Women's Role Historically
hroughout the history of humanity the role of women has been to be the bearer of the medicine bowl, to know the uses of plants to care for the family and the tribe. In the course of human history, for thousands of years, this was women's role until fairly recently in the West. The Inquisition in Europe was a movement to wrest from women, the traditional healers, the right to provide medicines and care for the people. The Medieval Vatican sought to keep the position of healer/physician solely for the church's hierarchy. We'll never have accurate numbers, but researchers have figures of several hundred thousand to several million women who were murdered in Europe, most accused of being witches due to their herbal knowledge between the 14th and 18th centuries.1
Although no one could tell it from the current state of healthcare in the United States, medical self-care is a part of the American tradition. There were few doctors in the new colonies, and with bleeding being their standard form of treatment, colonists were skeptical of physicians. Consequently most families had a home remedy kit of botanical medicines; plants were gathered, dried and prepared by the woman of the household. As the population expanded westward, the pioneer woman prescribed for her family and often doctored other families in her community.
Early in the 19th century two popular books on homeopathy taught women how to care for the family. In 1835, Dr. Constantine Hering published Domestic Physician, a two-volume materia medica, for families to take care of their own health with homeopathic medicines; the book and a kit of about 40 homeopathic remedies sold for five dollars. The kit gained in popularity through the decades and by the 1880's was a part of thousands of households.2
See also: What Women Think about US Healthcare and About WomensMedicineBowl
