Matilda la Leche, First recorded English Physician

Matilda la Leche fl. 1232

Matilda la Leche (the description la leche indicating she was a medical practitioner), of Wallingford was assessed for taxes in 1232. This makes her one of the earliest female doctors to be recorded in the UK.

Extract:

Women medical practitioners in England (act.c. 1200–c. 1475), were a widespread, amorphous, and often maligned group, and one that is very difficult to define. Surgical texts written by men abound with disparaging references to 'the ladies': amateur healers who were accused of making their patients worse. Much of this is part of medieval anti-female satire, though it does imply a female threat to male hegemony. Since most medicine was practised part-time in the middle ages, medical practitioners may be mentioned in a wide variety of sources. The exclusion of women from the clerical and other professions, from municipal and legal offices, and from a prominent place in the life of guilds and confraternities—that is, from virtually every situation tending to throw up the right kinds of records—makes it especially difficult for the historian to identify women medical practitioners. Medical texts survive directed exclusively to women's problems, but they were usually excerpts from longer general practices written by men. Nevertheless, scattered sources suggest that many women healers were powerful, independent, and sought after for their skills: it was their very success that was sometimes seen as a threat to the practice of medicine by men.

[1] Faye Getz, ‘Women medical practitioners in England (act. c.1200–c.1475)’, first published