Most academically defensible vector of Hillman's research: intersection of classical medicine + pharmakeia + female practitioners. His 2019 Elsevier peer-reviewed chapter documents role of priestesses + midwives + female herbalists administering abortifacients + aphrodisiacs + analgesics.
Structural claim that holds: women controlled a vast empirical pharmacopoeia in antiquity, operating outside the strict Hippocratic (male-dominated) medical paradigm. Institutional consolidation of power by male-dominated religious + medical hierarchies necessitated demonization of female practitioners as 'witches' (practitioners of pharmakeia).
Validators: Silvia Federici *Caliban and the Witch* (2004) — medieval-early-modern witch trials as systematic female-pharmacological-knowledge suppression. Ehrenreich & English *Witches, Midwives, and Nurses* (1973) — foundational argument.
Linguistic shift: when Septuagint + NT translated illicit magic as pharmakeia, and when Council of Elvira targeted maleficium, the operational result was disenfranchisement of the female pharmacological monopoly. Medicine woman leads to sorceress encodes a structural shift in societal power dynamics.