Whether we’re anxious about a potential illness or expecting a baby, being cared for by a professional who’s empathetic and inspires our confidence is a comfort. My experience with women healthcare practitioners has been positive. There’s a built-in understanding when I explain how I’m feeling. They’ve never invalidated my concerns.

Women practitioners have treated me as a whole person, not a jumble of body parts.

As a historical fiction author who’s interested in women’s lives, I’m always thinking of the past. This leads me to wonder about the care and understanding that women did—or didn’t receive—from male physicians before the prevalence of licensed female doctors.

I recently read Lisa See’s historical fiction, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, a story inspired by Tan Yunxian (1461–1554). Tan was one of a few women physicians during China’s Ming Dynasty and the first to publish a medical book. Women doctors and authors faced credibility issues. In the prologue, Tan wrote, “I beg readers’ indulgence and ask that they do not laugh at me.”

In the novel, I was struck by an account of a male doctor caring for a pregnant patient. Male doctors weren’t allowed to touch female patients, nor could married women be treated in the absence of their husbands. With the doctor seated on one side of a screen and the woman on the other, her husband acted as a go-between, posing the doctor’s questions to his wife and then repeating her answers to the doctor.

What quality of treatment did women receive under that kind of restriction?