Jacoba Felicie Barred from
Medicine: Paris, France, 1322
A number of scientists and doctors claimed that women should not be
permitted to practice any manner of health care. In 1322, the Faculty of
Medicine at the University of Paris laid charges against Jacoba Felicie for
practicing medicine without being qualified.
Jacoba Felicie was a French midwife who was brought to trial for
practicing medicine without license in a time when women were not allowed to.
Six witnesses affirmed that Jacoba had cured them, even after numerous doctors
had given up, and one patient declared that she was wiser in the art of surgery
and medicine than any master physician or surgeon in Paris. However, these
testimonials were used against her, for the charge was not that she was
incompetent, but that as a woman she dared to cure at all.
Jacoba was well known in Paris among the well-to-do women, who regularly
consulted her—often after seeing other doctors who had been unable to cure
their maladies. Jacoba was a skilled midwife and healer who took the pulses of
her patients and tested their urine to assist in diagnosis. Her patients
acclaimed her skill in healing both internal and external injuries and wounds.
She practiced medicine in the face of a great deal of enmity from the
magistrates of the university, the Chancellor of Paris and probably from the
humiliated licensed doctors whose patients she cured.
Opinions were divided on the role of women in medicine. Many, especially
women, were supportive of the caring attitudes and skills of female physicians.
The famed Salerno Medical School in Italy even trained gifted women to be
doctors. In the 11th century the legendary Trotula was an
obstetrician/gynecologist trained there who wrote several books that were still
consulted hundreds of years later. She was best known for teaching male doctors
about the female body and childbirth. The school maintained that women were
eminently suited to caring for other women, particularly in matters of
childbirth and other women's conditions. Abella, a Salerno graduate, wrote
authoritatively on black bile, and Mercuriade on fevers, so there was no doubt
that some women were perfectly capable of becoming physicians.
