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Elizabeth A Lehfeldt, Sara Ritchey, Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health Book, Social History of Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 3, August 2022, Pages 1021–1023, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab090
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Sara Ritchey’s Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health is a probing and engaging examination of what the hagiographies of locally revered holy women (nuns, beguines and others) in the southern Low Countries can tell us about the medical and caregiving work they performed in the thirteenth century. Ritchey’s analysis deftly upends our notions of what counts as a source and invites us to consider the full scope of the care that these women provided to the healing communities that formed around them. The book is thus a significant methodological contribution to our understanding of medical history and gender in this period.
Traditionally, these hagiographies have been mined for what they can tell us about female religiosity and sanctity. But Ritchey persuasively contends that these accounts also contain evidence of the acts of medical attention, therapeutic interventions, and caregiving provided by these women. Reading these lives alongside other evidence such as psalters and liturgical rites, Ritchey is able to reveal a rich tapestry of care and the communities that sought it.
