Document Type

Postprint

Publication Date

1-1-2023

Journal / Book Title

Beyond Cadfael

Abstract

In the history of gynecology and obstetrics, many medical interventions – direct and indirect–have been suggested to aid women’s fertility. Even when women’s sexual and reproductive organs were not visible or easily treatable, premodern medicine tried to provide women with the right diagnoses and treatments. Fertility affects not only whether women can have children but also whether women can survive birth procedures. Today, ultrasounds and hormone tests are vital and standard diagnostic tools in gynecology. But the absence of these medical technologies did not mean that medieval medicine lacked methods to save women in agony, either by urgent direct interventions or gradual health management. While medieval people did check the uterus or vagina, their diagnoses and treatments were often interconnected with beliefs about and representations of the body, which can sometimes still be seen in modern popular beliefs and alternative medical practices.

Journal ISSN / Book ISBN

191171368 (Orcid); WOS:001351563500009 (wosuid)

Published Citation

Lee, Minji. “How to Treat a Woman's Cold and Porous Body: Mugwort Fumigation for Fertility in Medieval and Modern Folk Medicine of Western and Asian Cultures.” Beyond Cadfael: Medieval Medicine and Medical Medievalism, edited by Lucy C. Barnhouse and Winston Black, Trivent Publishing, 2023, pp. 195–216.

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