Virtuous and wise: apprehending female medical practice from Hebrew texts on women’s health care

Abstract

In this article, I analyse the attribution of remedies and therapeutic procedures to women, anonymous in the main, embedded in a number of texts belonging to the medieval Hebrew corpus of literature on women's health care. By suggesting a classification of the ways in which both women and their healing activities are referred to, I intend to offer a framework that helps to identify Jewish (and non-Jewish) women's health agency from medical texts. In addition to textual analysis, I compare some of the mentions with evidences found in a variety of historical and literary sources for the sake of helping to contextualise them.

In this article, I analyse the attribution of remedies and therapeutic procedures to women, anonymous in the main, embedded in a number of texts belonging to the medieval Hebrew corpus of literature on women's health care. By suggesting a classification of the ways in which both women and their healing activities are referred to, I intend to offer a framework that helps to identify Jewish (and non-Jewish) women's health agency from medical texts. In addition to textual analysis, I compare some of the mentions with evidences found in a variety of historical and literary sources for the sake of helping to contextualise them.