1881.] Early Practice of Medicine by Women. 67 
occupied with the preparation of drugs as early as the 
seventeenth century, and both published works on medical 
subjects. 
In this hasty and superficial sketch of the history of the 
early practice of medicine by women we would not be true 
to the fadts if we omitted mention of certain ignorant and 
vulgar women who assumed medical knowledge and medical 
skill to impose upon a too credulous public. That avaricious 
women, fond of notoriety and careless of their reputation, 
should imitate the methods adopted in every age by unprin- 
cipled men, is not surprising, though it may be mortifying. 
To this class belonged Louise Bourgeois, nurse to Marie de 
Medici, the Queen of Henry IV. of France : though an 
ignorant charlatan, she acquired extraordinary influence 
over her royal patroness, and her career abounds in curious 
eventful episodes. She was the author of several medical 
treatises on the diseases of women, one of which was pub- 
lished at Paris in 1617. 
A century later another female practitioner flourished, of 
whom women have no reason to be proud. In the year 1738 
Mrs. Joanna Stephens proclaimed in London that she had 
discovered a sovereign remedy for a painful disease. Not- 
withstanding her gross ignorance and vulgar demeanour she 
secured a large circle of patients from among the upper and 
wealthy classes, and, after enriching herself by enormous 
fees drawn from their credulity, she proposed to make her 
medical discovery public in consideration of the modest sum 
of twenty-five thousand dollars. A subscription was started 
for this purpose and enthusiastically taken up ; the clergy, 
lords, and ladies, with an inexplicable infatuation, hastened 
to add their names to the list of subscribers. Failing, how- 
ever, to raise so large a sum of money, Mrs. Stephens’s 
friends obtained a grant of the desired amount from Parlia- 
ment. The certificate testifying to the “ utility, efficacy, 
and dissolving power of the medicines,” bears the date 
March 5, 1739, and is signed by twenty justices. These 
dearly purchased remedies were three in number, “ a powder, 
a decodtion, and pills.” The powder consisted of calcined 
egg-shells and snails ; the decodtion was a disgusting mix- 
ture of herbs, soap, and honey, boiled in water ; and the 
pills were made of “calcined wild-carrot seeds, burdock 
seeds, ashen keys, hips, and haws — all burned to a blackness 
— soap, and honey.” 
Contemporary with Mrs. Stephens lived another impostor, 
Mrs. Mapp, sometimes known as “ Crazy Sally of Epsom,” 
and described as an “enormously fat, ugly creature, 
