Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Throughout the existence of mankind, the task of caring has been the responsibility of women; outside the family unit, the first female carers were the shamans.However, history does not accurately reflect this role, given that medical texts have mostly been written by men.Metrodora (c.200-400 CE), whose identity is unknown beyond her name, was a Greek physician and author of the oldest medical text known to have been written by a woman, On the Diseases and Cures of Women, which made decisive contributions to the aetiology and symptomology of diseases, and was widely referenced by other medical writers in ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in mediaeval Europe. 1 Despite this background, when medicine became a university science, women were excluded, and it was not until the end of the 19th century that degrees in Medicine were awarded, very occasionally and with great uproar, to women for the first time.The first woman to achieve a degree in Medicine was Elizabeth Blackwell, of British origin, from New York's Geneva Medical College in 1849.In 1864, the African-American Rebecca Lee Crumpler graduated from Boston University.Almost 20 years later, in 1882, the Elena Maseras of Catalan origen, achieved a degree in Medicine, although she ended up working as a teacher due to the bureaucratic obstacles she faced in order to practise medicine.
Source: Nefrología (English Edition)
Institutions: Hospital de Poniente, Hospital Perpetuo Socorro
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2916993154