A Biographical Dictionary of Women Healers: Midwives, Nurses, and Physicians - Hardcover

Laurie Scrivener; J. Suzanne Barnes; Cecelia M. Brown; Dana Tuley-Williams

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157356219X ISBN 13: 9781573562195

Publisher: Greenwood, 2002

Synopsis

Women have always been healers; they have helped each other through the birthing process, nursed the sick and wounded, and sought cures for illnesses and injuries. This book summarizes the lives of 240 significant or representative women who have engaged in the core professions of mid-wifery, nursing, and medicine (exclusive of psychiatry), and whose careers were primarily spent in the United States and Canada, from colonial times to the present. For the high school or college student, it will serve as an introduction to the lives of these healers; some students may be inspired to do further research on them or may be inspired to become healers themselves. Women's Studies scholars, biographers, and historians of science, medicine, or nursing, will find the biographies useful starting points for more in-depth research. Each biography provides references for further reading and study.

About this title

About the Author:

LAURIE SCRIVENER is Assistant Professor of Bibliography and Social Sciences Reference Librarian at the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Scrivener was a co-editor of the International Biographical Directory of National Archivists, Documentalists, and Librarians, second edition, and has been published in the Journal of Government Information.

J. SUZANNE BARNES currently works for Ebsco Subscription Services Inc. in Los Angeles, California. She has worked for the University of Oklahoma Libraries, the Tulsa City-County Library System, the Santa Monica Public Library, and the Gemological Institute of America Library.

From Booklist:

Scrivener and Barnes have posted a long-delayed valentine to female health professionals.

Among the more honored female health workers-- Clara Barton, Margaret Sanger, Faye Wattleton--the book elevates the undervalued, for example, colonial midwife-herbalist Ann Hutchinson and Marie-Henriette LeJeune Ross, an Acadian healer who applied Turkish-style inoculations to Nova Scotians of Cape Breton to ward off smallpox. Emphasis is on women from the U.S and Canada. Missing from the lineup is commentary on the Hispanic curandera, a folk healer and adviser vital to Latinos into the twenty-first century.

Assisting the researcher, student, teacher, librarian, and health professional are excellent reference aids. Alphabetically arranged entries cover one or two pages and contain names, dates, education, professional organizations, photos, and innovations. References to books, journals, newspapers, and a sprinkling of Web sites point the user to other sources of information. Some entries include a portrait. Appendix 1 lists entrants by occupation (midwives, nurses, and physicians). A second appendix provides a five-page time line of events forming the milieu in which women established practices in communities where gender restrictions limited the medical profession to men only.

These women can be found in other resources; more than 70, primarily physicians, have entries in The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (Routledge, 2000). But A Biographical Dictionary of Women Healers offers a distinct context and is recommended for high-school, public, and academic libraries. RBB
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About this edition

• Publisher: Greenwood
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 157356219X
• ISBN 13: 9781573562195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288