This part of our website is devoted to women's achievements throughout history  in the area of healing and medicine. History books have failed to acknowledge the significance of women's contribution in this field -as in so many others!

It would be quite possible to read even modern histories of medicine and believe that women played no part in the development of the healing arts when in fact the contrary is true! Women have always been seminal in influencing the progress of healthcare from the earliest times. It is they as mothers and carers who have been at the forefront of raising young, finding the right foods and healing plants, and tending the sick. 

In simple societies, women have always been among the 'gatherers'. It is they who went out to pick herbs and roots, edible plants to be used for food and healing and  from their experience came the understanding of how plants grow, leading in many places to the development of agriculture. Even today it is often women who are out tending fields and vegetable plots - or allotments as we do!! - or growing plants, whether or not  for eating, in the home and garden.

Many of us can no doubt recall being told by mother or grandmother of plants such as dock to relieve nettle stings that could be helpful for some ailment or other. Many traditions dismissed as 'old wives tales' reveal in that very term the origins of women herbalists and healers. The word 'medicine' itself derives originally from the Sanskrit medha 'female wisdom'.

Over the centuries too wherever healing was needed among the poor, it would be from women that help came. The early male doctors tending to the wealthy who could keep them in money - gain being more important than healing. Even today it is clear that more women than men are in the field of nursing and home caring for the very young, sick or elderly relatives - those areas where money is not the issue but caring is. Women have always been involved in the sacred and significant stages in life from birth - the midwife - wise-woman - through to the laying out of the dead. Sadly, today these rites of passage have become more sanitised and mechanical in so-called progressive societies and the rituals which bind us to the earth and to our fellow creatures upon it are becoming lost and with it much of women's sacred role.

It is interesting to see that women have also often been involved in the setting up of sanctuaries and hospitals for sick animals. The Battersea Dog's Home in London now one of the best known organisations for rehoming stray dogs (and cats) was originally set up, on 2 October 1860, by Mary Tealby in Holloway, North London as a Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs. This was at a time when animals were rarely considered to be anything more than expendable ( as was thought no doubt of many of the poorest slum dwellers!). Mary Tealby died in 1864 but the Home continued and moved in 1871 to its present site in Battersea where her ghost is said to still roam the corridors! The PDSA organisation (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals) was also  founded by a woman, Maria Dickin, in 1917, to provide free veterinary care for the sick and injured pet animals of the very poor. The PDSA too has survived into the 21st century as a vital organisation to help those in poor financial circumstances to get good veterinary treatment for their companion animals. 

If you are interested in learning more about some individual women in the field of healing click on the links below - they will be added to over the next few months.

Previous Remarkable Women Pages