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 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.
Into the midst of this turmoil marched Mary Putnam Jacobi, 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 challenge to a sexist science still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues.
READERS ARE CAPTIVATED!
“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 lively engaging portrait
of one of the most influential women in Victorian medicine.”
—Olivia Campbell,
author of the New York Times bestselling
Women in White Coats
“The Cure for Women,
reads like it was stolen from the silver screen: the pace is relentless, the writing beautiful, and the narrative captivating. Through the eyes of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, we see how evidence-based medicine has always driven inclusivity and pushed away ignorance. Lydia Reeder’s writing is as essential as basic biology, and her book gives us needed perspective on the power of activism and organization in medicine.”
—Nathalia Holt,
New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls
and Wise Gals
“A highly readable account
of a truly ground-breaking woman and her pioneering work.
The book is also a great primer for those wishing to understand the misogynistic “medical” theories of the nineteenth century…
which still impact our lives today.”
—Kate Moore,
New York Times bestselling author of
The Radium Girls
and The Woman They Could Not Silence
“In The Cure for Women,
we hear the vivid cogent voices of brave and dedicated 19th century women who helped put science and evidence into medical practice, and who speak to us clearly across the years about how to make change happen.”
—Perri Klass, MD,
Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at NYU,
author of The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future
“The Cure for Women
is both a riveting and chilling story. The history of gynecology under men is barely distinguishable from quackery, revealing rampant abuse off the female body and psyche disguised as care. Women’s very anatomy was used against them. When I got to the part where a male gynecologist posited that going to medical school lead women to have undeveloped ovaries, I appreciated more than ever what Mary Putnam Jacobi had to endure, and how much I appreciated her perseverance. As we live in a time of the increasing trivialization of the health—and pain— of women, Reeder has found a heroine for our age.”
—Catherine Prendergast, Author, The Gilded Edge
“Reeder intricately weaves together the detailed stories of suffrage, medicine, science, and courage, painting a vivid portrait…a poignant reminder that great strides in the fight for gender equality were made by real women whose activism changed the world.”
author of In Shock
“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