The role of women as healers during the middle ages has received some attention from medical historians but remains little known or appreciated. In the 3 centuries preceding the Renaissance this role was heightened by 2 roughly related developments. The first was the evolution of European universities and their professional schools that for the most part systematically excluded women as students thereby creating a legal male monopoly of the practice of medicine. Ineligible as healers women waged a lengthy battle to maintain their right to care for the sick and injured. The 1322 case of Jacqueline Felicie one of many healers charged with illegally practicing medicine raises serious questions about the motives of male physicians in discrediting
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Jacqueline Felicie's real name was Jacobina Felicie. She was born in the early 14th century. Jacobina Felicie, like Agnodice, was a woman who tried to practice medicine at a time when men controlled the profession completely. Both women were put on trial for their crimes, but with opposite results. Jacobina Felicie came from a Jewish family and was probably of aristocratic birth. She practiced medicine in Paris in the early 1300s, treating patients of both sexes. In doing so, she violated a law that said all physicians in the city must be licensed by the medical faculty of Paris university. Such licenses usually were given only to those who had been named masters of medicine by the university which admitted only men. On August 11, 1322, Jacobina Felicie was put on trial for practicing medicine. Rather than denying the charges, her lawyer called patients who testified to her skill. The women among them said they would have remained untreated if they had not been able to go to a woman doctor. In her own defense, Jacobina Felicie said, "It is better that a wise woman learned in the art of medicine should visit the sick woman and inquire into the secrets of her hidden parts, than a man should do so, for whom it is not lawful to see the aforesaid
Jacqueline Felicie's real name was Jacobina Felicie. She was born in the early 14th century. Jacobina Felicie, like Agnodice, was a woman who tried to practice medicine at a time when men controlled the profession completely. Both women were put on trial for their crimes, but with opposite results. Jacobina Felicie came from a Jewish family and was probably of aristocratic birth. She practiced medicine in Paris in the early 1300s, treating patients of both sexes. In doing so, she violated a law that said all physicians in the city must be licensed by the medical faculty of Paris university. Such licenses usually were given only to those who had been named masters of medicine by the university which admitted only men. On August 11, 1322, Jacobina Felicie was put on trial for practicing medicine. Rather than denying the charges, her lawyer called patients who testified to her skill. The women among them said they would have remained untreated if they had not been able to go to a woman doctor. In her own defense, Jacobina Felicie said, "It is better that a wise woman learned in the art of medicine should visit the sick woman and inquire into the secrets of her hidden parts, than a man should do so, for whom it is not lawful to see the aforesaid