Permission to Practise Medicine
blogs.bl.uk
blogs.bl.uk
> ... without hindrance or disturbance from those people who might regard her with contempt or otherwise mistrust her medical knowledge.
> Unfortunately, we do not know any further details about the kinds of resistance Joan faced as a physician or the medical treatments she performed, or even if Henry ever granted her request.
I appreciate the historical evidence and what it means to us today. I disagree with the wild conjecture why she wrote this request.
I believe this request by Joan du Lee is more about making medicine a profession like carpetry, masonry and similar which were supported through masters, journeymen and guilds, than about hindrance based on sex.
Midwifes and doulas have been around for millennia in all cultures. In my limited knowledge, I am not aware of a culture where most of these roles are not females.
Midwifery is a narrow field, but there were lot of fully acknowledged "doctors". Our first evidence was for Peseshet (c. 2600 BC, Ancient Egypt), the "Lady Overseer of the Female Physicians", meaning that she was not only the doc but there was an entire "school" of female "docs".
There are of course also Enheduanna (c. 2300 BC, Sumer), Mesopotamian Healing Women (c. 2000 BC and earlier), and of course Agnodice, from the Greek tradition (c. 5th century BC and earlier).
There's no translation[1] here, but the UK National Archives record contains what may be a less conjectural summary that suggests the request explicitly discusses her treatment:
> Lee requests letters under the great seal that she is able to go safely about the country without disturbance of the people who disdain her because of her practice. Her husband was killed in the king's first journey into Wales and she has since then gone barefoot and taken the penance of the fast called the fast of St Mary praying for the maintenance of the king's royal and glorious estate.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9335069
[1] Interestingly the language is Middle French, not Middle English.
Literally Europe, in between the time when births moved to hospitals and before women became doctors. There were no "midwifes" nor "doulas" present during birth.
Also, literally whole communist block the whole time and also long after the communism felt. While midwifes and doulas just were not a thing. The nurses are all women, doctors used to be almost only men and now are mix of men and women.
Don't know about the rest of Europe, but in the UK midwives became an official profession in 1902 and have consistently almost all been women, whilst most births would have been at home until the introduction of the NHS in 1948.
The gynecologic and doctors doing childbirths were frequently men. Likewise, surgeons. And there was stereotype of them being better then women.
One of her coworkers went by the title "moaşa", the Romanian word for midwife.
Of course not, they called them this way just to joke. Thanks to "democracy", eastern europe discovered equality between sexes and finaly the women were able to go to school. /s
The eastern europe idea of what is "intellectual" or "important" was different then western one, leading to women having different jobs. Good half of what Americans consider "intellectual" was seen as administrative and boring. Economics is an example of women supposedly doing something more progressive, but in eastern europe it was being seen as easy school for future administrative workers that dont require "real" specialization.
Sure, but it doesnt really relate to your original statement.
> The nurses are all women, doctors used to be almost only men and now are mix of men and women.
Which obviously has been corrected here already, but in case:
> In 1917, 17 percent of doctors were women, yet by 1940 61 percent were women. From the 1950s the figure fluctuated at around 65–70 percent
A side effect of the impacts of WW2 and the loss of men I am led to believe and that occurred in many areas of society.
> Pediatricians would be women much more often then surgeons.
Sure, maybe. Maybe not. Last I looked, both are doctors.
Yeah, right. They were living in trees and eating fruits. /s
“Women were not allowed to go to university to study medicine and so could not qualify as licensed physicians.”
which would appear to be somewhat different to the expression of personal preferences.