Women have always played a vital role in treating illness and caring for the sick. Throughout most of history tending to the sick has often been carried out at home, and has often been considered part of a woman’s role in caring for the family.
However, for women who wanted to practise medicine as a profession the battle for recognition and acceptance has been a long one. Throughout history, women have often been excluded, both legally and socially, from formally practising and training in medicine. This continued even as our ways of understanding the human body and illness have changed.
Find out about four women who sought to practise medicine and the challenges they have faced.
Jacoba Felice
In Paris in 1322, Jacoba Felice (also known as Jacqueline depending on the translation) stood trial accused of practising medicine without a medical license – the permission to practice granted to university trained doctors. As a woman in 14th century France, Jacoba was not allowed to attend the University of Paris to study medicine. We know very little about Jacoba’s early life or how her interest in and knowledge of medicine developed, but from the transcript of her trial, including testimony from several of Jacoba’s patients, we know that Jacoba used many common medical practices at the time. This ranged from carrying out physical examinations to prescribing cures to help men and women, even after other medical professionals had failed. Jacoba’s methods of diagnosis and treatment were in line with those of male doctors of the time.
She examined her patients’ urine and felt their pulse. In medieval European medical traditions looking at the urine was an important way to understand if the four humours of the body were out of balance. The feel of the pulse also gave an insight into the ‘vital spirit’ which kept the body functioning. Although, different tools and a different framework of medical knowledge are used, both the pulse and urine are important to modern diagnosis and treatment.
Illnesses were treated using a range of herbs and syrups. One of Jacoba’s patients, Lord Odo de Cormessiaco (described in the transcript as a brother of the hospital of Paris) complained that he was so ill that his limbs could no longer support him. He reported that several other male doctors had visited him and had not successfully treated him. Some of the treatments used by Jacoba included camomile leaves and melilot. Odo had a complete recovery and emphasised in his testimony that Jacoba did not ask for payment until his treatment had been successful.
Jacoba images
Green wooden herb box with lid, albarello-shaped, for chamomile root, European, 1600-1800.
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Tin glazed earthenware drug jar, used for chamomile flower electuary, Dutch, 1751-1800.
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The yellow melilot or sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis).
Wellcome CollectionIn this period, religious life also cannot be disentangled from everyday life. Jacoba prayed with her patients, and this was an important part of treatment.
Unfortunately, nothing is known of Jacoba’s life outside of the events of her trial. Jacoba was fined 60 Parisian livres (roughly equivalent to £8,000 in 2024) and in the sources there seems to be some confusion about whether she was excommunicated or threatened with excommunication if she continued to practice medicine. How these events shaped the rest of Jacoba’s life we may never know.
This is also just one example of the medical work of a woman in this period – it just happens to have been recorded, discovered during research and translated. Furthermore, most medical treatment in this period would have begun in the home, with outside help only being sought for severe illnesses. This means that it is very likely that most women would have practiced some form of medicine within the domestic sphere.
Saints images
Pottery statue of Saint John of God, patron saint of hospitals and the sick, with relic at the front said to be a splinter of his walking stick, Spanish, 1690-1928
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Enamel plaque depicting St. Cosmas annointing the head of a patient, by Leonard Limousin, Limoges, France, 16th century
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St Damian and his twin brother St Cosmas were physicians who provided medical treatment free of charge in the hope of converting their patients to Christianity. The twins are said to have died for their Christian beliefs in the 300s CE.
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Carved relief figure of Saint Luke, patron saint of Physicians, Austrian, 19th century.
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Earthenware statue depicting Saint Peter restoring the lame man, possibly 18th century, Staffordshire, English.
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Figure of Saint Apollonia, patron saint of toothache sufferers, probably Spanish, 1700-1850
Science Museum GroupMary Seacole (1805 – 1881)
Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805. At this time, there were many enslaved Black people in the Caribbean, but Mary, who had a Black mother and a white father, was born free. From a young age, Mary followed in her mother’s footsteps and showed an interest in medicine. Mary’s mother was a healer using traditional medical techniques and, in her autobiography, Mary recalled practising these skills on her dolls and pets.
Today, Mary is best known for her work in the Crimea. After being refused by the War Office when she volunteered her services as an army nurse, she established a hotel near the front lines in Balaclava. The British Hotel, as it was known, became a well-established place of respite and care for soldiers. Mary also visited the battlefields to care for the wounded. In the Crimea, Mary was particularly well known for her success in treating cholera and diarrhoea. When he met Mary in August 1855, Surgeon Major William Menzies Calder said: “her fame as a doctoress for cholera and diarrhoea are spread all over the camp…they [her treatments] certainly cannot be less efficacious than all our drugs etc. for cholera, from all the varieties of which I have yet seen little benefit here.”
Mary Seacole images 2
Silver, oval amulet of St. Roch, for protection against cholera1800-1900.
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Crimean War Medal, silver with silk ribbon and 3 bars, awarded to Staff Surgeon I.C.G. Tice for services in the Crimea, made by B. Wyon and W. Wyon, English, 1854-1856.
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Black and white photograph of Balaclava Harbour, where Mary Seacole built the British Hotel.
An illustration of Mrs Seacole’s ‘Hotel’. ‘Mrs Seacole’s from the southeast’ (Blackwood,1881, facing page 252)
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Crimean War diary of Surgeon Major William Menzies Calder, 1 July 1855 - 15 March 1856, starting in Scutari Barracks, moving to the camp before Sebastopol on 28 July 1855.
Wellcome CollectionThis knowledge came from Mary’s extensive history of medical work outside of the Crimea. In both Jamaica and South America, Mary had treated patients during earlier cholera and yellow fever outbreaks. In both these earlier outbreaks and in the Crimea, Mary’s treatments for cholera included mustard emetics, mustard plasters, and calomel (mercury chloride).
Mary Seacole Gallery
Earthenware mustard jar
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Pharmacy vase, blue and white, for calomel, North Italian, 1730-1830
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Bottle with cork stopper, containing calomel tablets.
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Tin glazed earthenware drug jar, with portraits, used for fine mustard, Sicilian, 17th century.
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Paper packet containing Mustard Plaster, by Seabury and Johnson, USA, 1880-1920. They would be applied to the chest to alleviate congestion
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Empty glass bottle for calomel tablets, English, 1860-1900.
Science Museum GroupMary Seacole was well known in Britain during and immediately after the Crimean War as there had been significant newspaper coverage of her work during the conflict. Interestingly, the Crimean War had been the first conflict to be covered by a war correspondent from a newspaper, giving the British public much more immediate news of the ups and downs of the military campaign. Mary died in London in 1881. However, in the century or so after her death, her life and work became much less well known. There was a revival of interest in her in the 1950s and 1960s as she became a role model for Caribbean nurses emigrating to the UK to work in the NHS, with many visiting her grave in North West London. In 2004, Mary was voted the greatest Black Briton – a recognition of her legacy and importance.
Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842 – 1906)
For centuries, formal medical education had been off limits for women. In the UK, the Medical Act 1858 founded the General Medical Council and created a formal medical register of individuals permitted to practise medicine in the UK. This law did not specifically state that women could not register as doctors, but as women could not attend medical school in the UK, it was very difficult for them to get the required qualifications. When the register was first published in 1859, the only woman on it was Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. She had been the first woman to graduate medical school in the USA and used a loophole which allowed people who had trained abroad to register with GMC. This route to registration was quickly closed.
It was in this context that Mary Putnam Jacobi grew up. She was born in London, but her family moved to the USA when she was six. Mary first studied pharmacy graduating in 1861 and then medicine at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania finishing in 1864. The world of women practising medicine was very small in this period. Mary’s first hospital position was at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, which was founded by Marie Zakrzewska. Previously Marie had founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with Elizabeth Blackwell.
Mary Putnam Images
Dr. Marie Zakrzewska founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children, the first hospital in Boston—and the second hospital in America—to be run by women physicians and surgeons.
Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College
New England hospital for woman and children.
The New York Public Library
Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
National library of MedicineOne of Mary’s best-known pieces of work was her research into the effects of the menstrual cycle on the body. Her 1876 essay titled The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation won the Boylston Prize Essay of Harvard University. This prize is awarded to innovative medical research. Mary’s paper questioned the existing medical belief that it was hazardous for people to exert themselves while they were on their period and that they were weakened both mentally and physically at this time. Using the latest in medical technology, Mary systematically found that there was no physiological difference between those who were menstruating and those who weren’t. One of these tools was a sphygmograph. This device was developed in the mid-19th century to measure and trace the pattern of the pulse at the wrist. A fine needle would shift with the pulse and would trace a line on a smoked glass slide – leaving a wiggly line pulse trace. She gathered a whole range of data, including surveying over 200 women and completing more in-depth physical research with a smaller sample. This included using a sphygmograph to measure women’s pulse at various points of their menstrual cycle to show that there was no measurable difference.
Mary Putnam Jacobi continued to practise medicine for the rest of her life. In 1905, she published her final work titled "Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum. From Which the Writer Died. Written by Herself”. This was a detailed description of her symptoms and diagnosis – particularly remarkable given she did not have access to the modern imaging tools, like MRIs, which are today used to make this kind of diagnosis. This final work, written on her deathbed and published only months before she died in 1906, is a testament to the detail and precision she applied to her whole medical career.
Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958)
Practising as nurse or doctor is far from the only way in which women have been involved in medicine. Scientific research has played an enormous role in shaping our understanding of the human body and illnesses. Women have played an equally significant role in this work, although it hasn’t always been recognised at the time.
DNA (which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid) is the blueprint for all living things. The information it contains is passed from parents to children and is responsible for the traits, characteristics and even illnesses that we inherit. The genetic code is present in every cell of every living being. In 1869, Swiss biochemist Friedrich Miescher first identified the substance we now know as DNA, although he called it nuclein. It then took until the 1950s for the structure of DNA to be revealed. In 2022, the human genome was finally fully sequenced. The Human Genome project had decoded 92% of the human genome in 2003, but it took nearly 20 years for the final 8% to be completed.
The work of Rosalind Franklin was central to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. Rosalind was a talented x-ray crystallographer. X-ray crystallography involves exposing a crystalised sample of a molecule to x-rays using an x-ray camera. The resulting photograph shows how the atoms are arranged because different types of atoms diffract the x-rays in different ways. At Kings College London, Rosalind was part of one of several research groups attempting to understand DNA. With her PhD student, Raymond Gosling, Rosalind captured the famous ‘Photo 51’ which indicated the double helix structure of DNA. This provided vital information which allowed James Watson and Francis Crick to build their model of this structure. Rosalind’s x-ray crystallography also provided the data about the precise spatial relationships of the components of DNA, which were key to James and Francis’ model. In 1953, an article in Nature by James and Francis celebrated the discovery of the structure of DNA. This was accompanied by an article from Rosalind detailing her work and her data. However, for a long-time, popular histories, including James’ own autobiography, Double Helix, overlooked her contribution. This was compounded by the fact that Rosalind died of ovarian cancer in 1958, aged only 37. This was before she could publish her side of the story and before the other key players were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962. The Nobel Prize cannot be awarded posthumously.
Franklin DNA images
X-ray diffraction exposure of B type DNA
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Reconstruction of the double helix model of DNA, using some of the original metal plates, by Francis Crick and James Watson, England, 1953.
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Nobel Prize Telegram for Watson and Crick.
Wellcome CollectionAs important as it is to celebrate Rosalind’s work on DNA, it is also important to remember that this was not her only scientific achievement. Rosalind left Kings in 1953 to lead a research group at Birkbeck College, using x-ray crystallography to study the structure of plant viruses such as the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). They were the first to discover the full structure of the TMV, also making them the first to discover the structure of any virus.
Franklin Images
When X-rays are passed through crystals they scatter to create a pattern that can be used to determine the structures of molecules. Known today as X-ray crystallography, it was a crucial technique used to understand the structure of penicillin, DNA and insulin.
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Plaster of Paris model of tobacco mosaic virus made at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge.
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Franklin's Reports and Working Notes on DNA
Wellcome CollectionConclusion
Since the mid-1990s, the number of women studying medicine at UK universities has outnumbered men. The NHS is one of the largest employers in the UK and in NHS England 77% of the workforce in 2018 were female. However, women are still underrepresented at senior levels and in certain specialties. In 2018, NHS Digital found that only 27% of surgeons were women. Furthermore, a 2021 survey by the British Medical Association (BMA) found that 91% of the female doctors surveyed had experienced sexism in the workplace. An independent review commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care also found in 2021 that female hospital doctors earned on average 18.9% less than men. Women of colour, LGBTQIA+ women, disabled women and those with caring responsibilities can face even more barriers.
While we are a long way from equality, today women do have a much greater profile and presence in medicine and more access to formal medical training than ever before. There are a huge number of impressive role models available to young girls, from Sarah Gilbert, who was widely celebrated for her work developing the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to Elizabeth Anionwu, who transformed the treatment of sickle cell disease.
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