What Were Early Modern Beds Like?
Fairy tales don’t have to make sense to be meaningful. They follow their own logic and readers – or, traditionally, listeners – get so enraptured in the story that no one…
What Made a 17th-Century Midwife Good at Her Job?
Little Red Riding Hood and the Invisibility of Older Women
How to Clean Your Body in the Renaissance
One of the silliest historical myths out there is that people in the past were somehow ‘dirty’ and had poor hygiene, especially compared to today’s standards. Of course, I’m generalising; each…
The ‘Queen of Hysterics’ and 19th-Century Theatrical Hysteria
Maternal Mortality and “The Mother’s Legacy to Her Unborn Child”
What is the ‘Doctrine of Signatures’?
In the early modern period, an impotent man might be prescribed boiled orchid roots. But why? Well, they resembled testicles and were consequentially believed to be useful in improving male potency….
A Grip on the History of Forceps in Medicine
Eostre and Easter: ‘Rebranding’ a Spring Goddess to Fit Christianity?
Have you ever wondered where the word ‘Easter’ comes from? Let me introduce you to the Germanic goddess of dawn and spring, Eostre, after whom Easter was possibly named. (Historians and…
The Surprising Connection Between Freud and Greek Mythology
If there’s one person who thought and wrote about penises a lot, it was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the ‘father of psychoanalysis’. Like many nineteenth-century intellectuals, Freud was interested in sex and…
Moderata Fonte and ‘The Woman Question’
Is there anything more enlightening than listening in while women discuss their role in society? As the recent adaptation of Miriam Toews novel Women Talking shows, this is a pretty fascinating…
Welcome to Secrets of Women, where we aim to explore and rethink gender in history!
The idea for this website started as a way to bridge the distance between academic debates on gender and the wider community.
While my focus is on the history of medicine and gender history, and I specialise in the early modern period (16th-18th centuries), I also hope to create links between the past and the present.
My goal is to bring history into contemporary debates while creating a sense of community and a safe space for discussion.
(If you are curious about the gendered language used in this website, please read our Language and Inclusivity note.)
You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter which includes the latest posts before they appear on the website, as well as recommendations, from books to films and online courses.
I look forward to many stimulating debates and discussions with you!

About Julia Martins (She/Her)
I just finished my PhD in History at King’s College London. My thesis was about the translation of ‘secrets of women’ …