‘Wise women healers’ were now to be regarded as witches. Professional associations, to which
surgeons and physicians would automatically belong, as part of the establishment, looked with
distaste at the part these women were playing in this caring vocation. There was to be much friction
between those who had traditionally eased suffering without any formal qualifications and those
establishment-endorsed ‘modern’ doctors. These qualified healers were to receive total support
from the state, who acted on their behalf on several occasions to stop the amateurs and allow the
monopoly over the physical wellbeing of a nation’s inhabitants to be placed firmly in the hands of