The Cure for Women reintroduces Mary Putnam Jacobi to modern readers and tells the story of women in medicine, delving into the challenges they faced (and still do) and details of opponents (white men) who used women's medical issues and pain to create cures that boosted their careers without any scientific evidence or validated results.

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder, a fascinating story.
Until I read this book, I had never heard of Mary Putnam. She was quite an amazing woman.
These women fought for the right to become a doctor, endured ridicule from the male students and teachers. The lengths the male society went to underscore the achievement accomplished by the females and stop them from attending lectures. Publishing reports that were downright ridiculing woman issues. I have read quite a number of books on women’s suffrage and what is disappointing is that a lot of these woman were fighting for their own rights and education but only containing within their own class.
This is a beautifully written book. It is obvious that the author did her research. Also written in a style that is easy to read and keeps you interested till the end.

In The Cure for Women, Lydia Reeder begins by providing a picture of the state of the practice of medicine in the United States in the mid 19th century and women’s place within that picture. Needless to say, women were tolerated by some doctors in their relatively new roles as nurses (where they assisted during the Civil War). Some men thought women should be shielded from such horrors as exposure to wounds, male bodies unclothed, etc. At this time there was a budding movement of women who sought to become doctors. No medical school in the U.S. would accept a woman. But there were women-led medical schools which were teaching women all pertinent subjects, their founders having been educated in Europe. The doctors Gladwell were among the early leaders inspiring Mary Putnam, daughter of publisher George Putnam.

This book is the story of Mary Putnam (one day to become Jacobi with marriage) and her lifelong work to not only become a doctor but to bring more American women along with her. It places her firmly in her time and amidst the forces affecting her struggle, primarily the vast majority of physicians of the United States who saw women as beings with one destiny, being healthy mothers of white babies. The eugenics movement was underway in the latter half of the 19th century and women’s primary area of importance was known and noted to these men. Examples of essays and articles are provided in the text. One fascinating detail for me was that Mary Putnam Jacobi and other women scientists and European trained doctors were using harder science and practices than their male counterparts.

This is a fascinating study, with references to the primary source (diaries, articles, speeches, etc) primarily cited second hand though many examples are provided at least in part. There is an extensive section of footnotes. I recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s struggles for equality not only in education and the workplace but as human beings, a struggle that continues today.

Rating 4.5 rounded to 4


I received an eARC from St Martin’s Press through NetGalley.

When I was in grade school, I read a biography of Elizabeth Blackwell who, as many know, was the pioneering woman physician. I was reminded of her and the other bold women in medicine who struggled to find their places in what was a male dominated profession for many years. Mary Jacobi helped to change that narrative.

GP Putnam-I knew his name because of his work as a publisher. I did not know that he had a daughter named Mary Jacobi. She achieved a great deal as is related in this well told work of nonfiction that focuses on both her personal life and her accomplishments. Educated at the Sorbonne (a feat in itself), Jacobi went on to trail blaze for women in medicine.

Anyone interested in women’s history and the history of medicine will, I think, want to give this title a read. It was quite interesting.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this title. All opinions are my own.

This book outlines the struggle of women to obtain medical education. Once obtained, they faced ostracism and critique from male doctors, other women, and society at large. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from medical school, spent her career fighting for women. May Putnam Jacobi, was the first woman to be accepted into the Sorbonne, in Paris. After obtaining one of the best educations available to men or women, she returned to NY to fight for equality.

This book was well researched and well laid out. Although it was slow at times, it was an enjoyable read. Reading about these pioneering women and their accomplishments was inspiring. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Men barred their entrance to universities, though, forcing some women to travel overseas for education. One such student, Mary Putnam Jacobi, was the first woman to earn acceptance into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. After her studies, she returned to New York to teach. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi also conducted the first-ever data-backed scientific research on women's reproductive biology.
This book tells Jacobi's story and shares details of the transformation in medicine. Unfortunately, we haven't shifted much in the past 150 years. Women are still considered "less than." However, I have hope that the trend will change and that women will be trusted to know their bodies and seek the medical attention they deserve.
I appreciate that this book contains tons of interesting facts and stories. It also highlights what women and men have done well and what they did wrong in the quest for better medical treatment for all.

In her recently released The Cure for Women, Lydia Reeder not only presents a captivating biography of pioneer scientific women’s health researcher Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi but also places Putnam Jacobi’s revolutionary contributions firmly within the context of earlier and fellow midwives and women doctors who fought male prejudices, jealousies, misinformation, and malpractice to improve women’s health and women’s rights.

Unable to become a doctor, Reeder’s great-grandmother was an early twentieth century rural Missouri practicing midwife and healer, who read medical books recommended by the county doctor. She was upon to alleviate cramps and painful gout, reduce fevers, deliver local babies, and devise means to keep premature babies warm. Inspired by a 1985 recording made by her grandmother and grandmother’s sisters as they had gathered to share recollections of and thus honor their mother, Reeder began to wonder why her great-grandmother never became a physician, a question leading her to research earlier midwives and women physicians such as Emily Blackwell, Ann Preston, Marie Zakrzewska, and Harriet Hunt, who sought medical education, cared for women and children, started infirmaries and hospitals, opened nursing and medical schools, and battled men of their day to do so.

Focusing largely on Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of American publisher G. P. Putnam, Reeder works in these other women and more as well as men such as J. Marion Sims, who operated on naked, screaming, non-anesthetized slave and lower class women before audiences and Silas Weir Mitchell, whose “rest cure” for women, such as those suffering from post-partum depression amounted to little more than forced feeding and forced isolation locked in a room with nothing to do but sleep or grow insane. No woman, according to Weir Mitchell, could succeed where he did because only a man could have the required domination over the female patients.

After fighting for a medical school education against the beliefs of her family and society, Mary Putnam Jacobi next decided she decided to become a research physician, not just a hospital doctor. Advised that she would need to study in Europe to have a chance of researching that goal, she found ways to earn the needed money, becoming an accomplished writer in the process, and then spending years fighting more male prejudice in Paris, making the necessary contacts, and enhancing her lab experience before eventually gaining admission to medical school at the famed Sorbonne.

Returning home, she planned and executed a scientific research project into women’s menstrual periods to overturn centuries of male misinformation resulting in long-term belief in women’s unsuitability for anything other than producing babies and caring for them, a husband, and home. Tracing Putnam Jacobi’s life’s work and interactions with other women in the medical field, Reeder reveals how this long-forgotten woman changed the lives of all women for the better and, hopefully, forever.

Reeder’s excellent book has been released at a time that calls “forever” into question. She cites Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s written majority opinion as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito based the written opinion in part on a 17th century physician’s writing. Since then, the country has seen a backward movement in women’s reproductive care and attacks on childless woman as crazy cat ladies. Furthermore, the U.S. now faces the possibility that not only women’s health care but children’s health care could be jeopardized in the hands of conspiracy-theory anti-vaxxers. This is the time for more people--in their homes, their office places, and their government positions--to read Lydia Reeder’s The Cure for Women.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance reader egalley of this important new book.

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder is a well-researched account of the fight for, and barriers against, women doctors in the US in the Victorian era. The story focuses mainly on the life and accomplishments of Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first women to become an accredited MD by studying in Europe. The book outlines the often shoddy and frequently downright dangerous treatment of women by male doctors who fought against women in the profession, arguing that their supposed emotional personalities especially during menstruation made them unsuitable to the rigours of the profession. However, Putnam, through logical, fact-based and well-documented treatises, was able to refute these unfounded prejudices as well as showing the fallacies behind the accepted gynaecological as well as psychological treatment of women and she quickly became an important leader in the feminist movement.

This is a well-written, fascinating, and damn near unputdownable history of the fight for women doctors as well as some of the horrifying treatment of women patients by male doctors during the Victorian Age but perhaps, at least for me, was the similarities of many attitudes between then and now including a push to end abortions, which were legal at the time, by the fledgling AMA which denied entry of either female or Black doctors supposedly on ‘scientific’ rather than religious grounds ie the rise of Eugenics but with many of the same arguments recently used to end Roe v Wade.

For anyone interested in the history of medicine and women in the 19th c., how far we've come and how much we have to lose, this is an excellent read. I read an e-arc of this book from St Martin’s Press while listening to the audiobook from Dreamscape Media narrated by Sara Sheckells who does an excellent job.

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Dreamscape Media. All opinions are my own.

This was an extremely comprehensive overview of the first female physicians in the United States and the attitudes of the time. I learned a lot about many women doctors in addition to Elizabeth Blackwell. Although the thoroughness with which other personages and events are described can be helpful to fully understanding the environment of the time period, it often felt like a distraction from learning more about Mary Putnam Jacobi. Long, in-depth backstories about many other doctors and important figures were given, which sometimes made it hard to stay invested in the book overall. I also felt that a major conflict set up between Jacobi and another figure was given no closure. Of course, it would be simple enough to look up additional details, but given the amount of time and pages spent on this person, I would have liked more of a conclusion to their rivalry. Overall, this is an informative, detailed book that I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, early female physicians in the US, and medical education in the United States and Europe in the 1800s.

⭐ 4.5 / 5 rounded up

I hope as many women get their hands on this book as possible. It is engaging, and disheartening, drawing many parallels to an uphill battle we are still facing to this day. As a female clinician I am well aware of the obstacles faced by women in medicine, as well as how implicit and explicit gender biases impact women’s healthcare…or lack of healthcare in many cases.

This book is for anyone interested in history of medicine and/or gender studies across time. I could see this being an interesting book club pick. There are a plethora of timely discussion points to reflect on. Though we have evolved away from the “wandering womb” of ancient Greece, this book highlights how much work, and perseverance through setbacks, goes into each small step forward.

Thank you @netgalley, @stmartinspress, and the author for allowing me to read this eARC. The opinions presented in this review are mine alone.

The book is a compelling exploration of the intersection between medicine, societal rules and gender, with a focus on the lives of different female physicians that shaped modern medicine while having to overcome prejudice and lots of obstacles, especially the life of Mary Putnam, the first woman to become a member of the Academy of Medicine.
I found the topic fascinating and the writing sharp and engaging. The book sparked both my curiosity and reflection. While the book maintained my interest, I found it dragged a little in places, with some sections feeling overly detailed or slow-paced. However, this minor setback doesn't overshadow the books strengths. It's an enlightening read for those interested in the history of medicine with social commentary and the evolution of social attitude toward gender and health.

I was really looking forward to reading this. Medical history and women's rights are of a particular interest of mine. The title seems to indicate that Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi was the center of the story she isn't even mentioned until chapter 2. There is a lot about the politics of the day, the extremely bad behavior of men and I hate to say it but I was bored. It read more like a term paper than a story of Mary and her pursuit of a medical career.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with a digital copy.

It is nigh on impossible for a woman today to read about the trials and tribulations of women back in the Victorian era without feeling their anger and frustration. It is also nigh on impossible, especially for someone who lived through the 1960’s when women’s liberation really took hold, not to give thanks for being born now rather than then. Even the brightest and most talented faced unthinkable challenges as many men grasped tightly to their power and feared an independent woman.

Mary Putnam was one such woman who never gave up no matter what was thrown at her and thanks to her and many other women of the time, they bore the bruises and indignities that were heaped upon them by the male status quo. They bore them and the rose above them and we owe a great debt to them. Many of the things that we take for granted would not have come about had not Mary and her ilk been willing to risk all and take the punishment for daring to question.

This is a fascinating story and one that I did not know. These were not perfect paragons but real women without whose courage I shudder to think might have been the future of women. Thank you. Five purrs and two paws up.

This is a fascinating if often disheartening account of the women who waged war against the medical establishment and much of society to insure medical training and opportunity for female doctors in the 1800s. It is mind-blowing to read about all the obstacles they overcame and the ossified attitudes of people about women's capabilities and strengths. The writing is never dry and the background on the principal figures is quite readable. These were extraordinary women who never gave up despite the discouraging times they lived in.

Just reading about how "hysterical" women were diagnosed and treated is horrifying. And the many famous and learned men (and some women) who thought that having menstrual periods should eliminate women from any meaningful occupations or careers is hard to fathom.

Well-researched and entertaining as well as full of information. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

An interesting and infuriating look at the war on women in medicine in the 1800s by racist misogynists who wanted nothing more than to keep their women quietly making babies. The stories of these pioneering thinkers, researchers and servants are inspiring, their intellects amazing and their wills indomitable. I was struck by the timeless audacity of male mediocrity and insecurity as so many of these disgusting ideas continue to this day. Fascinating, and still depressingly timely stuff.

Thank you to NetGalley for my digital copy. These opinions are my own.

What a fascinating and interesting story. Not the usual thing that I read but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and am so interested in learning more about these women.

This book is both wonderfully and terribly timely in an era when under-informed male lawmakers and their supporters are once again trying to roll back women’s health care, especially around wombs and vaginas. Just as male dominated medical schools in the mid-1800s worked hard to remove woman as midwives from the birthing rooms, destroying centuries of traditional supportive care for pregnant and post-partum women, so a still-patriarchal medical system now is attempting to overturn much of the past 150 years of advances in medicine for women.

So who are those Victorian women who changed women's health care?

We learn about not only the Mary Jo Putney of the subtitle but also Harriet Hunt, who petitioned for the right to sit in on lectures at Harvard Medical School and organized the Ladies’ Physiological Society of Boston. Harriet later connected with early American suffragists Lucy Stone and Lucretia Mott, and helped make women’s medicine part of the national women's rights conversation. Harriet also joined with wealthy women in Ohio to start the Ohio Female Medical Loan Fund Association, that funded women medical students across the country via interest-free loans.

Elizabeth Blackwell, who was the first American woman accepted into regular medical school.

Sarah Hale, the influential editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the USA’s most popular women’s magazine in 1851, who ran a series of editorials praising female physicians as being ‘by nature’ more suited to take charge of the sick and suffering.

Ann Preston, the Quaker woman who was training in and organizing ‘irregular’ medical schools that taught about home and public hygiene , nutrition, and instruction on human physiology. She was also successful in enlisting Elizabeth Blackwell to help overcome Victorian women’s reluctance to give up their ‘purity’ over allowing doctors to physically examine them.

(Male doctors at that time generally examined women in the dark, by touch, with the patient fully clothed. Having access to female physicians permitted women to be examined and treated without fear of losing the respect and regard of their husbands, and was ultimately one of the chief social advances leading to a drop in women’s mortality rates in the latter half of the Victorian era.)

Marie Zakrzewska as a child spent a few months in a teaching hospital in Berlin, where her mother was training as a midwife. Marie took to following the doctor on his rounds and eventually he offered her books from his medical library to study. In adulthood she went back to the hospital to train in obstetrics and later emigrated with her younger sister to America, where she found that male doctors had succeeded in virtually barring women from practicing medicine. So she set up a knitting business instead. Eventually she connected with Elizabeth Blackwell through volunteer work at a homeless shelter and was invited to work with her. Marie was one of the early beneficiaries of the Ohio Fund to pay for her advanced medical training.

This is also a tale of men like J. Marion Sims, a surgeon and avid self-promoter who became very wealthy working on rich white women after he honed his techniques for gynecological surgeries on un-anaesthetised slaves and destitute women, often naked, in an auditorium full of men who found the weeping and screaming of the agonized women an added feature of the ‘show’. He started his first Womens Hospital by recruiting rich NY women to sit on a managing board, and then later incorporated it, removing all power from the women’s board and placing it in the hands of an all-male board of governors drawn from the richest magnates in the region, whose expertise lay not in medicine or womanhood but in making money. It’s not hard to see the entrenchment of the USA’s highly monetized health care system in moves like this.

Victorian women fought for decades to get the right to not only attend medical school but to teach other women about their own bodies. Now that is under threat, and it behooves all women to inform first themselves and then their sisterhood about the fight that got them the medical comprehension of women’s issues they have thus far benefited from in their lives. Let us not throw out all those hard-won gains by all those generations of women (and their few male allies) who fought this fight before us.

In today’s society, where women are still fighting for their medical rights and their place in society, histories, and biographies like the cure for women by Lydia Reeder about Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and her continual challenges to the Victorian medical community proved to be still highly educational and relevant.

I love reading these books and seeing a females persevere against the patriarchy and pave away for future generations.

Not being the first woman to receive a medical education, Putnam Jacobi is not a household name, but her strength, intelligence and endurance is something worth recognizing and looking up to.

I found this, what I’m calling a biography/history, absolutely fascinating and inspiring. The Cure for Women does not only focus on the life story and the many achievements and struggles that Puttnam Jacobi goes through, but that of her peers and women in medicine or receiving treatment during the Victorian time. I found this broad view of history at the time to create a broad picture of the time period and women’s medical experience in general.

With so much in flux during this time where women are losing ground on a daily basis, it’s easy to relate to the historical struggles these women experienced.

The Cure For Women, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacoby and the challenge to Victorian medicine that change women’s lives forever by Lydia Reeder. This book not only shows how far we’ve come but also how far we were without the sanction of men’s approval in their fancy doctorates. For time in Memorial women have been midwives healers and so much more and we were only told we couldn’t when needing the approval of men. From Quaker Mary Preston to the highly educated midwife Mary Zakrzewska, Who had more medical knowledge than most license doctors in America and she learned it all in German and have been studying since she was a child. She came to America thinking she could further her education since women were becoming doctors only to learn she was sadly mistaken but she did become a pupil of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell the first American female doctor. Then there is the unsung heroin Doctor Mary Putnam Jacobi, Who has done more for women’s health and the advancement of women in general and yet she is basically unknown. This book covers her life and the lives of her peers that fought for the right to educate their self in the way they deemed fit. All this against men who wrote books about the inferiority of women and how women were just too delicate and getting an education the way men get educated would somehow caused them to be infertile. Some of the things in this book would be funny if not due to the fact they’re also true and women had to live with these opinions and fight against them. Just to put things into perspective when women started wanting to be doctors and use the example that they been midwives for centuries mend quickly passed the law that women could no longer be made midwives and they have to be a licensed midwife to practice midwifery. I don’t think it was the female sex that was too delicate not if men get their feelings hurt so easily. Just keep in mind that’s coming from the same animal that thought riding a stride on a horse would cause females to lose their womb and the same with running marathons. It’s as if mens historical opinions are a comedy of errors that’s just not so funny. This was a great book with great examples of women to look up to and to thank for the opportunities we have today. #NetGalley,#Saint Martin’s press, #Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, #LydiaReeder, #TheCureForWomen,

What an amazing book.This woman was so courageous and how she led her life. This was a really interesting book.How women had to fight for everything especially going into medical school. Her last name was Putnam and her father was a publisher and published books on medical 2. You have to travel overseas to get training as well. Because of the United States had very few medical schools where they were allowed women to be admitted. They have to start their own medical schools because they reject it at most men's schools. This was a real eye opener.How these women are very intelligent and very smart Most of them were upper cross.Women who had money because they could pursue this. They were trying to help women out who and needed medical attentions.. It must have been a real struggle every time you were turned down but they kept going somehow. This woman name That's named. Putnam, it was a real eye opener because she diout there logically and tied it in with her medical studies. She also round her own clinic as well. These women are very strong and very forefront and they tighten with them trying to get The opportunity to vote. When they were Medical lecture in Philadelphia. They were cat called and prone stones. But they kept their composers and they stood their ground. The the male doctors were really bad sometimes because they thought women could not stand the ridgers study like this. These women prove these men wrong because they were just as good as them.