Article ID: CBB415134692

‘Make the Medick Art my Whole Concern’: Poetry as Women's Literary Medical Practice (2023)

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The act of writing has long been acknowledged as integral to eighteenth-century medical practice, with medical practitioners relying on their ability to communicate via the written word for professional success. Partly as a result of their literary activities, the achievements of male physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries are frequently well-documented, yet the same cannot be said of women engaging in medical work. This essay argues that eighteenth-century women's medical practice extended into their creative writing, with numerous women writers utilising poetry as a central form of authoritative expression on matters of health. Verse offered opportunities to scrutinise, advise on, and influence medical knowledge and practice. Print and manuscript works by authors Jane Barker (1652-1732), Martha Hodges (fl.1675-1725), and Susanna Blamire (1747-94), serve a variety of functions, including arguing for women's medical education, reimagining the workings of the body, and advocating holistic forms of practice that unite physical and emotional forms of care.

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Article Ashleigh Blackwood; Helen Williams (2023) Writing Doctors and Writing Health in the Long Eighteenth Century. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (pp. 3-20). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB415134692/

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Authors & Contributors
Allard, James Robert
Biernoff, Suzannah
Evans, Meredith
Gates, Barbara T.
Green, Steven J.
Hallett, Christine E.
Journals
Social History of Medicine
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Social Studies of Science
Publishers
Brill
Brown University
University of Toronto
Ashgate
Manchester University Press
McGill-Queen's University Press
Concepts
Medicine and literature
Women in medicine
Rhetoric in scientific discourse
Poetry and poetics
Medicine
Science and literature
People
Keats, John
Beddoes, Thomas
Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle
Davy, Humphry
Galen
Manilius, Marcus
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
Ancient
Medieval
17th century
Places
Great Britain
England
Rome (Italy)
France
Caribbean
Italy
Institutions
United States. Food and Drug Administration
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