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Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever
by Lydia Reeder
How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood―and the brilliant doctor who defied them.
After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Barred entrance to universities like Harvard, women built their own first-rate medical schools and hospitals. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from elite, white male physicians who were obsessed with eugenics and the propagation of the white race. Distorting Darwin's evolution theory, these haughty physicians proclaimed in bestselling books that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Motherhood was their constitution and duty.
Into the midst of this turmoil marched tiny, dynamic Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. As one of the best-educated doctors in the world, she returned to New York for the fight of her life. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women's reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education. Full of larger than life characters and cinematically written, The Cure for Women documents the birth of a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women's bodies and lives continues.
What’s the best nonfiction book you read in 2025?
Anything by the author Olivia Campbell. She wrote a book titled - White Coats that discusses the often neglected and hidden history of women's contributions to medicine and science, and a hard fought battle (still happening today) to be accepted and recognized and welcomed into the medical field....
-Sam
"Reeder's winsomely written narrative touches on issues strikingly similar to ones widely discussed today, including women's ongoing frustration with the lack of robust medical study of the female body and the troubling reemergence of reactionary assertions that women are by design not fit for work. It's an urgent and revealing slice of history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Despite occasional lengthy digressions that slow down the narrative, this is an impressive, important biography. A much-needed biography of an extraordinary woman." —Kirkus Reviews
"A lively, engaging portrait of one of the most influential women in Victorian medicine. Reeder artfully brings to life the fascinating story of Mary Putnam Jacobi, a visionary physician and ardent feminist whose ambition and perseverance amid ceaseless sexism are truly inspiring. Not only did Jacobi use scientific research to unequivocally refute the sexist claims of male doctors about female inferiority, but she also helped transform medicine into a science-based pursuit. A worthy, captivating subject indeed." ―Olivia Campbell, New York Times bestselling author of Women in White Coats
"Powerful, suspenseful, cinematic. Lydia Reeder has a talent for uncovering little-known heroes from the past and making their stories compulsively readable." ―Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times bestselling author of The Facemaker
"A fascinating history of the women who charged down medicine's 'forbidden path,' fighting not only for better care and opportunities for women, but so much more." ―Rachel Swaby, author of Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science and the World
This information about The Cure for Women was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lydia Ellen Reeder is the grandniece of Sam Babb, the extraordinary basketball coach featured in Dust Bowl Girls. She spent over two years conducting research for the book and also wrote and narrated a short film about the Cardinal basketball team, currently on view at the Oklahoma Historical Society. As a former associate editor at Whole Life Times in Los Angeles and Delicious Magazine in Boulder, Colorado, Reeder has worked for many years as a copywriter and editor on behalf of corporate and organizational clients and most recently developed e-learning for a national nursing association. She lives in Denver with her husband and enjoys hiking in the mountains of Colorado. Dust Bowl Girls is her first book.
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