14. The hierarchy of the medical profession took form in medieval Europe
Physicians were considered to be at the pinnacle of the medical profession, as were, during the medieval period. They were educated, often from the upper classes of society (nobody else could afford an education), and were for the most part hard to find. From their lofty pinnacle, they looked down upon the surgeons, barber-surgeons, barbers, and apothecaries who made up the rest of what a later day would call the health care system. There were no nurses, other than monks and nuns, and midwives were considered to be servants rather than medical practitioners. At the bottom of the medical profession was its most common and often resorted to practitioner, the local wise woman.
Resembling the modern conception of a medieval witch, the local wise woman usually lived alone, either widowed or a spinster, and was wise in the ways of folk medicine and pagan cures. It was she who prepared many of the herbal salves and balms, teas and powders, used to treat those in her neighborhood who became ill. Less concerned with the learned concept of humors and more so with results, she was usually consulted by those without resort to a monastery or the funds to visit a doctor. She was also the one called to the home of the sick when infectious diseases reared their feared heads, sometimes helping to spread the contagion from home to home, albeit unwittingly.