True stories of the women who pioneered medicine. It is always fascinating to learn about the struggles and triumphs of people and if you are especially interested in learning how women have overcome social barriers, this is a great book for you. Would offer a lot of discussion points for book clubs. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC #sponsored

2.5 rounded down

This is a very big, very packed book, apparently diligently researched. It addresses the persistent efforts of mid-nineteenth-century American women to gain access to medical education and physician training. Blocked by male doctors, these innovative and determined individuals created their own medical schools, as well as hospitals and clinics for women and children, even as they continued to agitate for entry into established mainstream medical institutions. They energetically and strategically networked with wealthy, influential socialites and thinkers in order to gain funding for their projects.

The key figure in the book is Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the foremost female physician-scientist of her time. Unfortunately, we often lose sight of her for large stretches due to the author’s tendency to get sidetracked. Other women doctors—the Blackwell sisters (Elizabeth and Emily), Ann Preston, and German-American Marie Zakrzewska (and a few men, primarily painted as the enemy) also loom large. An amalgam of biography, history, medical and social science, this text is also a sort of feminist disquisition and a virtual who’s who of the suffragist and women’s rights movement. By the end of the text, a coeducational graduate medical school is slated to open at Johns Hopkins due to the efforts and money of wealthy young female philanthropists, and the book turns to the matter of women’s suffrage itself.

Much of the content the author presents was new to me. I wish I were better equipped to assess her interpretation of some of the material. However, there was enough of a slant to Reeder’s writing to prevent my fully trusting her. I think her unnecessary mention of Jordan Peterson as a “modern-day Victorian” started it. Apparently, the issue is that “he has published three books arguing that women’s capabilities are defined by their biology and their evolutionary ties to child-rearing.” (No specific passages from his work are supplied as support.) She then goes on to suggest that Peterson is in the same league as a couple of the nineteenth-century physicians she features, men vehemently opposed to and actively engaged in obstructing women’s access to higher education. I have not read Peterson’s books, but I’ve seen him interviewed multiple times and have not heard him question women’s intelligence or their right to pursue an education or a career of their choosing. I do not find the idea that evolution and biology have shaped the interests, behaviour, and personalities of the sexes unreasonable or objectionable. This idea doesn’t exclude the impact of culture, nor do I see it as reason to deny women opportunities to advance in the larger world.

Some sections of The Cure for Women interested me a good deal more than others. For instance, I found the biographical sections about Mary Putnam Jacobi strong and engaging —particularly the parts describing her dogged attempts to gain entry into the Sorbonne’s École de Médecine, the fatal illness of her young son, and her faltering marriage to “father of pediatrics” Dr. Abraham Jacobi (who turned out to be more a product of his times—sexist, stodgy, inflexible, and less egalitarian—than Mary had bargained for). However, I regularly lost patience with the book. Perhaps the first great trial was Reeder’s lengthy chapter on Dr. Edward Hammond Clarke’s 1875 controversial book Sex in Education, in which the Harvard-affiliated physician-author declared his opposition to the coeducation of males and females and argued against girls engaging in any intensive intellectual activity. Clarke received considerable public and institutional support for the absurd notion that when females studied too much, bodily energy was diverted from the uterus and ovaries, compromising function of those organs and potentially causing infertility, insanity, and even death. He was a eugenicist who evidently feared the Anglo Saxon race was threatened if its women left the domestic sphere. According to him, girls shouldn’t be exercising their brains at all when menstruating; they should be resting. Reeder really goes to town on this matter: she seems to have included rebuttals to Clarke’s ideas from every leading light of the period.

Women’s rights activists, concerned that real setbacks could occur in response to Clarke’s assertions, engaged the esteemed Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi in the battle. The scientific research she subsequently conducted on the female reproductive system was shaped into an essay, which won a prestigious Harvard University prize. Based on her findings, she’d concluded: “There is nothing in the nature of menstruation to imply the necessity, or even the desirability, of rest.” Jacobi would also go on to criticize—and offer an alternative to—prominent neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell’s famous “rest cure”, a six-to-eight week isolation treatment for “neurasthenic” women (who were experiencing lassitude, emotional disturbance, and anorexia and whom Weir Mitchell viewed as being disobedient, spoiled, selfish, arrogant, and malingering). His treatment sometimes involved force feeding and painful, humiliating remedies for constipation. This “therapy” is the focus of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper. Those familiar with Virginia Woolf’s life are certainly aware of the rest cure as well.

I don’t think anyone can dispute that Weir Mitchell’s paternalistic, pathologically controlling approach to women’s mental distress was horrendous. Some women died while under his care. Reeder, relying on Nancy Cervetti’s biography of Mitchell for details, describes the case of one of them—Winnie (the daughter of renowned novelist William Dean Howells) who died while being held in one of his clinics. (view spoiler) Was Mitchell as bad as he’s presented in this book, and did the harms done by his rest cure completely overshadow his actual significant accomplishments? Not having read a biography of him, I find it hard to judge. However, I have reservations about Reeder’s unrelentingly negative portrait of this physician, sometimes called the father of American neurology. She covers his unpromising and directionless youth, disparagingly comments on his literary oeuvre, scornfully notes the opulent setting in which he lived, but she mainly highlights (alongside his rest cure) his vivisectionist experimentation, depicting him as an arrogant peacock and a cruel, even sadistic scientist. She foregoes mentioning any of his discoveries, many related to his work with soldiers of the Civil War: the naming and describing of causalgia (complex regional pain syndrome), erythromelalgia (a vascular-neurological condition that causes painful reddening of the hands and feet), and phantom-limb syndrome to name a few.

The author’s own “heroine” Mary Putnam Jacobi also performed experiments on live animals, “was a leading proponent of vivisection,” and advocated for her students to learn from it as part of their scientific medical education. It is intimated in the book that her animal experimentation was humane and merciful. I’m doubtful. In childhood, Jacobi had shocked her mother by stating her wish to cut open a dead rat to view its internal organs. As a young medical professor, she was impatient and disdainful of her students to the point that a group of them circulated a petition demanding that she be let go or at least cautioned. Yes, Jacobi was formidable—and that no doubt got her where she wanted to be. It appears that she wasn’t known for having an agreeable or compassionate nature. She made it clear that she valued reason over emotion—the latter of which she equated with sentimentality.

Exhaustively (and exhaustingly) detailed, this book runs to well over 350 pages. While I did learn a fair bit, I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. Part of the problem is that I’m just not interested in reading about the somewhat niche subject of women’s struggle for entry into mainstream medical schools, which is a huge part of this book, or about the machinations involved in women’s obtaining the vote (in the state of New York ). I would’ve preferred a concise text with a more nuanced approach than Reeder offers. A sustained focus on Mary Putnam Jacobi herself would have been welcome. Going in, that’s what I thought I was getting.

I believe huge sections of this text could have been safely cut (for example, the numerous descriptions of meetings for medical school fundraising and women’s suffrage, the biographical sketches of peripheral figures—such as Jacobi’s husband’s best friend from childhood, details about the interior of the dean of Bryn Mawr’s Victorian gothic cottage (who cares?!), the lengthy discussion of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s case and the full summary of her famous novella—we can read it for ourselves if we want to! The author makes much of gender fluidity and how likely Putnam Jacobi would have been to embrace such an idea and the work some researchers are now engaged in to prove that there is no “male” or “female” brain. Based on my reading, I understand that women’s and men’s brains are more alike than different, but the evidence I’ve seen does point to some notable variations. Gender fluidity is not a concept I find myself interested in or sympathetic to. I simply believe that neither women nor men should be prevented from reaching their potential or be barred from pursuing interests or careers traditionally associated with the opposite sex.

I see that many have enjoyed this text, but in the end I can’t recommend it, having too often found it teeth-grindingly tedious. My main feeling upon completion is absolute relief.

This book is the history of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and her efforts to provide medical education to women in the U.S. Jacobi was trained in Europe but returned to the States to teach and manage her own medical practice. She was a published researcher who pioneered scientific methods of conducting research with human subjects. As her influence grew, she played a key role in funding the Johns Hopkins University graduate school for medicine, which was the first to provide a coeducational environment for medical students. The author gives the reader the profiles of many other prominent women doctors, as well as men doctors. Jacobi became active in the suffrage cause and motivated many of New York City’s distinguished and wealthy women to support a woman’s right to vote. This is an account of women’s rights issues in the 19th century that has continuing relevance today.

Well written and interesting, but does not cover any new ground about early women doctors not already out there. I'd hoped for more.

This is a fantastic and empowering book on the struggles and fights women had to put up with to finally getting acknowledged as beings with a functional brain. Many parts of this book are enraging to read, realizing how men were diminishing them in order to stay in power and in control of the medical field. But thank to women such as Mary Putnam, who pushed through, and who knew that she was worth a whole lot, she made it possible for women to become nurses, doctors, surgeons. A must-read if you want to have more meat to chew on next time you are having a debate with a man over women history.

The Cure for Women reintroduces Mary Putnam Jacobi to modern readers and tells the story of women in medicine, delving into the challenges they faced (and still do) and details of opponents (white men) who used women's medical issues and pain to create cures that boosted their careers without any scientific evidence or validated results.

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder, a fascinating story.
Until I read this book, I had never heard of Mary Putnam. She was quite an amazing woman.
These women fought for the right to become a doctor, endured ridicule from the male students and teachers. The lengths the male society went to underscore the achievement accomplished by the females and stop them from attending lectures. Publishing reports that were downright ridiculing woman issues. I have read quite a number of books on women’s suffrage and what is disappointing is that a lot of these woman were fighting for their own rights and education but only containing within their own class.
This is a beautifully written book. It is obvious that the author did her research. Also written in a style that is easy to read and keeps you interested till the end.

In The Cure for Women, Lydia Reeder begins by providing a picture of the state of the practice of medicine in the United States in the mid 19th century and women’s place within that picture. Needless to say, women were tolerated by some doctors in their relatively new roles as nurses (where they assisted during the Civil War). Some men thought women should be shielded from such horrors as exposure to wounds, male bodies unclothed, etc. At this time there was a budding movement of women who sought to become doctors. No medical school in the U.S. would accept a woman. But there were women-led medical schools which were teaching women all pertinent subjects, their founders having been educated in Europe. The doctors Gladwell were among the early leaders inspiring Mary Putnam, daughter of publisher George Putnam.

This book is the story of Mary Putnam (one day to become Jacobi with marriage) and her lifelong work to not only become a doctor but to bring more American women along with her. It places her firmly in her time and amidst the forces affecting her struggle, primarily the vast majority of physicians of the United States who saw women as beings with one destiny, being healthy mothers of white babies. The eugenics movement was underway in the latter half of the 19th century and women’s primary area of importance was known and noted to these men. Examples of essays and articles are provided in the text. One fascinating detail for me was that Mary Putnam Jacobi and other women scientists and European trained doctors were using harder science and practices than their male counterparts.

This is a fascinating study, with references to the primary source (diaries, articles, speeches, etc) primarily cited second hand though many examples are provided at least in part. There is an extensive section of footnotes. I recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s struggles for equality not only in education and the workplace but as human beings, a struggle that continues today.

Rating 4.5 rounded to 4


I received an eARC from St Martin’s Press through NetGalley.

When I was in grade school, I read a biography of Elizabeth Blackwell who, as many know, was the pioneering woman physician. I was reminded of her and the other bold women in medicine who struggled to find their places in what was a male dominated profession for many years. Mary Jacobi helped to change that narrative.

GP Putnam-I knew his name because of his work as a publisher. I did not know that he had a daughter named Mary Jacobi. She achieved a great deal as is related in this well told work of nonfiction that focuses on both her personal life and her accomplishments. Educated at the Sorbonne (a feat in itself), Jacobi went on to trail blaze for women in medicine.

Anyone interested in women’s history and the history of medicine will, I think, want to give this title a read. It was quite interesting.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this title. All opinions are my own.

This book outlines the struggle of women to obtain medical education. Once obtained, they faced ostracism and critique from male doctors, other women, and society at large. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school, spent her career fighting for women. May Putnam Jacobi, was the first woman to be accepted into the Sorbonne, in Paris. After obtaining one of the best educations available to men or women, she returned to NY to fight for equality.

This book was well researched and well laid out. Although it was slow at times, it was an enjoyable read. Reading about these pioneering women and their accomplishments was inspiring. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Men barred their entrance to universities, though, forcing some women to travel overseas for education. One such student, Mary Putnam Jacobi, was the first woman to earn acceptance into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. After her studies, she returned to New York to teach. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi also conducted the first-ever data-backed scientific research on women's reproductive biology.
This book tells Jacobi's story and shares details of the transformation in medicine. Unfortunately, we haven't shifted much in the past 150 years. Women are still considered "less than." However, I have hope that the trend will change and that women will be trusted to know their bodies and seek the medical attention they deserve.
I appreciate that this book contains tons of interesting facts and stories. It also highlights what women and men have done well and what they did wrong in the quest for better medical treatment for all.

In her recently released The Cure for Women, Lydia Reeder not only presents a captivating biography of pioneer scientific women’s health researcher Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi but also places Putnam Jacobi’s revolutionary contributions firmly within the context of earlier and fellow midwives and women doctors who fought male prejudices, jealousies, misinformation, and malpractice to improve women’s health and women’s rights.

Unable to become a doctor, Reeder’s great-grandmother was an early twentieth century rural Missouri practicing midwife and healer, who read medical books recommended by the county doctor. She was upon to alleviate cramps and painful gout, reduce fevers, deliver local babies, and devise means to keep premature babies warm. Inspired by a 1985 recording made by her grandmother and grandmother’s sisters as they had gathered to share recollections of and thus honor their mother, Reeder began to wonder why her great-grandmother never became a physician, a question leading her to research earlier midwives and women physicians such as Emily Blackwell, Ann Preston, Marie Zakrzewska, and Harriet Hunt, who sought medical education, cared for women and children, started infirmaries and hospitals, opened nursing and medical schools, and battled men of their day to do so.

Focusing largely on Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of American publisher G. P. Putnam, Reeder works in these other women and more as well as men such as J. Marion Sims, who operated on naked, screaming, non-anesthetized slave and lower class women before audiences and Silas Weir Mitchell, whose “rest cure” for women, such as those suffering from post-partum depression amounted to little more than forced feeding and forced isolation locked in a room with nothing to do but sleep or grow insane. No woman, according to Weir Mitchell, could succeed where he did because only a man could have the required domination over the female patients.

After fighting for a medical school education against the beliefs of her family and society, Mary Putnam Jacobi next decided she decided to become a research physician, not just a hospital doctor. Advised that she would need to study in Europe to have a chance of researching that goal, she found ways to earn the needed money, becoming an accomplished writer in the process, and then spending years fighting more male prejudice in Paris, making the necessary contacts, and enhancing her lab experience before eventually gaining admission to medical school at the famed Sorbonne.

Returning home, she planned and executed a scientific research project into women’s menstrual periods to overturn centuries of male misinformation resulting in long-term belief in women’s unsuitability for anything other than producing babies and caring for them, a husband, and home. Tracing Putnam Jacobi’s life’s work and interactions with other women in the medical field, Reeder reveals how this long-forgotten woman changed the lives of all women for the better and, hopefully, forever.

Reeder’s excellent book has been released at a time that calls “forever” into question. She cites Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s written majority opinion as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito based the written opinion in part on a 17th century physician’s writing. Since then, the country has seen a backward movement in women’s reproductive care and attacks on childless woman as crazy cat ladies. Furthermore, the U.S. now faces the possibility that not only women’s health care but children’s health care could be jeopardized in the hands of conspiracy-theory anti-vaxxers. This is the time for more people--in their homes, their office places, and their government positions--to read Lydia Reeder’s The Cure for Women.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance reader egalley of this important new book.

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder is a well-researched account of the fight for, and barriers against, women doctors in the US in the Victorian era. The story focuses mainly on the life and accomplishments of Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first women to become an accredited MD by studying in Europe. The book outlines the often shoddy and frequently downright dangerous treatment of women by male doctors who fought against women in the profession, arguing that their supposed emotional personalities especially during menstruation made them unsuitable to the rigours of the profession. However, Putnam, through logical, fact-based and well-documented treatises, was able to refute these unfounded prejudices as well as showing the fallacies behind the accepted gynaecological as well as psychological treatment of women and she quickly became an important leader in the feminist movement.

This is a well-written, fascinating, and damn near unputdownable history of the fight for women doctors as well as some of the horrifying treatment of women patients by male doctors during the Victorian Age but perhaps, at least for me, was the similarities of many attitudes between then and now including a push to end abortions, which were legal at the time, by the fledgling AMA which denied entry of either female or Black doctors supposedly on ‘scientific’ rather than religious grounds ie the rise of Eugenics but with many of the same arguments recently used to end Roe v Wade.

For anyone interested in the history of medicine and women in the 19th c., how far we've come and how much we have to lose, this is an excellent read. I read an e-arc of this book from St Martin’s Press while listening to the audiobook from Dreamscape Media narrated by Sara Sheckells who does an excellent job.

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Dreamscape Media. All opinions are my own.

This was an extremely comprehensive overview of the first female physicians in the United States and the attitudes of the time. I learned a lot about many women doctors in addition to Elizabeth Blackwell. Although the thoroughness with which other personages and events are described can be helpful to fully understanding the environment of the time period, it often felt like a distraction from learning more about Mary Putnam Jacobi. Long, in-depth backstories about many other doctors and important figures were given, which sometimes made it hard to stay invested in the book overall. I also felt that a major conflict set up between Jacobi and another figure was given no closure. Of course, it would be simple enough to look up additional details, but given the amount of time and pages spent on this person, I would have liked more of a conclusion to their rivalry. Overall, this is an informative, detailed book that I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, early female physicians in the US, and medical education in the United States and Europe in the 1800s.

⭐ 4.5 / 5 rounded up

I hope as many women get their hands on this book as possible. It is engaging, and disheartening, drawing many parallels to an uphill battle we are still facing to this day. As a female clinician I am well aware of the obstacles faced by women in medicine, as well as how implicit and explicit gender biases impact women’s healthcare…or lack of healthcare in many cases.

This book is for anyone interested in history of medicine and/or gender studies across time. I could see this being an interesting book club pick. There are a plethora of timely discussion points to reflect on. Though we have evolved away from the “wandering womb” of ancient Greece, this book highlights how much work, and perseverance through setbacks, goes into each small step forward.

Thank you @netgalley, @stmartinspress, and the author for allowing me to read this eARC. The opinions presented in this review are mine alone.

The book is a compelling exploration of the intersection between medicine, societal rules and gender, with a focus on the lives of different female physicians that shaped modern medicine while having to overcome prejudice and lots of obstacles, especially the life of Mary Putnam, the first woman to become a member of the Academy of Medicine.
I found the topic fascinating and the writing sharp and engaging. The book sparked both my curiosity and reflection. While the book maintained my interest, I found it dragged a little in places, with some sections feeling overly detailed or slow-paced. However, this minor setback doesn't overshadow the books strengths. It's an enlightening read for those interested in the history of medicine with social commentary and the evolution of social attitude toward gender and health.

I was really looking forward to reading this. Medical history and women's rights are of a particular interest of mine. The title seems to indicate that Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi was the center of the story she isn't even mentioned until chapter 2. There is a lot about the politics of the day, the extremely bad behavior of men and I hate to say it but I was bored. It read more like a term paper than a story of Mary and her pursuit of a medical career.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital copy.

It is nigh on impossible for a woman today to read about the trials and tribulations of women back in the Victorian era without feeling their anger and frustration. It is also nigh on impossible, especially for someone who lived through the 1960’s when women’s liberation really took hold, not to give thanks for being born now rather than then. Even the brightest and most talented faced unthinkable challenges as many men grasped tightly to their power and feared an independent woman.

Mary Putnam was one such woman who never gave up no matter what was thrown at her and thanks to her and many other women of the time, they bore the bruises and indignities that were heaped upon them by the male status quo. They bore them and the rose above them and we owe a great debt to them. Many of the things that we take for granted would not have come about had not Mary and her ilk been willing to risk all and take the punishment for daring to question.

This is a fascinating story and one that I did not know. These were not perfect paragons but real women without whose courage I shudder to think might have been the future of women. Thank you. Five purrs and two paws up.

This is a fascinating if often disheartening account of the women who waged war against the medical establishment and much of society to insure medical training and opportunity for female doctors in the 1800s. It is mind-blowing to read about all the obstacles they overcame and the ossified attitudes of people about women's capabilities and strengths. The writing is never dry and the background on the principal figures is quite readable. These were extraordinary women who never gave up despite the discouraging times they lived in.

Just reading about how "hysterical" women were diagnosed and treated is horrifying. And the many famous and learned men (and some women) who thought that having menstrual periods should eliminate women from any meaningful occupations or careers is hard to fathom.

Well-researched and entertaining as well as full of information. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

An interesting and infuriating look at the war on women in medicine in the 1800s by racist misogynists who wanted nothing more than to keep their women quietly making babies. The stories of these pioneering thinkers, researchers and servants are inspiring, their intellects amazing and their wills indomitable. I was struck by the timeless audacity of male mediocrity and insecurity as so many of these disgusting ideas continue to this day. Fascinating, and still depressingly timely stuff.

Thank you to NetGalley for my digital copy. These opinions are my own.