Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health. Sara Ritchey. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. xvi + 310 pp. $45

Acts of Care investigates women's roles in the medieval health economy, taking religious women in the Southern Low Countries as a case study. [...]the significance of religious women for the health of late medieval society is made more convincing by discussions of the circulation of healing stories beyond the convent, the connections with hospitals and leprosaria, and assistance in mortuary practices and childbirth. [...]although Ritchey only hints at (negative) long-term developments such as further exclusion and erasure (disciplining of beguines, accusations of sorcery), her work does imply that more research into these topics is necessary, and that religious reform potentially profoundly affected healthcare practices.