3.25⭐️1🌶️

Historical Non-Fiction

Victorian medicine

Women’s health

Gender discrimination

Misogyny

TW: everything and anything you can think of in regards to medical trauma, malpractice and experimentation.

Victorian healthcare and women in health has been an interest of mine since I read Women in White Coats by Olivia Campbell and My Notorious Life by Kate Manning last year. The idea of the levels of mysogny being so profound, and continuing in small ways into todays healthcare system is mind blowing and very revealing.

This book was an interesting look at women’s health in Victorian times, and more specifically the life of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of a NY publisher and first woman to be accepted into a world renown medical school in Paris. Dr. Putnam Jacobi focused her attention in researching women’s reproductive health with backed up data rather than the fabricated women’s health practices of the time.

It was more in the style of a textbook than a story, so thankfully the book was very well researched. The storyline that was promised was very much non-linear, and would shoot off topic fairly often, following other well known individuals. With how much research was done, I really wish there had been more direct quotes. I think this would have lent to feeling like we knew Dr. Putnam Jacobi better as a person and practitioner. More showing and less telling.

The medical procedures were well written and documented. 

The topic of women’s healthcare, gender discrimination and women’s rights is so important and timely. Proper recognition is due to so many more silent (or quieted) leaders in women’s health, women’s continued education and standard sterile practices.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.