Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Alisha Rankin, “Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany” (U. Chicago Press, 2013)
Description: Dorothea was a widow who treated Martin Luther, the Duke of Saxony, and throngs of poor peasants with her medicinal waters. Anna was the powerful wife of the Elector of Saxony who favored testing medical remedies on others before using them on her friends and family. Elisabeth was an invalid patient whose preferred treatments included topical remedies and ministrations from the “almighty physician,” but never “the smear.” We meet these three lively women in the pages of Alisha Rankin‘s wonderful new book on the medical practices of noblewomen from the last decades of the sixteenth century. Panaceia’s Daughters: N...