Throughout history, women have always been healers. For Women’s History Month, we’re looking at the ways in which women have been involved in the development of holistic health practices! With a history rich in growing herbs for healing, midwifery, energy healing, and nursing, women have played a huge role by sharing their knowledge, keeping these practices alive, and furthering holistic health!

History of Women in Holistic Healing

  • In Egypt, Priestesses of Isis in the second century were regarded as physician-healers who took their healing powers from the goddess Isis.

  • The most famous early Roman healer was a woman named Fabiola. She lived in the fourth century and is known as an important part of the creation of the first public hospital in Europe.

  • In China the wife of physician Ge Hong, Bao Gu, is credited with being the first to use dried mugwort as an acupuncture needle and was known as a skilled acupuncturist and external medicine doctor.

  • A Greek woman named Agnodice attended medical school, breaking the rules that prohibited women from entering the healing field in ancient Greece. She practiced obstetrics and gynecology, resulting in the updating of Greece’s laws.

  • Hildegard of Bingen was a German abbess and is often called the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

  • In Italy during the Medieval Ages, Trota de Salerno was a famous female physician. Her treatments for women’s health and birthing were gathered and used for hundreds of years.