In an age of increasing religious liberty and scientific discovery, a special relationship between religion and medicine existed. Times of hardship — unfamiliar environments, war on both sides, shifting economies — pressed even harder on the future Americans to find their faiths in the process of survival. Women had no formal place in many Protestant religions or medicine, but they still contributed to the development of the two as separate entities, which would later allow for more rights for women to practice medicine.
History’s Dark Shadow: Witchcraft
Beginning centuries before the Revolutionary War, women were persecuted as witches for practicing lay medicine without the consent of the Church. For example, female midwives gave ergot to ease labor pains contrary to the Church’s teachings that labor pains were the just punishment for Eve’s original sin. Hence, it was a sin to escape the pains of childbirth in the same way it was a sin to escape the wrath of God. A leading witch hunter at the time stated that “[there are]…good Witches, which do no hurt but good…It were a thousand times better in the land if all witches but especially the blessing Witch, might suffer death.” (Williams Perkins, 1608) Threats to the power structure within the Church were reason to condemn these life-saving women; both the good and the bad witches were persecuted because they were all thought to derive their power from Satan and not God. A good witch was even more dangerous than a bad one because she brought attention to her wicked ways through popularity.
Along with its support of universities and medical education, the Church charged university-trained male physicians to determine who was or was not a witch. Thus, certain scholars claim that the male doctors eliminated their female rivals from the medical field and the Church eliminated women who freely provided healing powers as potent as any the Church itself possessed. This background posed a challenge for future women in medicine as they were forced out of the professional medical field and into submission to male physicians. However, new trends and windows of opportunity arose for women during the formation of the United States, a nation based on liberty and progress.
Native American Medicine
Ministers held important roles in the practice of medicine, since they were seen as doers of God’s work and sharers of God’s blessings. One minister in colonial Massachusetts who took on this mixed role was the Reverend Cotton Mather. Mather was specifically interested in Native American medicine and botanic remedies. He believed that God had placed remedies in each part of the world where He saw fit, and since the Native Americans had long dwelled in America, they had very well been the first to find the blessings allocated to their continent. In 1723, Reverend Cotton Mather wrote, “that for our physick, as well as for our food, Every Creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused, if it be received with Thanksgiving.” His progressive view on accepting the spiritually-tied ways of Native American health into his own teachings of Christianity allowed for the advancement of medicine and survival in the future America.
The colonists benefitted from accepting the ways of the native healers who understood the medicinal value of indigenous plants and animal products. The simple remedies of the natives contrasted the complicated nostrums and electuaries of European healers, which encouraged the colonists to establish an independent tradition of prescribing a specific remedy for a specific ailment. The simplicity of native medicine and favorable exchange of ideas also caused the colonists to shift from relying on the European scholars to depending on the ‘simples and specifics’ of the old wives, Native Americans, and ministers.
John Wesley’s Influence
Among a host of handbooks and self-help traditions formed in the spirit of a new American nation was Methodist theologian John Wesley’s Primitive Physick (London, 1747). Reverend Wesley, an educated reformer in rebellion against the men of physick (pre-modern medicine), provided his book to the public so that safe and effective remedies were available to the common man without a monetary or religious barrier.
In his book, Wesley hearkened back to the concept of the ‘original sin’ to justify God’s provision of illness and pestilence as part of the punishment for the sinfulness of man. Wesley wrote that he felt that God provided the cures for the diseases in nearby places because above all, God is still good. For example, Wesley described a village cursed with sores of the mouth. One of the villagers was walking in a nearby forest when a drop of tar from a pine tree fell onto his sore mouth. The villager was immediately relieved of his ailment and went on to tell others of the “cure.”
For these simple, “primitive” remedies to be successful, one must lead a simple life by fearing God, caring to exercise, keeping clean, and exercising temperance in all things. Wesley further advised that if one must consult a physician on the nature of an illness, one should seek a God-fearing physician in that rare occasion.
Most of the remedies Wesley shares in his book show similarities with old herbal recipes, self-help books, folklore, and Native American remedies. Further demonstrating his embrace of native healing, Wesley stated that the natives were rarely ill due to their “continual exercise” and “universal temperance.” If the natives did become ill, the fathers informed the children on what remedy to use. Wesley’s show of appreciation for simple and honest medicine through his book led to the break in American dependence on European medical theory and drugs, which he believed was based on wealth and power instead of the true desire for others to be well.
A New Tide
Native American medicine and John Wesley’s influence share a common effect: their approaches to medicine helped Americans shift from complex and corrupt European medicine to a less formal but more manageable American type of medicine. This shift opened up new pathways in more ways than one. During the Revolutionary War, the war effort affected everybody in the colonies. Women played important roles in maintaining the economy and stimulating the political attitude of the time. Aside from these liberating opportunities to play a part in society, women’s role in medicine was given a refreshing reconsideration. Women contributed to the medical field as nurses, midwives, practitioners, barber surgeons, and whatever roles they needed to fill to keep the fledgling society afloat during the War. Quaker women ministers had filled this double-role as healers for years before, but this was a newfound freedom for many other women. All previous religious persecutions of women practicing necessary high-level medicine seemed to have simmered, and in their place was the avant garde woman in medicine. When the Revolutionary War ended, men resumed their places as practitioners, surgeons, and apothecaries and the women were budged down to their previous positions, but the taste of freedom and power that women received for that short period of time sowed the seeds for a larger battle for women’s rights yet to come.
Femina Medicus: Women in Medicine During the Revolutionary War 