This is a wonderful historical account of three women who showed tremendous courage and resilience in their quest to become women physicians, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake. Each of these women truly paved the way for future women who were drawn into medical career as physicians. The obstacles that they faced were large and yet they weren’t deterred from their paths.
In addition to their impact on women joining the male dominated career of being trained as physicians, it also was a time when the training of physicians was very basic. The training was only four months, total. It then expanded to 6 months, again total school after high school. Compare this to the training today that includes university (undergraduate degree), followed by 3-4 years of medical school and then specialty training for 3-7 years. The field of medicine has grown in expertise. It has also increased in terms of physician interaction with patients.
The path paved by these spectacular women pioneers provided a change in who can become a physician but also in how medicine is practiced. These women were revolutionary in their willingness to tend to the women who were otherwise underserved.
The writing in this book is fantastic and super accessible. There is no knowledge of science or medicine required to appreciate the achievements these women made.
Highly recommend!
#WomenInWhiteCoats #NetGalley #HarlequinTradePublishing #ParkRow

At a time when women had absolutely no say in their health and wellness, three women decided to change the status quo.
This covers the stories of Elizabeth Blackwell (first female MD in US), Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (first female MD in UK), and Sophia Jex-Blake (first female MD in Scotland) and how they changed women's health care almost two hundred years ago.
Honestly covering each woman's roadblocks to even get into school and the constant harassment and ridiculous sexism they faced while students, residents, and eventually staff, author Campbell brings these three names into the forefront.
At a time when women were refusing to go to the doctor because of misogynist mindsets about "normal" female behavior, Blackwell's, Anderson's, and Jex-Blake's individual and collective changes helped countless women during the Victorian era. Their impacts still felt today.
Amazing detail and wonderfully educational.
For those who love stories about strong women not just pushing the boundaries, but kicking them out of the way, this is a must read.

*I appreciate the advanced reader copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

As Campbell notes in the opening of her book, women have long provided medical care in their communities. Some were recognized as medical professionals, but many have been lost to history as women just doing “women’s work.” By the mid 19th century, the very idea that a woman could be capable of the rigors of being a physician was, for much of the medical establishment, laughable. The women profiled in this book were rejected from almost every medical school they applied at, and often had to arrange for private tutoring and exploit licensure rules that did not specify a gender for candidates. Campbell has chosen to follow the academic and professional careers of Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Sophia Jex-Blake, all of whom were trailblazers in the United States and the United Kingdom. The three were linked in their professional careers, advising each other and other members of the movement for women’s medical education.

Women in White Coats nicely balances the professional and personal aspects of the women’s lives, including enough information about their background, families, and lives outside of medicine without losing focus. The opening feels a bit fragmented, but once all the players have been introduced their stories come together quickly. I recommend this book for fans of medical history and feminist history.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review.

Elizabeth Blackwell is a familiar figure from history. One might think that after she became the first American female doctor, it would be easy for others to follow in her footsteps. Nothing is farther from the truth. This book highlights the obstacles and roadblocks that beset the women who dared to want to become doctors. What the book hammers into readers repeatedly, is the slight opening of opportunities that are suddenly halted as doors are slammed, classes are denied, and any efforts for women to get a medical degree are thwarted.

Women like Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake and other females who pursued a degree in medicine in the 1800’s, are equally as important as Blackwell, to the historical record of women’s attempts to join an exclusively male profession. This is truly a book that showcases the outrageous claims that women are unfit to be doctors. It was believed that women were too frail, too weak and too tender to hear about or be exposed to private body parts, indelicate discussion on bodily functions or to engage in the bloody work that a doctor must handle. There were a few men in the book who championed the women’s efforts to learn medicine, but they were outnumbered by strident and vocal opponents.

It is remarkable that these women medical pioneers were steadfast in their determination to become doctors. They did not give up, despite the opposition. This was a universal problem facing women in both America and Europe in the Nineteenth Century. It astounds one to think that doors were repeatedly slammed shut in so many countries. Where one woman, or a handful of women, would manage to make a tiny inroad, a group of pompous men would immediately prevent them from continuing to gain the required medical credentials. The women would devise creative means of getting practical training, only to learn the authorities had made new laws and new requirements to prevent them from succeeding.

Reading the book is an exercise in frustration. This is not because the book is poorly written but rather, that readers will be filled with indignation on behalf of the courageous women who were determined to become physicians. Campbell has written an engaging tour de force book about women that should be embraced for calling attention to the inequities that women have had to overcome throughout history. We are all indebted to the ladies who would not be cowed by the prevailing attitudes of so many in authority. A huge thank you to Campbell for writing so eloquently about these women champions.

Many of us have heard, vaguely, of Elizabeth Blackwell as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the US. But we rarely hear more than that - how did she accomplish it? How was she received by her professional colleagues, or by potential patients? Who followed in her footsteps? This book answers a few of those questions and more. We learn that Blackwell had a sister who also obtained a degree, we compare the experience of those attempting to earn medical degrees in the US with their counterparts in the UK, and we gain some insight into how they had to present themselves publicly to obtain their goals. I had never heard of the Edinburgh Seven - what a story.

There's one quote that stands out from the many others in this marvelous book about the first women doctors. "A woman must have uncommon sweetness of disposition and manners to be forgiven for possessing superior talents and acquirements" (Elizabeth Smith). Indeed, a familiar refrain echoes that well-behaved women seldom make history but readers are really probably looking for ladies who likely adhere to societal norms of femininity rather than the opposite.

Three women emerge during the Victorian Era in the early 1800s to forge a path to give women the opportunity to become doctors in the completely male dominated practice of medicine. Driven by ambition and a desire to achieve dreams for career and independence beyond was was available for women at the time, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake pursue extremely difficult challenges in their quest.

I've always been interested in health, disease, and medicine. I grew up in a large household with my father, a family physician, and my mother, a registered nurse, very open and knowledgeable about those subjects. One of the first books I read as a child was The First Woman Doctor: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. (Scholastic Biography) by Rachel Baker published in 1972. Although highly motivated, I did not become a doctor after all, but spent 42 years as a registered nurse and watched women become more prominent in medicine and surgery. Reading this book gave me fits as I realized all of the obstacles that those first women doctors had to go through to get their education and to receive their MD registry. It's laughable and maddening how hard the male students, other physicians, and professors worked to keep women out of the universities and prevent them from receiving the training. How scared the men must have been to think that their whole superiority was based on nothing but the delusions of their own minds. The fact that these pioneers kept going in the face of it all is truly worth admiration and we who now benefit by having so many wonder female doctors need to be reminded of these trailblazers.

The writing was extremely detailed and the author does jump around a bit in time and place, but it was a very interesting read in the Biographies & Memoirs | History genre. I chose this to celebrate Women's History Month as I wanted to appreciate the accomplishments of these women who truly have made a difference in health care.

I'll end with these quotes to give you more to think about: "Recent research shows women may actually be better doctors. They are more likely to follow clinical guidelines and provide preventive care than their male counterparts." It's interesting that in 2017, in the US for the first time ever, there were more medical students that were female than male. "What a glorious rebuke to all those nasty Victorian nay-sayers who claimed women were entirely unfit to practice medicine."

Thank you to NetGalley and HARLEQUIN – Trade Publishing (U.S. & Canada) Park Row for this e-book ARC to read, review, and recommend.

Books like these really make me wonder where the world would be in women had been giving the same opportunities and rights as men from the beginning. This story is so well done and such an interesting case! Go trailblazing women!
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me an arc for an honest review!

This book outlines the stories of the pioneering women in the early 1800's who fought for medical education. These women encountered prejudice and obstacles every step of their journey. Although this book started strong, it quickly bogged down towards the middle. The stories were interesting, but after a while everything seemed to blend together. Overall, 2 out of 5 stars.

This book tells the story of those women who led the fight to ensure that not only could women become doctors but the importance of healthcare of women and children. Campbell does a great job of discussing the difficulties that these women faced not only from societies but from their own families and friends. A great story of triumph and the importance of never backing down from what you believe in.

A wonderfully detailed book about the first (modern) women physicians. How each of them came to decide on the medical profession, their education and their professional work are all in an appealing level of detail. Of particular interest are the myriad obstacles each woman faced--family objections, being refused admission to medical programs, harassment by students and locals and difficulty in finding residencies and professional positions.

Women in White Coats tells of the struggles of the first women in America and the UK to obtain medical degrees and be seen as serious medical professionals. While it seemed to me that the author occasionally went off on unnecessary tangents, this book is very readable for a piece of non-fiction and tells a gripping story while also imparting a lot of information.

Although about the medical field, this book is as much about Victorian social customs and morality as it is about medicine. Women had to struggle against a patriarchal society to obtain medical degrees that were seen as valid and equal to the ones that men could receive. These pioneering women not only changed medicine—giving female patients female physicians that they could better relate to—but also set a president for all women to gain access to any means of higher education.

This is an interesting and insightful work about the perseverance of women fighting for equal rights to education and access to professional disciplines.

This book covers a very interesting and important part of history and culture - how some women found their way to becoming doctors. There is also a good bit of medical history from the 19th Century mixed in.
I hope the version I read is an early, unedited one. The books needs a good editing and some rewrite. The information contained is very interesting and important, but not well executed. It varies from an smooth and clear presentation of the facts of these women's fight to become recognized doctors with MD's to an information dump; I can see it was well researched with lots of facts and history, but too often more was given than needed to illustrate a point and pieces of information were repeated with not value added to the narrative. It was also hard to follow the different stories and they interwove. The chronology seemed flawed as parts of the story went back and forth in time. The core of a very good and important book is there, it just needs to be fretted out. Then it will become a must read.
Another downside of the book was the limited focus on the women who fought for and received their MD's from mainstream universities. That was an important part of the story and a victory that needed to be won, but was only part of the story of 19th Century female doctors. Other than the New York Women's Medical College, all the others in the USA and other countries were virtually ignored. There is more to the story that needs to be told, to properly cover the topic and give a true view of the time and the women working in the medical field. If I did not have access to other avenues, I would think that these few women were the only ones who were working as doctors (officially or not).

Although not particularly interested in the medical field myself, I was quite excited to learn about the first women who worked as doctors. A point of clarification that is never really addressed is that this is not the history of the first female doctors anywhere, but rather some of the first in the US and UK. A quick search turns up the first female MD a century before the subjects of these books, as well as contemporaries in less Anglo countries. The three women focused on the book did lead interesting lives with an enormous amount of hardship they had to persist through to pursue their education and careers and pave the way for future female doctors. A surprisingly unaddressed subject in the book was the significant role these women's' race and class played in their ability to achieve what they did.
The jumping from character to character, with the introduction of many other related subjects, made the book hard for me to follow at times. I certainly learned a lot, although I don't know that I'd feel compelled to recommend this book to others.

4.25 stars

This is mainly a biography of three of the first women doctors in the mid- to late-19th century, but also a history of the fight for the right of women to become doctors. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman in the US to earn an MD, in the mid-1800s. It took a while longer, but Lizzie Garret was the first in England. Sophia Jax-Blake was not immediately next in the UK, but she worked hard fighting for the right of women to be able to earn that designation; she did get her MD later s well, but she also helped start up two women’s medical schools – in London and Edinburgh.

Every step of the way took months and years of hard work for these women to be able to earn that MD. With the stereotypes and fears of male doctors, professors, and medical students pushing back with excuses to deny them this. Before the women’s schools were set up, these women had to take classes (many privately, and at a much higher cost), as well as find a placement for clinical practice to gain that experience; very very difficult to do when most hospitals continually turned them down. There were some male doctors (and professors) who were sympathetic and did help out as much as they could.

I’ve left out so much of the struggles! This book is nonfiction, but it reads like fiction. Very readable. Oh, the frustration, though, at the male students, doctors, and professors! They call the women “delicate” and such, but as far as I can tell, the men were the “delicate” ones with their temper tantrums (the phrase entered my head even before she used it in the book!), not able to handle that there are women just as smart and can do the job just as well as they (possibly) could (although I do wonder about some of those men!). And these men were supposed to be trusted to tend to women’s health issues!? Ugh! (Many women at the time avoided, if possible, seeing male doctors for their ailments.) Many of the women students had better grades than the men, but of course, were never really acknowledged for it.

Felt elementary. It didn't engage me the way I had hoped. Felt like a series of summaries of other books.

Fascinating and engaging. This is the history of three Victorian women and their journey to open the doors to becoming doctors not only for themselves but for women of the future. Many of these women were instrumental in developing the attributes of the modern day medical school in the United States including clinical practice. These driven and intelligent women overcame so many obstacles including a male dominated industry and society norms which barred their access to becoming medical doctors. They were also instrumental in providing medical care for women by women. Yes, women feel connected and understood by another woman when they want to discuss women's issues! Told in a beautiful narrative style that kept me reading. I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Women as trailblazers, No obstacles could stop them.
History changed by women, we need to learn this history.
Everyone needs to know and appreciate women's contributions to the medical world.
MANY have benefited!

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book! I will definitely buy this for my library. So many obstacles, not just women, but others have fought to overcome and this is a great example of one struggle. Determined to help others, especially women, these ladies earned their way to become the first women doctors and gain respect of many. They were horrified by the stigma women faced and the cruel and humane treatment by male doctors. Later, they founded women colleges and hospitals. This was a great read and told in an incredible way. Perfect timing after celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage.

Read if you: Want a richly told acccount of the intelligent, brave, and determined women who forced open the door for women in medicine.

Librarians/booksellers: Women's history continues to be quite popular; having a medical history angle adds to the appeal for many readers. A strong purchase.

Many thanks to Harlequin and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.