This richly detailed book is a veritable master class in how to construct a "woman's history of medical care" when the available primary sources are almost all written by men. Over the past two decades, Lee Jen-der has been a leader in the study of gender and medicine in Han though Tang dynasty China, and the chapters in this book are based on her previously published articles. With thoroughness and insight, she weaves together accounts of women and caregiving gleaned from a wide array of sources, including official histories, government documents, inscriptions, religious and ritual writings, moral treatises, and, of course, medical texts. She documents the central role that women played in caregiving and medical treatment, as well as the way that different imaginings of the female body shaped male medical theorizing. She also coaxes her sources to reveal the lived experiences of women as bearers of children and givers of care. The result is a compelling corrective to existing histories that focus on the development of classical medicine and its male practitioners.
