Witches, Midwives, and Nurses
5 stars
Astonishingly good, avoiding all of the traps that feminist writing of this era tends to fall into, and providing a excellent history of the "professionalization" (masculinization) of medicine in the United States.
This book does a excellent job of looking at the interlocking systems of gender, class, and race, and provides a essentially anarchist view of what "professionalization" means and how it operates — focusing on the medical context, but much more broadly applicable. The discussion of Nightingale nursing in particular was excellent — laying bare the class implications of it is a very different history than what I'm used to.
I wish there were more historical sources for some of the claims about witches in particular — while everything they say seems plausible, I would prefer to know thier primary sources.
Highly recommended.