The woman physician as antidote to the ills of modern medicine

Abstract

This article, drawing on the work of Edith Stein, reflects on the feminine aspects of the medical profession, specifically attention to the whole person and personal accompaniment. It presents these feminine aspects, in light of the mechanistic, highly specialized, and often impersonal ethos of modern medicine, as a needed corrective to such an ethos. Finally, this thesis is illustrated with an example from physician Victoria Sweet.

Keywords:

• Modern medicine
• Women physicians
• René Descartes
• Edith Stein
• Victoria Sweet

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Sr. Mary Madeline, O.P.; Sr. Mary Diana, O.P.; and an anonymous reviewer for The Linacre Quarterly for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Stein herself was trained as a nurse during the First World War and served in a field hospital in Austria (Stein 2016, 318–67).

2. In Part Five of the Discourse on the Method, Descartes explains in some detail his understanding of the operation of the heart (Descartes 2006). His explanation turns out to have been incorrect, but the text illustrates well his approach to problems of physiology. See also Hall (1972, xxvii).

3. Bacon himself made few experiments. His explanation of the physiology of the heart, for example, was a creative application of the notion of “trepidation” from ancient astronomy: “It is the motion of an (as it were) eternal captivity; when bodies, for instance, being placed not altogether according to their nature, and yet not exactly ill, constantly tremble, and are restless, not contented with their position, and yet not daring to advance. Such is the motion of the heart and pulse of animals, and it must necessarily occur in all bodies which are situated in a mean state, between conveniences and inconveniences; so that being removed from their proper position, they strive to escape, are repulsed, and again continue to make the attempt” (Bacon 1902, 265). For further discussion of sixteenth-century ideas about the motion of the heart and blood, see Wallace (1996, 350–5; 396–400).

4. Early calls for a new field of study called “Bio-Ethik” were made in the 1920s and 1930s by German theologian Fritz Jahr. In the United States, the field of bioethics came into its own in the 1970s, especially in response to developments such as the Harvard Commission’s statement on brain death (1968) and the Supreme Court Decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) (Gordon n.d.).

5. For the idea of the professional as embodiment of professional knowledge, see Sokolowski (1991).

6. This aspect of knowledge distinguishes technê from a knack or purely experiential knowledge. The person with technê can teach his craft to another. See Aristotle 1979, bk. 1, 981a15–b9.

7. “Only the person blinded by the passion of controversy could deny that woman in soul and body is formed for a particular purpose. The clear and irrevocable word of Scripture declares what daily experience teaches from the beginning of the world: woman is destined to be wife and mother. Both physically and spiritually, she is endowed for this purpose, as is seen clearly from practical experience” (Stein 2017, 45).

8. “It is as a result of some natural power that curing is accomplished with the assistance of art” (Thomas Aquinas 1963, q. 5, a. 1, ad 5).

9. This etymology is mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997, no. 144).

10. Regarding the division of medicine into theoretical (knowledge for the sake of knowledge) and practical (knowledge for the sake of the product, in this case, health), Thomas Aquinas says: “when we divide medicine into theoretical and practical, the division is not on the basis of the end. For on that basis the whole of medicine is practical, since it is directed to practice” (Thomas Aquinas 1963, q. 5, a. 1, ad 4). For a more recent articulation of the primacy of the practical end of medicine, see Sokolowski (1989).

11. Sweet published a narrative of her practice at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco in the book God’s Hotel (Sweet 2012). A second book advocating for the kind of “slow medicine” that she found to be so fruitful at Laguna Honda is forthcoming in October 2017 (New York: Riverhead Books).

12. Sweet frames her reflections in terms of a contrast between modern and premodern modes of practicing medicine, but the benefits of the latter mode, which she is able to incorporate into her own practice, are the same as those we have been considering as the feminine aspects of medicine.

13. Sweet’s doctoral work on Hildegard is presented in the monograph Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine (Sweet 2006). References to Hildegard’s work are also incorporated into God’s Hotel.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sr. Elinor Gardner

Sister Elinor Gardner, O.P., Ph.D., is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia. She teaches philosophy at the University of Dallas. She can be reached at [email protected].