Dorothea Leporin Erxleben: German doctor of the Enlightenment

Against considerable opposition and while raising nine children, she ran a medical practice for nearly two decades, and used her experience to publish a strong critique of routine but unevidenced practices. Erxleben took as an example the “bezoar stone”, a ball of hard, undigested material recovered from the gastrointestinal tracts of some animals, thought since antiquity to be a universal antidote. “Since no one can say with certainty what the bezoar stone is actually sold for”, she wrote, “it is not worth the effort to waste as much money on it as those who love it do.” Of barbers, who also conventionally practised surgery, she wrote “Many see medicinal knowledge as a thing that those who have learned the art of barbering in the usual way, get as a bonus after years of training without any effort and without having grasped anything of it…