WOMEN IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY 291 



chiefly to midwifery. There was no provision made in 

 either of these countries for the education of women in 

 medicine and surgery, and such a thing as a college where 

 they could receive instruction in the healing art was un- 

 known. It is true that an ecclesiastical law of Edgar, 

 King of England, permitted women as well as men to prac- 

 tice medicine, but this law was subsequently abolished by 

 Henry V. 1 



During the reign of Henry VIII a law was again en- 

 acted in favor of women physicians; for at that time an 

 act was passed for the relief and protection of "Divers 

 honest psones, as well men as women, whom God hathe 

 endued with the knowledge of the nature, kind and opera- 

 gon of certeyne herbes, rotes and waters, and the using and 

 ministering them to suche as be payned with customable 

 diseases, for neighbourhode and Goddes sake and of pitie 

 and charitie, because that "The Companie and Fellowship 

 of Surgeons of London, mynding only their owne lucres 

 and nothing the profit or case of the diseased or patient, 

 have sued, vexed and troubled 7 the aforesaid 'honest 

 psones/ who were henceforth to be allowed 'to practyse, 

 use and mynistre in and to any outwarde sore, swelling or 

 disease, any herbes, oyntments, bathes, pultes or emplasters, 

 according to their cooning, experience and knowledge 

 without sute, vexation, penaltie or loss of their goods.' " 2 



The italicized words in this quotation prove that the 

 women doctors of England had the same difficulties as their 

 sisters in France, and that the real reason of the opposition 

 of the male practitioners was that they wished to monopo- 



1 * ' Possunt et vir et f oemina medici esse. ' ' Cf . Chiappelli, Medi- 

 cina negli Ultimi Ire Secoli del Media Evo, Milan, 1885. 



2 Quoted in Woman's Work and Woman's Culture, p. 87, Joseph- 

 ine E. Butler, London, 1869. Dom Gasquet in his English Monastic 

 Life, p. 175, tells us that in the Wiltshire convents "the young 

 maids learned needlework, the art of confectionery, surgery for 

 anciently there were no apothecaries or surgeons; the gentlewomen 

 did cure their poor neighbors physic, drawing, etc." 



