Editing History of medicine (section)

==== People ====

===== Woman =====
Catholic women played large roles in health and healing in medieval and early modern Europe.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Fissell ME | title = Introduction: women, health, and healing in early modern Europe | journal = Bulletin of the History of Medicine | volume = 82 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–17 | year = 2008 | pmid = 18344583 | doi = 10.1353/bhm.2008.0024 | s2cid = 37622681 }}</ref> A life as a nun was a prestigious role; wealthy families provided dowries for their daughters, and these funded the convents, while the nuns provided free nursing care for the poor.<ref name="pmid11618104">{{cite journal | vauthors = Green M | title = Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe | journal = Signs | volume = 14 | issue = 2 | pages = 434–74 | date = 1989 | pmid = 11618104 | doi = 10.1086/494516 | s2cid = 38651601 }}</ref>

The Catholic elites provided hospital services because of their theology of salvation that good works were the route to heaven. The Protestant reformers rejected the notion that rich men could gain God's grace through good works—and thereby escape purgatory—by providing cash endowments to charitable institutions. They also rejected the Catholic idea that the poor patients earned grace and salvation through their suffering.<ref>{{cite book| veditors = Dixon CS, Freist D, Greengrass M |title=Living With Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l9fVJYNd61oC&pg=PA129|year= 2009|publisher=Ashgate |pages=128–130 |isbn=978-0-7546-6668-4 }}</ref> Protestants generally closed all the convents<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Leonard AE | chapter = Female Religious Orders | veditors = Hsia RP |title=A companion to the Reformation world |date=2006 |publisher=Blackwell |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1-4051-7865-5 | pages = 237–254 }}</ref> and most of the hospitals, sending women home to become housewives, often against their will.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Cunningham A, Grell OP |title=Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dd-44kXLh1QC&pg=PA130|year= 2002|publisher=Routledge|pages=130–33|isbn=978-0-203-43134-4}}</ref> On the other hand, local officials recognized the public value of hospitals, and some were continued in Protestant lands, but without monks or nuns and in the control of local governments.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Mäkinen V |title=Lutheran Reformation and the Law|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Dkk1CDZ1UsC&pg=PA227|year=2006|publisher=Brill|pages=227–29|isbn=978-90-04-14904-5}}</ref>

In London, the crown allowed two hospitals to continue their charitable work, under nonreligious control of city officials.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Waddington K |title=Medical Education at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1123–1995|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mi5cV5D0SkAC&pg=PA18 |year=2003 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer|page=18|isbn=978-0-85115-919-5 }}</ref> The convents were all shut down but Harkness finds that women—some of them former nuns—were part of a new system that delivered essential medical services to people outside their family. They were employed by parishes and hospitals, as well as by private families, and provided nursing care as well as some medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical services.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Harkness DE | title = A view from the streets: women and medical work in Elizabethan London | journal = Bulletin of the History of Medicine | volume = 82 | issue = 1 | pages = 52–85 | year = 2008 | pmid = 18344585 | doi = 10.1353/bhm.2008.0001 | s2cid = 5695475 }}</ref>

Meanwhile, in Catholic lands such as France, rich families continued to fund convents and monasteries, and enrolled their daughters as nuns who provided free health services to the poor. Nursing was a religious role for the nurse, and there was little call for science.<ref name="pmid21724643">{{cite journal | vauthors = McHugh T | title = Expanding women's rural medical work in early modern Brittany: the Daughters of the Holy Spirit | journal = Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences | volume = 67 | issue = 3 | pages = 428–456 | date = July 2012 |id={{Project MUSE|480067}} | pmid = 21724643 | pmc = 3376001 | doi = 10.1093/jhmas/jrr032 }}</ref>