Sympathy and Science : Women Physicians in American Medicine

When first published in 1985, Sympathy and Science was hailed as a groundbreaking study of women in medicine. It remains the most comprehensive history of American women physicians available. Tracing the participation of women in the medical profession from the colonial period to the present, Regina Morantz-Sanchez examines women's roles as nurses, midwives, and practitioners of folk medicine in early America; recounts their successful struggles in the nineteenth century to enter medical schools and found their own institutions and organizations; and follows female physicians into the twentieth century, exploring their efforts to sustain significant and rewarding professional lives without sacrificing the other privileges and opportunities of womanhood. In a new preface, the author surveys recent scholarship and comments on the changing world of women in medicine over the past two decades. Despite extraordinary advances, she concludes, women physicians continue to grapple with many of the issues that troubled their predecessors.

First published in 1985 to wide acclaim, this book is the most comprehensive history of American women physicians available, covering the period from colonial times to the present. This edition includes a new preface that reflects on the changing world of women in medicine over the past two decades.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Kathleen G. Rawls, RN, BA, MA(Irvine Valley College)
Description:This is a history of American women physicians and their struggle for acceptance in the patriarchal medical profession. First published in 1985, this book has been republished with a new preface reviewing subsequent scholarship on the subject.
Purpose:This book contributes to the field of women's history by using methodologies emerging from the new social history of medicine. It contains an invaluable bibliographic essay on secondary sources.
Audience:The intended audience is historians, women physicians, and the lay public.
Features:This remains an important work on women in medicine because it successfully combines "medicine as an artifact of culture" with "the relationship of women to public and private life." Beginning with colonial women in healthcare, the book outlines the history of the emerging medical profession within the context of changing gender roles in American society. Morantz-Sanchez uses her own experience in a male dominated academic profession to shape her inquiry into the challenges faced by women physicians. Through a study of institutional archives, as well as case studies of representative female doctors such as Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary Putnam Jacobi, the author discusses the strategies employed by women to gain entrance into medicine.
Assessment:Fifteen years after the original publication, some of the issues presented here reflect more "dated" aspects of analysis. For example, the author seems compelled to cast women doctors as "feminists" by virtue of their actions even if some of them eschew feminism. Why women physicians should be seen as feminists is not persuasively explored. Yet, this book ultimately succeeds in demonstrating ways in which women's history has moved beyond the search for feminist role models through a comprehensive analysis of power plays affecting women's advancement in a male dominated profession.

Contents 8 Preface 10 Colonial Beginnings and Separate Spheres 13 Exploring Diversity 15 Women and Professionalization 18 Recent Scholarship 19 New Directions for Future Scholarship 23 Notes 25 Acknowledgments 34 Introduction 40 Notes 416 1. Colonial Beginnings: Public Men and Private Women 45 Notes 416 2. The Middle-Class Woman Finds Health Reform 65 Notes 419 3. Bringing Science into the Home: Women Enter the Medical Profession 84 Notes 427 4. Separate but Equal: Medical Education for Women in the Nineteenth Century 101 Notes 431 5. Women and the Profession: The Doctor as a Lady 127 Notes 437 6. The Woman Professional: The Lady as a Doctor 181 Notes 446 7. Science, Morality, and Women Doctors: Mary Putnam Jacobi and Elizabeth Blackwell as Representative Types 221 Notes 452 8. Doctors and Patients: Gender and Medical Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America 240 Notes 454 9. Hopes Unfulfilled: Women Physicians and the Social Transformation of American Medicine 269 Notes 462 10. The Emergence of Social Medicine: Women's Work in the Profession 303 Notes 466 11. Integration in Name Only 349 Notes 475 12. Quo Vadis? 388 Notes 483 Appendix. Notes on Methodology 400 Bibliography 406 Notes 416 Index 486 A-B 486 C 488 D-E 489 F-G 490 H 491 I-K 492 L-M 493 N-O 495 P 496 Q-S 497 T-Y 499 W 500 Y-Z 501 It was an early November morning in 1869, and Dean Ann Preston of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, normally a rather austere woman, could not hide her delight.