Was there a Querelle des Femmes in early modern medicine?

Resumo

Historians have often emphasized the anti-feminist role played by medical argument in the early modern Querelle des Femmes. In this article, I argue that this interpretation should be reconsidered. Plenty of evidence suggests that medicine played an important role on the pro-woman side of the Querelle, but so far this evidence has been analysed only piecemeal. When we review it together, a different story emerges, one in which proto-feminist arguments appear to be an influential and enduring aspect of early modern medical discourse, related to important new trends in early modern medicine. In this essay, I first look at the transformation of gender roles in humanism, and particularly in medical humanism, as they are indicated by two significant female voices in the Querelle, Nicole Liébault and Lucrezia Marinella, both daughters of physicians. I then examine one of the most striking novelties of early modern medicine, the emergence of medical writings on women’s diseases, newly addressed, to some extent, to a female public. It is especially in these texts that we find physicians voicing pro-women arguments, so much so that these works should be considered, in my view, as an integral part of the Querelle. On the basis of this evidence, I conclude that there was a Querelle des Femmes in early modern medicine. Older, scholastic views on women were challenged by some humanist physicians, and this had a profound and enduring impact on early modern medical culture.