Afterword: Healing Women and Women Healers

This essay highlights two main themes explored by Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550: women’s health and women’s roles in healthcare. In reviewing the evidence and main arguments of the studies included in the collection, the essay demonstrates that these two themes are interconnected. A case history of postpartum melancholy reported by the sixteenth-century Portuguese physician Amato Lusitano furnishes a narrative through-line that further exemplifies the value of the information gathered in the book. The afterword proposes several new routes for future research.