Practicing Medicine in Secret: the Long Struggle of Women to Become Doctors

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, many women died of curable diseases because they refused to undergo medical examinations carried out exclusively by male doctors, which were often humiliating or even painful. Moreover, women were terrified by the idea of being judged ill and thus seeing their chances of finding a husband, a job, or entering society taken away

One of the first female physicians whose name is recorded in historical documents is Agnodice. Legend has it that Agnodice began practicing medicine in the fourth century BC to save the women of Athens from curable diseases, which they often neglected until death simply because they did not want to be examined by male doctors. Since the medical profession was barred to women, Agnodice began to practice disguised as a man.

To reveal to her patients who she really was, she lifted her garments and showed her sex. Soon the other doctors of the city discovered this and, out of envy, had her condemned for practicing illegally. In a dramatic final reckoning, the women of Athens rushed to the court to defend her, leading to the abolition of the ban against women doctors.

Curare di nascosto: la lunga lotta delle donne per esercitare la medicina

In the sixteenth century, King Henry VIII granted occasional medical licenses "to some women so that they might treat the poor who could not afford to pay the fees of regular physicians". In medieval France about one hundred women were recognized as physicians (compared with seven thousand men). Before long, nuns became the main practitioners of the healing arts, and convents a kind of proto-hospitals. Nuns tended gardens of medicinal herbs, bandaged soldiers' battle wounds, and treated the inhabitants of the villages.

When in the thirteenth century medicine began to establish itself as a true profession—requiring university training and certification—the patriarchal control came into play. Women could not become "official" doctors because they were not admitted to universities. Outside England and France, some institutions were more permissive: in 1390, Dorotea Bucca succeeded her father by holding the chair of medicine at the University of Bologna, a position she kept for more than forty years. However, these figures were the exception, not the rule.

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Of the 9,118 cancer deaths in Paris between 1830 and 1840, almost 3,000 were caused by cancer of the uterus. The reasons for this terrible statistic were manifold.

First of all, symptoms of cancer in women's reproductive organs often did not appear until it was too late, frequently being mistaken for disorders of benign origin.
Another reason was that women did not feel able to consult their doctor or postponed doing so, even though there are greater chances of recovery when the tumor is at an early stage.
Moreover, since cancer was believed to be hereditary, seeking treatment meant revealing to society that one was "contaminated". Even in cases of survival, such a diagnosis could mean, for a woman, the end of any romantic, social, and professional prospects.