Women healers and the medical marketplace of 16th-century Lyon

Although women's legal and marital status make them almost invisible in archiva1 , what traces remain suggest that women participated in Lyon's medical in various ways and under various guises. At Lyon's municipally-funded hospital, the Hotel-Dieu, widows and wives of surgeons, repentant prostitutes, attendants, and .women» cared for the destitute and sick of Lyon, in the capacity midwives, physicians, surgeons, and barbers. Though the records almost always women practitioners simply as «women» or by their first and last name, many them engaged in the identical tasks as male practitioners. Outside of the hospital, acted as barbers or surgeons alongside or in place of their husbands when . In the final analysis, municipal authorities accepted the help of female on the basis of their traditional medical knowledge, joint work identity with practitioner-husbands, and proven skill.