How Medicine Became a Commodity

Until the mid-17th century, for the vast majority of Europeans, medical care was administered by women for free in the household and neighborhood, using herbs and other formulas passed down between and among generations. Karen Bloom Gevirtz illustrates how and why only a century later, they were supplanted by men who established the basis of our for-profit medical system. (Full-length presentation.)

Karen Bloom Gevirtz, The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity UC Press, 2025

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