The Role of Gender in Medical Care.
The Case of the Imperial Habsburg Family
(16th–17th Centuries)

The roles of women as patients in the early modern period has represented an under-researched topic thus far, with most works that neglecting a gender perspective. The present project thus aims to reach a full comprehension of the early modern medical encounter by applying a patient-centred perspective and exploring how gender differentiation played out at all levels of a medical visit. To this end, the research will focus on the Habsburg imperial family (16th–17th centuries), one of the most influential runling families in the early modern Europe.