Witches, midwives and nurses (Active A6 edition)

An early 1970s left feminist interpretation of Malleus Maleficarum is the centerpiece of this essay by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deidre English. It sets the tone for a dark story of the co-optation by men of medicine as practiced by women from the earliest times and the subsequent alienation, persecution, and subjugation of such women with the rise of the male-dominated “medical profession.” The tragic irony of this tale is that all the good about that profession came from the independent “wise women” of olde.