Lay Healers

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/nov12.html

"A popular homeopathic lay healer within her community … , Elizabeth Cady Stanton doctored family, friends, and neighbors armed with a homeopathic domestic medical kit … Stanton was proud of her self-reliance, successfully managing her own parturitions, and of nursing her children through malaria, whooping cough, mumps, and broken limbs. After the 1852 birth of her daughter, Stanton wrote to her friend … 'Dear me, how much cruel bondage of mind and suffering of body poor woman will escape when she takes the liberty of being her own physician of both body and soul!' Stanton denounced both the Protestant and 'medical ministries' for their manipulation of women, arguing that the 'genteel' and 'civilized' woman was made ill and unnecessarily dependent upon their authority." 

The above is an excerpt from the engaging book A Vital Force: Women in American Homeopathy by Anne Taylor Kirschmann. I have been reading this book while working on my assignments in this semester's English class, which focus upon rhetoric, controversy, and, as my topic of choice, homeopathy.