The authors argue that this transition was the result of an active takeover by male professionals which sought to suppress female healers in a political, gendered, and classist struggle. The original introduction to WMN asserts that women have historically always been healers and asks how they, as a gender, arrived at their current position of subservience in the healthcare industry from a historical position of leadership.

Despite the necessary corrections they make to their original text based on this more recent scholarship, the authors maintain the contemporary relevance of their research as the American healthcare system is still profit-driven. The introduction also explains the lack of scholarship which was available to the authors in the 1970s as well as the contribution their treatise made to the development of feminist scholarship as a legitimate academic field. It explains the political and social context which drove Ehrenreich and English to pen the original manuscript and presents their hypothesis that women have been systematically disempowered when it comes to both their traditional roles as healers and their understanding of their own bodies. This introduction contextualizes the original manuscript, written in the 1970s, and updates some of the authors’ initial assertions based on more recent scholarship. The 2010 edition of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (WMN) opens with a new introduction by the authors. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deidre English.

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