Normal Women: Medicine

Collins Big Cat supports every primary child on their reading journey from phonics to fluency. Top authors and illustrators have created fiction and non-fiction books that children love to read. Levelled for guided and independent reading, each book includes ideas to support reading. Teaching and assessment support and eBooks are also available.I bet you think of women who made potions in the “Olden Days” as witches on broomsticks? Think again! They were the first doctors in British History but they have vanished from the history books.This story begins almost one thousand years ago. Women have always been healers, experimenting with cures and working in medicine even when they were locked out of education, banned from their trade and blamed for the illnesses they were trying to heal. This book is about all of these women – the skilled women who were pushed out and the women who fought back.Adapted from her best-selling, critically acclaimed series Normal Women, join multi-award-winning author Philippa Gregory as she explores the long history of women’s competence in healing and medicine – from the Black Death and witchcraft trials to wartime work and Covid vaccines.Diamond/Band 17 books offer more complex, underlying themes to give opportunities for children to understand causes and points of view.Pages 54 and 55 allow children to re-visit the content of the book, supporting comprehension skills, vocabulary development and recall.Ideas for reading in the back of the book provide practical support and stimulating activities.Normal women make history.