She Was Never Just One Thing: Part II

The Silence:

They will never have biographies.
Not because they were small, but because in a world ruled by men, they were rarely seen, rarely acknowledged, or worse, seen by patriarchy and erased by it.

The mothers who taught sons like Vāgbhaṭa the secrets of Ayurveda, yet whose names dissolved into “his mother.”

The women healers mentioned in al-Tabarī’s writings, never cited as authors, only as “wise women say…”

The Indigenous curanderas, shamans, and midwives whose knowledge fed colonial pharmacopoeias, even as they were burnt at the stake.

Healing was never rare. It was never peripheral.
It was the foundation of survival.
And across every continent, it was mostly women who carried this knowledge.

They caught babies with bloody hands and whispered prayers. 
They crushed leaves into poultices, boiled bark into teas, rubbed oils into fevered foreheads.

They passed knowledge from mother to daughter, sister to sister—because there was no page to write them.
They stitched bone, sang fevers down, sat at deathbeds, not with charts, but with heart.

The unnamed are countless. They are the center of all civilizations and yet their names go unspoken. 
I write this to honor them, to remember the nameless. To pay tribute to them.

The record of the named is sparse because history was written by the very powers that sought to erase them. But some women’s names broke through the silence. Their stories are merely pieces of a larger whole. Here we will name but a few.

• The Inventors
• The Strategists
• The Warriors
• The Scientists
• The Midwives & Healers
• The Poets & Prophets
• The Ones History Feared Too Much to Name

The Healers

Peseshet

Her title, imy-r swnwt—“overseer of female physicians”. It meant she supervised other female doctors.. It is uncertain if she was a practicing doctor herself or primarily a medical educator, though sources suggest she was a practitioner. She may also have trained midwives. Peseshet is referred to in inscriptions as the ‘King’s Associate,’ which suggests she was the personal physician of the monarch.

The claim that there were no women, or only a few, involved in medicine in ancient Egypt cannot possibly be accurate because it does not line up with the rules of that civilization or any other for that matter. Because by this reasoning, there were no women involved in anything in any civilization because history books does not mention their contributions.

Explore the limited digital footprint of her existence by visiting here.

Trotula of Salerno

She was a practitioner and teacher. Menstruation, conception and childbirth, women’s issue was her forte. She promoted cleanliness, a balanced diet, exercise, and avoidance of stress, a very modern combination. Her book on the diseases of women was very advanced for the time [Reference: “The Hidden Giant” by Sethanne Howard]. Her fame spread as far away as France and England in the 12th and 13th centuries. Yet no independent biography exists. We piece information from other historical texts just to get a glimpse of her.

Visit here to read between the lines about her legacy.

Nana Asma’u

Nana Asma’u healing was intellectual, spiritual, and profound. Guided by deep Islamic teachings and a profound connection to the local earth, she was a builder of more than just communities. She was a teacher, a scholar, and a writer. She created groups that aided her in her mission to heal and educate and to that end she also wrote in such a way for both the elite and the illiterate.

Journey into her story: Discover her lasting impact.

María Sabina

She was not just a curandera, or healer; she was a woman whose healing chants and sacred mushroom rituals healed her people, guiding them through ceremonies called veladas with a deep, intuitive grace. While her image spread globally, her community bore the devastating cost of that exposure, leaving her impoverished and exploited.

Experience the difference she made..Learn about her life’s work here.

Toypurina

A medicine woman and shaman who led resistance against Spanish colonizers in California. Her healing was inseparable from her defiance, survival itself was medicine.

Uncover more about her journey

Yi Shuo

A physician recorded in Chinese medical texts, known for her contributions to gynecology. One of the few women named in the Han dynasty’s vast medical record. Yi Shuo became the personal physician to the Empress Dowager Wang Zhi, treating the women in the royal palace. Because of her achievements, she was given the title of Imperial Physician. This was a remarkable, as this was the very thing that helped pave the way for other women in medicine.

Here, the few threads of her story remain.

In Closing:

For every name that survived, thousands did not. For every healer written into history, there are oceans of women whose hands fed and soothed and saved without record. She was never just one thing.
 She healed, she endured, she resisted.
 And even in silence, she remains.
Let them not be erased.