Witch Trial and Error: How Women Healers Shaped Medieval Medicine
Written By Adiyat Zahir
“Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.”
-First Witch, Macbeth, IV.I.1551-2
Malevolent and manipulative, veiled practitioners of sinful arts and poisonous potions - such has been the portrayal of witches in documented history for centuries. And yet, behind the facade of the bitter old crone, witches were historically the village midwife, medic and caregiver, whose crime was as much healing as it was harm. The witch hunts in Medieval Europe were marked by the systemic prosecution of women who operated in medical practice beyond the scope of the Church. Far from the virulent potion-brewers we have come to know, women - all at once unlicensed pharmacists, abortionists, nurses and counsellors - were the anatomists of Western history, whose fates were sealed by those who feared their power and popularity, and have since exiled them from the domain of medical knowledge. It is no surprise that today, healthcare remains the property of male professionals. To truly grasp this inequality in healthcare, we can start by recognising the historical exclusion of women from the medical field and their struggle to remain a part of it, whether they were labelled midwives, witches, healers or heretics.
The wise woman, or witch, occupied both a curative and caregiving position in medieval society. They did indeed employ a variety of herbal remedies for their community - many of which were the antecedents for modern pharmacological drugs. In their possession were painkillers and anti-inflammatory agents. For example, they used ergot, a fungus which grew on grain, to treat labour pains, and it is from this that we derive ergotamine, a medication used to treat migraines today. However, women were not merely purveyors of treatments for their neighbours’ afflictions - they also played a deep-rooted communal role as counsellors and, in particular, midwives, which threatened the religious influence of the time. At a time when the pains of childbirth were seen as the Lord’s requital for Eve’s sin, the witch-healer’s methods of easing such pains were a heretical intervention, and one which threatened to disrupt the Church’s dogmatic control over its followers. “No one does more harm to the Catholic church than midwives,” wrote witch-hunters Kramer and Sprenger in Malleus Maleficarum, the most famous treatise on witches. ‘Good witches’ were soon portrayed as stewards of the Devil, using earthly ‘medicines’ to give people the power to cure themselves; they were driven from their dependence on God, turning to these magic charms rather than prayer to seek healing. As a result, women folk healers were expelled from medicine - in the eyes of the State and the Church, the more the medicinal power of these witches grew, so too did their magic power.
It was the rise of ‘professional’ medicine following this, however, which truly expropriated women from the patrimony of medical knowledge. Given that most women at the time were practising some form of practical medicine - in the absence of documented, professional medical care - it seems likely that medical knowledge was disseminated mostly through the oral tradition, especially considering the prevalence of illiteracy in girls among peasant populations. This formed an intergenerational repository of empirical knowledge passed from mother to daughter, spanning decades if not centuries, based entirely on observation and effect - what was found to work and what did not, maintained in an unrecorded, and thus unprovable, tradition. In short, witches and women healers were - in their time - empiricists, discerning herbs and healing remedies by trial and error, cause and effect. This was in stark contrast to both the ecclesiastical and professional teachings of medicine which arose at the time.
The Church was deeply anti-empirical, regarding the senses and the physical world as the realm of the Devil, who “creeps in by all sensual approaches” (St. Augustine, quoted in the Malleus), and so viewed the witch-healer’s methods as a stark shift away from the faith-led teachings of the Lord. As for medicine as a profession, medical students at the time, like all other young scholars, spent years studying Plato, Aristotle, Galen and Christian theology; intellectual philosophising and theory were the pinnacle of academic pursuit, far more greatly valued than experience. Medical students rarely saw patients while studying and often grounded their treatment in ‘logic’ and quasi-religious doctrine as opposed to physiological understanding of a disease; the physician to Edward II, who held a doctorate in medicine from Oxford, was known to treat toothache by inscribing on the jaws of the patient, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen”. Consider now, in contrast, the progressively scientific method of medieval women healers, who, in the absence of such teachings, relied on a medical foundation of physiology, observation and patient-centred care. And yet, women with such expertise were not only excluded, but actively driven from medicine by the ‘professional’ doctors, who sought to erect a wall of irrefutable scientific knowledge. They would soon play a key role in the elimination of female healers en masse; by the 14th century, it was decreed that, in any witch trial, the “judgement of doctors” would be used to determine whether an illness was physically caused or witch-borne. Hence, the Church was able to explicitly legitimise this form of ‘professional’ medicine whilst simultaneously denouncing non-professional healing as heresy. From this point forth, the dichotomy between ‘female’ mysticism and ‘male’ medicine was made all too clear by the very roles of witch and doctor at these trials.
The historical exclusion of women from medicine was characterised by the derision of their art as treacherous, mystical and satanic. As has been argued, ecclesiastical authorities across Medieval Europe used the epithet of ‘witch’ to systemically undermine their communal power and proficiency; their heuristic methods of acquiring and sharing medical knowledge challenged the doctrinal power of the Church, and so they were forced from the field of professional medical practice - and with them, the expertise of generations. Of course, it is easy for us to now see the value of this approach to medicine as characterised by women-healers; it would seem rightly absurd to us to not think of medicine as evidence-based, readily shared and, above all, patient-centred. However, though it may be easy for us to judge the attitudes of feudal England as archaic and misguided, we seem yet to have learned from the dangers of excluding certain voices from healthcare. The Bristol heart scandal (where an inquiry found that the high rate of infant death after cardiac surgery was due to ‘an old boy’s culture’ among doctors, amongst other shortcomings) is an all-too-recent example of the threat posed to the community by a lax, arrogant and exclusive approach to healthcare. Just as the expulsion of medieval women led to rigid and uncaring medical practice, so too does the suppression of diverse voices threaten to perpetuate inequality and preventable harm. If we are to learn from our past, modern healthcare must work to examine systemic biases and dismantle a male monopoly over medicine - otherwise, our toil and trouble will only double and double.
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