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Cover image of Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine
Cover image of Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine
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Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine

edited by Ellen S. More, Elizabeth Fee, and Manon Parry

Publication Date
Binding Type

2012 ALHHS Best Print Publication, Archivists and Librarians of the History of the Health Sciences

This volume examines the wide-ranging careers and diverse lives of American women physicians, shedding light on their struggles for equality, professional accomplishment, and personal happiness over the past 150 years.

Leading scholars in the history of medicine chronicle the trials and triumphs of such extraordinary women as Marie Zakrzewska, one of the first female medical graduates in the United States and founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children; Mary S. Calderone, the...

2012 ALHHS Best Print Publication, Archivists and Librarians of the History of the Health Sciences

This volume examines the wide-ranging careers and diverse lives of American women physicians, shedding light on their struggles for equality, professional accomplishment, and personal happiness over the past 150 years.

Leading scholars in the history of medicine chronicle the trials and triumphs of such extraordinary women as Marie Zakrzewska, one of the first female medical graduates in the United States and founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children; Mary S. Calderone, the courageous and controversial medical director of Planned Parenthood in the mid-twentieth century; and Esther Pohl Lovejoy, who risked her life to bring medical aid and supplies to countries experiencing war, famine, and other catastrophes.

Illuminating the ethnic, political, and personal diversity of women physicians, the book reveals them as dedicated professionals who grapple with obstacles and embrace challenges, even as they negotiate their own health, sexuality, and body images, the needs of their patients, and the rise of the women's health movement.

Reviews

Reviews

This lively collection of essays will no doubt be enlightening to the current generation of medical students, historians, and scholars.

Readers will find much to admire in this book. The individual essays, while diverse, are uniformly well written, well-researched, and impressively documented... Highly recommended.

The book would certainly be helpful for medical historians, of course, but also for any person—woman or man—interested in the past, present, and future role of women in medicine. Readers are rewarded with impressive scholarship and exhaustive, essay-specific bibliographies.

Stellar edited collection... Read this book and assign it for class: it succeeds in leaving us informed,inspired, and amazed... It is provocative, deconstructs binaries, shows the personal tolls and struggles faced by these physicians and their use of science, nutrition, professional authority, and maternity (among others) as means to challenge male medical authority and culturally constructed gendered norms.

This important volume delineates the state of the field in many aspects of the history of women physicians in the United States and points the way to the next steps in research.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
376
ISBN
9780801890383
Illustration Description
19 halftones, 9 line drawings
Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: New Perspectives on Women Physicians and Medicine in the United States, 1849 to the Present
Part I: Performing Gender, Being a Woman Physician
Chapter 1. Mary Putnam

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: New Perspectives on Women Physicians and Medicine in the United States, 1849 to the Present
Part I: Performing Gender, Being a Woman Physician
Chapter 1. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Nineteenth-Century Politics of Women's Health Research
Chapter 2. Maternity and the Female Body in the Writings of Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, 1829–1902
Chapter 3. Female Patient Agency and the 1892 Trial of Dr. Mary Dixon Jones in Late Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn
Chapter 4. A Chinese Woman Doctor in Progressive Era Chicago
Chapter 5. Professionalism versus Sexuality in the Career of Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone, 1904–1998
Part II: Challenging the Culture of Professionalism
Chapter 6. The Legacy of Masculine Codes of Honor and the Admission of Women to the Medical Profession in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 7. Women Physicians and the Twentieth-Century Women's Health Movement in the United States
Chapter 8. Narrative Forms in Our Bodies, Ourselves
Chapter 9. Feminists Fight the Culture of Exclusion in Medical Education, 1970–1990
Part III: Expanding the Boundaries
Chapter 10. Women Physicians and Medical Sects in Nineteenth-Century Chicago
Chapter 11. Ruth A. Parmelee, Esther P. Lovejoy, and the Discourse of Motherhood in Asia Minor and Greece in the Early Twentieth Century
Chapter 12. Women Physicians and a New Agenda for College Health, 1920–1970
Conclusion: Opportunities and Obstacles for Women Physicians in the Twenty-First Century
List of Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

Elizabeth Fee

Elizabeth Fee is the chief historian at the National Library of Medicine. She is the coeditor of AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease, Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist, Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine, and many other works.