Thesis (M.S.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Bruce Grindal, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Anthropology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 26, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 83 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. David Johnson, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 12, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-81). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Women have been healers since the dawn of humankind. They had learned their medical skills in a natural way since, as child bearers, they were also the first midwives, nurses, health carers, apothecaries and physicians. / That women were skilled in the practice of medicine and that female healers were an accepted part in medieval medical practice is evident from the numerous references describing medical treatment as found in the courtly Middle High German romances. In this study, I will first offer an overview of the medical knowledge and practice of the Middle Ages. Then I will present literary examples and incidences portraying women as healers as described in the German courtly romances of Tristan by Gottfried von Stra$ beta$burg, Erec and Iwein by Hartmann von Aue, and Parzival and Willehalm by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in order to elucidate and complete the image of the medieval female healer. / At the time when these romances were created, medical knowledge and practice were greatly influenced by the transmission and reception of Greek & Arabic medical works which formed the basis of a new Latin medical learning. This in turn provided the basis for a growing vernacular European medical literature. On the one hand, medical practice was still based on traditional folk medicine with the female healers preparing and using simple herbal remedies; on the other hand, they resorted to exotic compound medicines, such as theriac, which was closer to the learned book medicine.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisors: Darryl Dickson-Carr ; Jerrilyn McGregory, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 22, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 219 pages. Includes bibliographical references. Includes filmography.

Na busca pela saúde muitos recorrem a práticas religiosas que, ao longo do tempo, foram consideradas estranhas e extravagantes. Nossa cultura racionalista perdeu de vista a imensa contribuição que as rezadeiras, ainda hoje, oferecem para a vida de muitas pessoas que a elas recorrem em busca de alívio de suas dores materiais e espirituais. Nesta dissertação nossa tarefa, como cientista da religião, é reconstruir pontes que possibilitem um diálogo integrador e transdisciplinar das ciências com a vida. Nas benzeções, busca-se saúde e se encontra salvação, entre, através e além dessas práticas. Negar a complexidade deste fenômeno é negligenciar a força revitalizadora que anima e fortalece a experiência de fé e de solidariedade que é possível identificar em nossas periferias. / Searching health, many people resort to religious practices that along the time were considered strange and extravagant. Our racionalistic culture has lost the great contribution that the sorceress offers to the lives of many people who appeal to them looking for relief to their material and spiritual pain. In this dissertation, our work, as a religion scientist, is to reconstruct bridges that could make possible an integrated and transdiscipline dialogue between science and life. In magic blessing practice, health and salvation are in a dialogical relationship between, through and beyond prays and blesses. Deny this phenomenon complexity is the same as negligence the revitalization strength that empowers and encourages the faith and solidary experience which could be find in all society levels.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:12:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sandro Roberto de Santana Gomes.pdf: 1780148 bytes, checksum: 6d03202084b16927940ab012851d64c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-04-12 / Searching health, many people resort to religious practices that along the time were considered strange and extravagant. Our racionalistic culture has lost the great contribution that the sorceress offers to the lives of many people who appeal to them looking for relief to their material and spiritual pain. In this dissertation, our work, as a religion scientist, is to reconstruct bridges that could make possible an integrated and transdiscipline dialogue between science and life. In magic blessing practice, health and salvation are in a dialogical relationship between, through and beyond prays and blesses. Deny this phenomenon complexity is the same as negligence the revitalization strength that empowers and encourages the faith and solidary experience which could be find in all society levels. / Na busca pela saúde muitos recorrem a práticas religiosas que, ao longo do tempo, foram consideradas estranhas e extravagantes. Nossa cultura racionalista perdeu de vista a imensa contribuição que as rezadeiras, ainda hoje, oferecem para a vida de muitas pessoas que a elas recorrem em busca de alívio de suas dores materiais e espirituais. Nesta dissertação nossa tarefa, como cientista da religião, é reconstruir pontes que possibilitem um diálogo integrador e transdisciplinar das ciências com a vida. Nas benzeções, busca-se saúde e se encontra salvação, entre, através e além dessas práticas. Negar a complexidade deste fenômeno é negligenciar a força revitalizadora que anima e fortalece a experiência de fé e de solidariedade que é possível identificar em nossas periferias.

MA (Psychology) / Department of Psychology / See the attached abstract below

This dissertation uncovers women healers' vital role in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century healthcare marketplace. Euro-American women healers participated in networks of health information sharing that reached across lines of class and gender, and included female practitioners in American Indian and African American communities. Although their contributions to the healthcare labor force are relatively invisible in the historical record, women healers in the Delaware Valley provided the bulk of healthcare for their families and communities. Nonetheless, apart from a few notable monographs, women healers' practices and authority remain understudied. My project complicates a medical historiography that marginalizes female practitioners and narrates their declining healthcare authority after the mid-eighteenth century due to the emergence of a consumer society, a culture of domesticity, the professionalization of medicine, and the rise of enlightened science, which generated discourses of women's innate irrationality. Using the Philadelphia area as a case study, I argue that women healers were not merely static traditional practitioners destined to fall victim to the march of science, medicine, and capitalism as this older narrative suggests. Instead, I assert that women healers of various classes and ethnicities adapted their practices as they found new sources of healthcare authority through female education in the sciences, manuscript authorship, access to medical print media, the culture of sensibility, and the alternative gender norms of religious groups like the Quakers. Building on a longstanding foundation of recognized female practitioners, medically skilled women continued to fashion healing authority by participating in mutually affirming webs of medical information exchanges that reflected new ideas about science, health, and the body. In addition, women doctresses, herbalists, apothecaries, and druggists empowered themselves by participating in an increasingly commercialized and consumer-oriented healthcare marketplace. Within this unregulated environment, women healers in the colonies and early republic challenged physicians' claims to a monopoly on medical knowledge and practice. The practitioners analyzed in this study represent a bridge between the recognized and skilled women healers of the seventeenth century and the female healthcare professionals of the nineteenth century. / History