Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West

In this collection of seven essays (one of them published here for the first time), Monica Green argues that a history of women's healthcare in medieval western Europe has not yet been written because it cannot yet be written - the majority of texts relating to women's healthcare have never been edited or studied. Seen in their original contexts, medieval gynecological texts raise questions of women's activity as healthcare providers and recipients, as well as questions of how the sexual division of labor, literacy, and professionalization functioned in the production of medical knowledge on the female body. An appendix lists all known medieval gynecological texts in Latin and the western European vernacular languages.