ABSTRACT
The ‘Materia Medica Woman Project’ set out to discover what medications were prescribed for women, but not whether they all had demonstrable therapeutic benefits for the illnesses for which they were prescribed. Partial or complete lists of the cataloged medications are scattered throughout the text of Materia Medica Woman. Many problems were encountered during the research. Medications were prescribed using completely different logic but, in spite of this, many were effective. Humoral medicine (and its adaptations) existed for millennia and carried its own authority. Throughout the ages almost all prescriptions were compound in nature, and the plant in question could be mixed with a large number of other animal, mineral, or plant components to form the final medication. The medication could then be administered in a number of different ways — by fumigation, mouth, as a plaster, or per rectum.
