Sinéad Spearing
Author | Medical Historian | Witness to the buried, and unflinching in the face of silence.
I am a medical historian and writer uncovering the lost medical knowledge of early English women — healers, midwives, and plant-workers whose expertise was later buried beneath centuries of fear, distortion, and accusation.
My work reclaims these women as the true physicians they were — revealing the quiet science behind the folklore, and exposing the systems that sought to erase them.
I write to bring their truth to light — and in doing so, restore a history that still shapes how we understand women, medicine, and power.
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BOOKS
These books trace the roots of the women who healed — through herb, word, and spirit — before they were rewritten as witches. Each one is a piece of the larger remembering.
The Remedies
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Old English Medical Remedies, Published by Pen and Sword.
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In ninth-century England, a bishop quietly gathers the healing knowledge of pagan women — and unknowingly preserves a remedy that would one day cure MRSA where modern antibiotics fail.
Old English Medical Remedies traces the roots of ancient healing through Bald’s Leechbook and the spell-laced Lacnunga — where cures for the “moon-mad” and protections against elves mingle with herbal treatments and ritual acts.
Both scholarly and lyrical, this book reveals a lost psychological and spiritual intelligence within folk medicine, bringing the voices of early women healers out from centuries of silence.
The Women
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A History of Women in Medicine, Published by Pen and Sword.
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Long before “witch” became a curse, it belonged to a tradition of female physicians — women who travelled between villages carrying knowledge of herbs, ritual, and healing prayer.
A History of Women in Medicine brings these forgotten therapists to light: respected, intuitive practitioners who blended medicine and spirit. Drawing on folklore, archaeological evidence, and Church records, it reveals how their wisdom was slowly recast as heresy — their remedies reframed as devil’s work.
This book traces how centuries of healing were turned into threat, and how the women who once saved lives came to be seen as dangerous.
Meet Sinéad
Nightshade and wormwood grow wild in my garden.
Borage and chamomile appear in strange places — chamomile in particular gathers at the cellar door, rooting into sandstone and unearthing what was meant to be forgotten.
I follow those roots — through ritual, memory, and written silence — to find the healer before she became demonised, and to recover the women they tried to burn from history.
My name is Sinéad Spearing. I am a writer, medical historian, and folklorist, specialising in early English healing traditions.
My work uncovers the hidden knowledge of women who once treated body, mind, and spirit long before medicine became modern — women later erased, rewritten, or vilified as witches.
I hold a first-class honours degree in psychology and philosophy, and have authored two books on the subject: Old English Medical Remedies and A History of Women in Medicine, both published by Pen & Sword. My third, The Roots Remember: Reclaiming the Lost Medicine of England’s Women, is in development. I have been invited to speak for The British Society of Pharmacology, The Old Operating Theatre Museum in London, and others. My work has appeared in Watkins Magazine, PsychTalk, and has been praised by Professor Jacalyn Duffin of The Natural History Museum.
Alongside the stories of these women, I study the remedies themselves — translating Old English medical texts such as Bald’s Leechbook III and Lacnunga, and investigating their healing properties through both historical and pharmacological lenses. One such remedy has been shown to cure MRSA where antibiotics fail. My work asks what else still lies buried — not as folklore, but as medicine.
I also consult on projects involving the history of medicine, women’s healing traditions, and Anglo-Saxon texts — providing historical accuracy, linguistic insight, and narrative structure for documentaries, educational programming, and historical fiction.
But beneath the research lies something deeper.
For years, I lived with silence — marked by betrayal, spiritual violence, and the long shadow of fear. When I published my first book, members of my own parish accused me of inviting darkness. I remember looking out over the fields one night and wondering: If this were the seventeenth century, would they come with pitchforks?
What I didn’t know then was that my ancestors lived here too. That the gravestones outside the church bear my family name. That the house I now live in once held a jail. That the women I write about may have passed through the same doorways I cross each day.
So I write. I research. I name what was buried.
Because I know what it is to stand in the shadow of history — and what it means to turn toward the light.
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Miss Honeybug
What a wonderful book this was! I enjoy my fiction but I also crave for well documented books filled with interesting facts, research and in depth analysis. This is one of those books that left me captivated by the subject and wanting to know more about it.
Professor Duffin.
The Natural History Museum, London
Intelligently and clearly written, with the support of relevant quotes from a range of Anglo-Saxon texts... the eleven chapters of the book introduce the reader to a fascinating world where the supernatural is commonplace, and the timing of the harvest of appropriate therapeutic herbs, sympathetic magic, ritual proclamations, transference, numerology, amulets, charms and talismans, were all used in the treatment of the sick.
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Frankie
I was intrigued by the book the moment I spotted it and knew I had to read it and I am so pleased that I got the chance to. It is a remarkable read, I found it to be very hard-hitting and yet sensitive to those women it tells the stories of, it is a book that should be read by everyone, not just women who like me are interested in women’s history and celebrating how wonderful these women were but by all. I can guarantee there will be something within these pages that will intrigue everyone.
Blog
This is a trail of fragments, reflections, and field notes from a life spent listening: to the land, the stories, and the women history tried to burn from memory.
Some of these posts are part of books I’m writing. Others are simply moments — barefoot steps, thorns caught in the hem — me noticing what grows in places most people overlook.
