This engaging collection examines the implications and representations of race, class and gender in health care offering new approaches to women's health care. Subjects covered range from reproductive issues to AIDS.

This path-breaking collection offers an integrative model for understanding health and healing in Europe and the Mediterranean from 1250 to 1550. By foregrounding gender as an organizing principle of healthcare, the contributors challenge traditional binaries that ahistorically separate care from cure, medicine from religion, and domestic healing from fee-for-service medical exchanges. The essays collected here illuminate previously hidden and undervalued forms of healthcare and varieties of body knowledge produced and transmitted outside the traditional settings of university, guild, and academy. They draw on non-traditional sources -- vernacular regimens, oral communications, religious and legal sources, images and objects -- to reveal additional locations for producing body knowledge in households, religious communities, hospices, and public markets. Emphasizing cross-confessional and multilinguistic exchange, the essays also reveal the multiple pathways for knowledge transfer in these centuries. Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550 provides a synoptic view of how gender and cross-cultural exchange shaped medical theory and practice in later medieval and Renaissance societies.

One of Canada's most trusted and beloved health practitioners introduces American women to the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine and the time-tested practices that have helped optimize physical and emotional health for centuries. Since establishing her practice in Canada twelve years ago, Dr. Xiaolan Zhao has treated thousands of women suffering from fatigue, PMS, infertility, depression, cancer, menopausal symptoms and other gynecological disorders - health problems that are all too common in the West but less so in China, where traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been an integral part of women's lives for thousands of years. As a physician originally trained in Western medicine who later took up the practice of TCM, Dr. Zhao has seen how effective the Chinese approach is for her patients, and her book will help American women incorporate its wisdom and practices in our lives. Sharing stories from her own life and the lives of her patients, Dr. Zhao shows that we have nothing to reject about our feminine selves, and explains how we can develop new relationships with our bodies and our emotions. There is so much every woman can do in terms of ongoing and preventative self-care to improve her health and vitality and prevent illness. By making simple changes in diet, exercise routine, sex life and the way we deal with stress and our emotions, we can profoundly improve our health now and into the future.

Women have absolute power within themselves to heal. A living testament to the healing efficacy of her teachings, the author freed herself from "terminal" ovarian cancer at the age of 23. More than 25 years later--having been recognized by the Parliament of the World's Religions for her outstanding contribution to humanity--she shares the healing wisdom that literally saved her life.

Simple, safe, and effective herbal home remedies for women of all ages! From menstruation to menopause, learn how to prepare natural treatments for acne, PMS, morning sickness, hot flashes, yeast infections, and more. For centuries women have turned to herbs to cope with a wide variety of health problems and conditions. Comprehensive and easy-to-use, Herbal Healing for Women explains how to create remedies—including teas, tinctures, salves, and ointments—for the common disorders that arise in the different cycles of a woman's life. Covering adolescence, childbearing years, pregnancy and childbirth, and menopause, Rosemary Gladstar teaches how herbs can be used to treat the symptoms of conditions such as acne, PMS, morning sickness, and hot flashes. A complete women's health-care manual, Herbal Healing for Women discusses: -common disorders and the herbs that are effective for treating them -how to select and store herbs -preparation of hundreds of herbal remedies -an alphabetical listing of herbs, including a brief description of the herb, the general medicinal usage, and when necessary, warnings about potential side effects. By explaining the properties of specific herbs and the art of preparation, Rosemary Gladstar demonstrates not only how to achieve healing through herbs but good health as well.

Working Cures explores black health under slavery showing how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South and invoked conflicts.

Suggests herbal treatments for menopause, vaginal infections, and menstrual ailments, and explains why natural healding is superior to modern medical practices