How the Middle Ages’ female doctors were consigned to oblivion

In seeking to tell the story of these experts (prior to their ostracization from the practice), researchers have come up against a number of obstacles. The information available comes primarily from scarce, disparate fragments from biographical sources, as well as economic, legal and administrative ones. Sometimes all that remains is a given name or a surname, such as in the case of the women listed in the Ars Medicina of Florence (a medical treatise) or of the nun apothecary Giovanna Ginori, whose name can be found in the tax records of the pharmacy where she worked in the 1560s.
Such painstaking research has nevertheless helped us better understand how a male-dominated, institutional and hierarchical system has pushed women away from the practice and study of medicine.
How the Middle Ages’ female doctors were consigned to oblivion