Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

Slow read but interesting history of women in medicine.

As a nurse I was super interested in the topic. However, the book is dense and I had trouble keeping characters straight. Not an easy read.

This book is an excellent, information dense book. It has so much fascinating information about women's history as re the women's suffrage movement and medicine as an institution. It illustrates the very real fight for women to gain better educations that would both enable them to earn good wages. Women doctors would make moves that served to improve the lives of women in every social class. It also compares how women doctors were viewed and treated in America versus the UK which was quite different. The author pointed out many key figures in the history of establishing avenues for women to obtain MD's, gain experience and earn money as doctors. Many of them were quakers even though I also noted that none of the early female doctors mentioned were of this group. Women found it much easier to become doctors in the US, but were omitted from gentile society, whereas women doctors in the UK were welcomed in intellectual circles and high society. The early MD students received such abuses from the medical establishment in the UK that they gained a lot of sympathy from the general public. Politicians from the House of Commons supported their cause due to its popularity and it helped greatly that many of the poorest people benefited from the free and low cost clinics set up by these women as they were getting their feet into the profession. I believe that this would be an excellent source of info for anyone wishing to shine a new light on female trail blazers and how they effected change. Florence Nightingale deserves all support she received by the public for her contributions to healthcare but, at the same point in history other women were forcing the doors of the medical establishment open and arguably making far more wide reaching impacts on the health of women and their potential to earn money and free themselves from the patriarchy. Women who were less praised in their lifetime and more easily forgotten with the passage of time

Learning more about these brave and tenacious women who broke the gender barrier in medicine was fascinating. The author obviously deeply researched her topic. I found the uneven narrative tone distracting: it varied from scholarly to conversational to young adult reader.

So much is lacking in the study of women’s history that it is easy to understand that most of us —men and women alike — know almost nothing about the pioneering women who fought and won their right to fulfill their ambitions to become doctors. These intelligent women of the Victorian age were tough, determined, talented, and skilled; they refused to be deterred from their goal of achieving the MDs as well as establishing schools and hospitals for other women with the same ambition. It took incredible inner strength to persevere when they were repeatedly insulted, attacked, shunned, and blocked at every turn because male doctors believed women were intellectually, emotionally and physically incapable of performing the duties required of doctors. And yet, they succeeded anyway! Women in all professions considered to be strictly the province of men owe these women a great debt. Breaking the social barriers they did certainly had a ripple effect in breaking down the gates of other male-dominated professions once forbidden to women . Thank you, ladies, for all you did for us! Thank you Olivia Campbell for sharing the inspiring stories of these remarkable women and for illuminating this corner of women’s history left too long in the dark.

As a student of 19th century medicine, I commend this book to anyone who wants to understand the 1800s in western culture, and women’s fight for equality. I would have given the book 5 stars, but it refers to the women by first name after they are first introduced. I found that confusing, irregular and condescending. If you can keep first names straight, you will learn much from this book.

This particular type of book is not usually my cup of tea. It is interesting to learn about the first women doctors. Be aware that one of the doctors is in a complicated relationship, but they don’t spend too much time there. Very little language of concern. There is a little bit of discussion That you will read from time to time regarding patient experiences, but nothing too gross. These are real women that really open the door for future women doctors.

Good read by the pool.

my wife enjoyed reading it

… but too many minute details.!!! The epilogue should have been the prologue so that the concise summary of women’s many contributions to medicine both in research, diagnostics, surgical and treatment were stated at the get go. THEN say ‘.. and here is how they got there.’ I grew weary of the back and forth to USA, Edinburgh, Paris, London, Zurich etc. If I grew weary, imagine what these strong women felt. But it became too much detail for the reader . Almost to the point I was going to give up. I also got terribly confused by so many women mentioned —-Elizabeth, Lizzie, Emily, Sophia, etcetc I needed one of those story boards to show who was related to who, who was friends/ lovers with who. In the end I just gave up trying to keep anyone but the two Blackwell sisters straight. *** interesting tidbit… on 2023 Jeopardy Masters Tournament, one of the clues was ‘last name of two sisters Elizabeth and Emily in recent book about women doctors’ I thought no one would guess but Andrew He answered correctly ‘Who are the Blackwells?’

This book describes the barriers that women had to overcome, to be recognized as legitimate and competent physicians in a field that was dominated by men. It tells of the triumphs and the disappointments that women endured in their fight to be recognized as equals to men. In the end, they managed to prove that in some instances, they were better than men.