Panaceia's Daughters by Alisha Rankin

Author:Alisha Rankin [Rankin, Alisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Germany, Renaissance, Medical, Science
ISBN: 9780226925387
Google: 3FEnlbxU7FcC
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-03-19T16:08:48+00:00

5

Elisabeth of Rochlitz and the Experience of Illness

What did noblewomen do when they themselves got sick? Did they use the same potions, powders, salves, and aqua vitae that they advised and prescribed for others? Or did they, when it came down to it, call for a well-known doctor? It is much more difficult to find answers to these questions than one might suppose, given the abandon with which noblewomen wrote of their medical practice. Because most medical care took place locally, patients tended to mention only significant events, such as the visit of a practitioner from afar. When Dorothea of Mansfeld became seriously ill in 1572, for example, she reported consulting multiple physicians.1 She did not, however, mention to what extent she tried any of her own remedies or those of other practitioners in addition to the doctor’s ministrations. In such cases, we are left to wonder what the absence of such a reference implies. Did Dorothea shun self-care when her own health was on the line? Or was recourse to her own medications so obvious that it did not even warrant mention? What were the important factors to noblewomen in choosing each method of health care?

To explore answers to these questions, we are lucky to have a very complete account of the long patienthood of a third noblewoman, a duchess of Saxony known to her contemporaries as Elisabeth of Rochlitz (1502–57). Elisa beth provides a slightly different model from that of the women we have met up to this point. Although she dabbled in medical practice, she did not gain the widespread recognition that Dorothea of Mansfeld or Anna of Saxony enjoyed. She offered occasional advice for the illnesses and complaints of her family members and subordinates, she kept an extensive collection of medical remedies, and she too distilled aqua vitae, but these activities were conducted on a much more localized level than the very public and farreaching healing of Dorothea and Anna. She did not become widely known for her medical recipes, and, as we have seen, when she heard that her nephew Duke Moritz of Saxony had taken ill in 1546, she turned to Dorothea rather than offer her own advice.

Although she possessed at least a basic level of familiarity with medical care as a practitioner, Elisabeth became more intimately acquainted with medical remedies from the other side, as a patient. From the early 1540s, she suffered from chronically recurring skin blemishes, aching joints, and fevers. In June of 1552, a sudden, incapacitating illness left her bedridden and clinging to life for three months; nearly everyone, including at least one physician, assumed she would not survive the summer, a presumption she regarded with much bitterness when she recovered her health later that autumn. From that point onward, however, the nagging complaints that had plagued her for years became more severe, as she increasingly began to exhibit symptoms that many of her acquaintances, including her own brother, eventually suspected to be the French Disease. (Elisabeth, as we shall see, fervently disagreed with this diagnosis.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.