Category Archives: Women’s Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Botany, Feminism, Folk Healers, Folklore, London, Medicine, Museum of the Home, Nature, Romany Reagan, Talk, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Live talk at the Museum of the Home in London, Thursday 12th June 2025, 6:30pm: ‘Ancient Herbal Remedies & Fertility Management — The Secrets of Mediaeval & Early Modern Midwives’

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*** Buy tickets here!!! ***

Join Dr Romany Reagan and Kerry Lemon for an exclusive after-hours event at the Museum of the Home, followed by a group walk to Ruup & Form for an intimate viewing of SIMPLING led by the artist. We’ll begin in the herb gardens at the Museum of the Home, where there will be a wine reception and access to explore the Gardens Through Time after hours. Then Romany will give a talk exploring the roots of women-led fertility management through the lens of herbal history. We’ll uncover the often-overlooked practices of mediaeval and early modern healers — women who passed down their knowledge orally, from mother to daughter, from midwife to apprentice. Their methods of community care were rarely recorded in written form, so uncovering these methods of reproductive control are their most secret knowledge of all.

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Feminism, Folk Healers, London, Museum of the Home, Nature, Romany Reagan, Talk, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Live talk at the Museum of the Home in London Sat 30th Sept: Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers 

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***Buy tickets here!***

Do you have mint tea in your cupboard? Grow rosemary in your garden? Or perhaps eat ginger when you have an upset stomach?

Then your home is a living museum, continuing the traditions that women have practised for hundreds of years for health and healing. This wisdom comes from the time when food was medicine, the kitchen was the apothecary, and healing was women’s domain.

Marking the close of the audio installation Women’s Weeds by Dr. Romany Reagan, you are invited to join us for a talk exploring the role of women in healing during the late mediaeval and early modern eras (15th to 17th centuries).

Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers will uncover how women shared healing practices in a sisterhood of secret knowledge that was handed down through generations.

This event marks the closure of Women’s Weeds. You can listen now to the audio installation in our gardens, or on Bloomberg Connects.

Feminism, Folk Healers, Museum of the Home, Pandemic, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Hidden history of women healers in the eradication of smallpox

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When we think of the eradication of the smallpox disease today, we think of the groundbreaking vaccine developed by Dr Jenner — but where did the original knowledge of smallpox inoculation (the knowledge on which the eventual vaccine was based) come from? We actually owe our thanks to the ancient practices kept alive by women healers in Greece, Turkey, China, India, and Africa. Basically, everywhere in the world *except* Western Europe…

Botany, Feminism, Folk Healers, Medicine, Museum of the Home, Romany Reagan, Video, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

What does the English Civil War have to do with feminist medicine?

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In this video, I explain how the chaos of the English Civil War led to relaxed print censorship, increased literacy, and a boom time for female-focused medical books — the origin of the printed family herbal book. 

Feminism, Museum of the Home, Video, witches, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Why is the stereotypical image we have of a witch always a woman?

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In this short history, I pinpoint the exact year in mediaeval Europe when the idea of the inherent character of the Satanic witch as female began — and also explain how the blame for this misogynist bull really comes down to just a few travelling preachers.