Almanacs

The almanacs reproduced in this volume add to an understanding of women's participation in popular culture, astrology, medicine and prophecy. As the most inexpensive form of printed matter in the early modern period, and due to their practical use as a calendar, literary miscellany, guide to the weather, advertising medium and source book, almanacs exerted a tremendous influence on popular opinion. By the 16th century, the almanac had stabilized into the two-part structure found in the examples in this volume, with one part compsed of the ephemeris (astronomical tables) listing the risings and settings of the sun and moon, times of the eclipses and the aspects of the planets. This information was used in astrological calculations to predict future events, forecast weather and determine the best times for medical procedures. The second part of the almanac typically contained astrological prognostications or prophecies for the coming year, which could be political, scientific or medical in nature. The appearance of the medical and prophetic advice in Jinner's and Holden's works was partially due to several larger trends, including an increase of women's literacy and a explosion of female authorship after the 1640s. Following the example of female medieval medical authorities, Trotula of Salerno and Hildegard of Bingen, women in the 17th century began publishing in increasing numbers on medical matters in a variety of genres. The picture that emerges when historically situating the work of Holden and Jinner within early modern English medicine, is that women, spurred by Culpeper's English translations of Galen and the London dispensatory, and the increasing general literacy for women, were gaining increasing access to classically based medical knowledge and were thereby attempting to raise standards of female-adminstered health care through publication and even by challenging the male medical hierarchy itself by proposing the formal education of midwives.