Women were prohibited from receiving formal medical educations in the late eighteenth century, while men were learning in apprenticeships and medical schools in America and abroad. Some sources show that men dominated formal medical education as a gesture of kindness to women, since they believed women were too delicate to be concerned with medicine’s dirty matters. However, a theme throughout historical sources shows that threats to power in the medical field and general sexism were also large parts of why women were kept out of medical schools until much later.
Medical Schools and Societies
Dr. William Shippen, Jr. and Dr. John Morgan, who each served as head of the medical department at a point during the Revolutionary War, founded America’s first medical school in Philadelphia in 1765. This was a major step for American physicians because it meant that young men would no longer have to go abroad to receive a formal medical education. Along with the rise of medical schools were medical societies, where scholars could collaborate and share knowledge in an exclusive setting. Women were not welcome in either environment. There is a scarcity of documentation of women’s involvement in medical societies during the Revolutionary War, but the diary of Margaret Hill Morris shows that they were not totally excluded, even if they were not welcome. She was educated in formal Quaker schooling where she learned natural philosophy, which included medicine and science. Some Quaker schools also taught female entrepreneurship by educating girls on compounding interest, brokerage, land and metallurgy measurements, and apothecaries’ terminology and conversions. She had respected relatives in the field of medicine, so she was able to participate in the exclusive world of medical societies. Many other women who lacked the schooling and networking did not have the same opportunities.
Handbooks and Pharmacopeia
A vital piece of women’s history with medicine in the eighteenth century is medical handbooks and pharmacopeia. To compensate for the lack of formal education women received, they made heavy use of books that laid out herbal recipes, do-it-yourself pharmaceuticals, and medical advice for many different situations. The books may or may not have held professional status, but they were nonetheless treasured by colonial housewives and aspiring female healers.
In a copy of a medical handbook from 1667 from the Boston Medical Library, there is a fly-leaf notation that the book was loaned to Grace Greenleaf ‘by her honoured Mother…in the year 1764.’ In the same book, another notation says that the book was given from Grace to her sister Elizabeth two years later. In the same library, a copy of the Boston edition of 1720 is notated with the following: ‘Rachel Martin, Her Book, Given Her by Her Mother Jest before her Deth, March 13th Day 1765.’
As seen in these notations, handbooks were passed from woman to woman as a token of care. The gift of a medical handbook may have shown that the giver entrusted the receiver with the information, so that she might be a skilled healer one day.
Women also learned medical skills from tradition and folklore, and many of these skills were eventually written down in common-sense handbooks. A true woman of medicine was an extensive bank for the history of medicine.
Femina Medicus: Women in Medicine During the Revolutionary War 