Jacoba Felicie

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Jacoba Felicie

fl. 1300s

French healer who challenged gender hierarchy in medicine and the Statute of 1271. The faculty of the University of Paris brought charges against Felicie in 1322 for practicing medicine without a license. Despite her success with patients, they refused to grant her a license because she was a woman. The fact that she took pulses and studied urine was held against her because "medicine was a science transmitted from texts, not a craft to be learned empirically."