A History of Women in Medicine and Medical Research

Exploring the Trailblazers of STEM

Dale DeBakcsy

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781399068987
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

In the nineteenth century, a small but dedicated group of European and American women rose to agitate for the inclusion of women in the medical profession. It is a historic tale that we have told and retold for decades, but it is far from where the story of women as physicians and healers begins. Stretching back into deepest antiquity, we possess accounts of women who were consulted by emperors and paupers alike for their medical expertise. They were surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, university lecturers, and medical researchers in correspondence with the most learned societies of their time. And then it all came crashing down. A History of Women in Medicine and Medical Research is the story of the women who participated in that early Golden Age, and of a medical establishment closing ranks against them so effectively that, by the early Victorian era, they not only were barred from practicing medicine, but from so much as stepping into a classroom where medical topics were being discussed. It is the story of that intrepid band of reformers and pioneers who built back the women's medical profession from the ashes and constructed a thriving new community of researchers and practitioners who within a century had retaken not only the ground that had been lost, but boldly advanced to levels of fame and achievement unimaginable to any previous era. Told through in-depth accounts of the lives of the pioneers and practitioners who built and rebuilt the women's medical movement, this title dives into the lives of not only legendary figures like Florence Nightingale, Gertrude Elion, Rosalyn Yalow, and Elizabeth Blackwell, but visits women the world over whose medical contributions broke down doors and advanced the cause of women's and world health, like the revolutionary medieval physician Trota of Salerno, the pioneering eighteenth century midwife and businesswoman Madame du Coudray, the microbiological research trailblazer Mary Putnam Jacobi, and the HIV researcher and world epidemic response coordinator Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. With over 140 stories spanning three millennia of global medicine, this book shines a light on the unknown heroes, towering discoveries, tragic missteps, and profound struggles that have accompanied the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the women's medical profession.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Trota of Salerno and the Problem of Medieval Women’s Medicine
• Chapter 2 Brief Portraits: Women Physicians of Antiquity and the Middle Ages
• Chapter 3 Lady Mary Montagu and Europe’s First Tool Against Smallpox
• Chapter 4 The Last of the Women Physicians: Dorothea Leporin Erxleben
• Chapter 5 Midwife to a Nation: Madame du Coudray and the King’s Commission to Professionalise Childbirth
• Chapter 6 Brief Portraits: Women Physicians of the Early Modern Era
• Chapter 7 Lavinia Waterhouse: Gold Rush Physician, Frontier Suffragette
• Chapter 8 Founder’s Curse: The Long Rise and Hard Fall of Elizabeth Blackwell, the First English Woman MD
• Chapter 9 Though the Profession Be Against You: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and the Battle for Medical Women
• Chapter 10 The Path of Most Resistance: Sophia Jex-Blake and the Fight for Women’s Medical Education
• Chapter 11 The Experimentalist: The Case of Mary Putnam Jacobi vs. Proper Victorian Medicine
• Chapter 12 One Woman Against the Black Death: The Saga of Edith Pechey-Phipson and the Struggle for Medical Women in India
• Chapter 13 The Totally Improbable, Completely True Life of Betsy Cadwaladr, Welsh War Nurse
• Chapter 14 The Many Wars of Florence Nightingale
• Chapter 15 From the Underground Railroad to the Plantations of Santo Domingo: The Doctor’s Journey of Sarah Loguen Fraser
• Chapter 16 Too Bright: Dr Anandibai Joshee, India’s First Woman Medical Doctor
• Chapter 17 A Healer at the Fringe of Civilisation: The Siberian Odyssey of Dr Anna Bek
• Chapter 18 Brief Portraits: The Nineteenth-Century Renaissance
• Chapter 19 A Doctor at Sky’s Edge: Susan Anderson and the Practice of Medicine on America’s Last Frontier
• Chapter 20 Lymph, There it is: Florence Sabin, Pioneer Woman of Medical Research
• Chapter 21 I Doubled My Fist: Sara Josephine Baker and the Struggle for Child Hygiene
• Chapter 22 Breaking the Shackles Procreative: Margaret Sanger and the Creation of the Pill
• Chapter 23 Milk and Blood: Icie Macy Hoobler and the Science of Infant-Mother Nutrition
• Chapter 24 War, Fame, and Surgery: The Amazing Life of Margaret Chung, the First American-Born Chinese Woman Surgeon
• Chapter 25 Sex after Sixty: The Geriatric Gynaecology of Anna Kleegman Daniels
• Chapter 26 Blue Babies with Crossword Puzzle Hearts: The Paediatric Cardiology of Helen Taussig
• Chapter 27 Making All Nurses Equal: The Many Battles of Estelle Massey Osborne
• Chapter 28 Isabel Morgan, Polio, and the High Cost of Marriage
• Chapter 29 Killer of Cancer, Slayer of Viruses: The Many Medicines of Nobel Prize Laureate Gertrude Elion
• Chapter 30 The Secret Life of Hormones: Rosalyn Yalow and the Discovery of Radioimmunoassaying
• Chapter 31 Ancient Secrets, Modern Methods: Nobel Laureate Youyou Tu, Malaria, and the Discovery of Artemisinin
• Chapter 32 One Doctor Against Nuclear War: Helen Caldicott and the Creation of the Physicians for Social Responsibility
• Chapter 33 Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, the Discovery of HIV, and the Fight Against AIDS
• Chapter 34 An ER Doctor in Space, the Story of Astronaut Rhea Seddon
• Chapter 35 Brief Portraits: Women Physicians and Researchers of the Twentieth Century
• Selected Bibliography
• Plate Section