in Renaissance Italy -- Agents of health: nun apothecaries and ways of knowing -- Restoring health: care and cure in Renaissance pox hospitals Summary In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life--from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries--drove the Italian medical economy. In convent pharmacies, pox hospitals, girls' shelters, and homes, women were practitioners and purveyors of knowledge about health and healing, making significant contributions to early modern medicine. Sharon Strocchia offers a wealth of new evidence about how illness was diagnosed and treated, whether by noblewomen living at court or poor nurses living in hospitals. She finds that women expanded on their roles as health care providers by participating in empirical work and the development of scientific knowledge. Nuns, in particular, were among the most prominent manufacturers and vendors of pharmaceutical products. Their experiments with materials and techniques added greatly to the era's understanding of medical care. Thanks to their excellence in medicine urban Italian women had greater access to commerce than perhaps any other women in Europe. Forgotten Healers provides a more accurate picture of the pursuit of health in Renaissance Italy. More broadly, by emphasizing that the frontlines of medical care are often found in the household and other spaces thought of as female, Strocchia encourages us to rethink the history of medicine.-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Women healers -- Italy -- History -- 16th century Women healers -- Italy -- History -- 17th century Women in medicine -- Italy -- History -- 16th century Women in medicine -- Italy -- History -- 17th century Medical care -- Italy -- History -- 16th century Medical care -- Italy -- History -- 17th century Medicine -- Italy -- History -- 16th century Medicine -- Italy -- History -- 17th century Medicine -- History. Medicine -- History -- 17th century. History of Medicine Physicians, Women -- history History, 16th Century History, 17th Century history of medicine. HISTORY -- Renaissance. Medical care Medicine Women healers Women in medicine SUBJECT Italy https://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/D007558 Subject Italy Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 9780674243446 0674243447

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