Lot's Wife Edition 4 2016

SCIENCE
People have lived for millennia with issues such as endometriosis,
PCOS and a range of other debilitating, but not generally
killer diseases. The wealthy royals of Western Europe were
not the only people to leave descendants into the 21st century.
Did any of the people killed as witches hold the knowledge of
how to help anyone suffering with these diseases?
When the Library of Alexandria burnt and the House of
Wisdom destroyed, humanity lost vast amounts of knowledge.
Perhaps if all these great libraries hadn’t been destroyed, then
we would be living on Mars right now! Okay so that’s just
speculation, but humanity did have to catch up on the lost
information. Could it be that the witch hunts were a similar
loss of knowledge?
Witches and women healers cared for the peasant population
with simple herbal remedies like willow bark and honey.
The church condemned the healing of the peasant population
– sin was the cause of illness. Witches were a threat to the
establishment by helping keep the enormously populated lower
classes alive and helping ease women’s pain in childbirth.
When female healers were charged with witchcraft, it was
because they were undermining men’s position as medical
‘professionals’. In England in the 15th century, these medical
professionals were all men and schooled in Galen’s theory
of humours. These men were generally only approved by the
church for use by the wealthy. Accessing schooling was an issue
for lower classes and all women as it was very difficult, if not
impossible to gain admittance to education as a woman in
Medieval Europe.
Male medical professionals most likely did not have a high
success rate of healing patients, as the humours method of
healing involved a lot of bleeding and leeches. They likely cost
more for patients compared to lower class female healers.
Seeing the local healer woman would appear to have a higher
success rate and be cheaper for the ill of the lower classes. To
medical professionals, these women were seen as encroaching
on customers and possible income.
Witches may have been empirical scientists, as traditional
herbal remedies must have been tested through trial and error.
Honey and garlic are both anti-bacterials and willow bark has
salicylic acid, a part of the active ingredient in aspirin. The
lower class healers would have passed information along to one
another. I hope that some women once talked about allergies,
or complications in childbirth – “Mistress Baker’s little knave
wast large, the birthing tooketh days and wast hard worketh!”
they might have said.
After the medieval period, at the end of the witch hunts in
the 16th century, women had roles as palliative nurses as nuns
in convents. Women’s roles in medicine became more regulated
and downplayed. Nurses as we know it in contemporary times
came around with Florence Nightingale’s teachings, with nurses
being trained to be subservient to doctors and to act as maids
and active carers. Doctors were not meant to have time for patients
– they instructed what needed to happen, and the nurses
acted upon the instructions.
Today there is little acknowledgement of the loss of healing
knowledge that may have occurred in Western Europe during
the centuries of witch hunts.
Witches and women
healers cared for the
peasant population
with simple herbal
remedies like willow
bark and honey. The
church condemned the
healing of the peasant
population – sin was the
cause of illness.
Since this period of time in European history, women, especially
independent women, have been associated with witches,
evil and demons. Women that subverted the norm by applying
knowledge, and being independent in their work, were targeted
as witches as they undermined the patriarchal power of the
Church and State. Across the ages, any woman who could possibly
cause threat to systems of power were subdued or removed.
The witch hunts were a part in a continued trend in society of
misogyny and an imbalance of power, where men hold onto
the majority. Women should celebrate being called witches. It
seems to refer to all wonderful things - we are independent,
intelligent and causing change.
36 | Lot’s Wife