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“There is no tongue that moves”
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Paulina) in Shakespeare’s
The Winter’s Tale
in the way I will do
so here, by placing them in the context of historical female
practitioners via the theories of Paracelsus. Here then I will be
looking at these women’s ability to overcome their
traditionally limited gender (sexual), social and political roles
and become therapeutic instruments or forces for the “healing”
or “curing” of infected (though still powerful) male subjects
and of their malevolent language.
I. The Early Modern Women Healers in England
Women healers in England in the early modern period
were commonly barred from entering the orthodox medical
society, as they were mostly unlicensed and unrecognized, yet
their importance has been shown in relatively recent research.
For example, Margaret Pelling and Charles Webster,
6
two
pioneers in the study of early modern medical practices in
England, claim that “[w]omen play a substantial part in
medicine in sixteenth-century London” (1979: 186).
According to them, there were three main medical groups in
London at this time: the College of Physicians, the
Barber-Surgeons’ Company, and the apothecaries; however,
“[a]t the fringe of official medicine were the midwives” (1979:
179). Moreover, “[t]he College of Physicians had general
authority over physicians, surgeons and apothecaries” (Pelling
& Webster, 1979: 179), as well as over the midwives or
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For all the studies of early modern English medical practitioners, the most
influential scholars are Margaret Pelling and Charles Webster, as
demonstrated in their monumental article, “Medical Practitioners.” See
Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century
(1979). Their major
contribution to the history of medicine remains in both scholars’ initial
research on the abundance of the College of Physicians weighty manuscript
Annals
.