The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder

Women have always been homes’ first caregivers. First moms nursed their families, and then midwives delivered babies day and night and learned through apprenticeships or by doing. Men have always stood in their paths to prevent higher education.

Going back to the mid-1800s, this extremely thorough researched book details names, dates accomplishments of the top headliners for women in medicine. It’s a long fought battle, which took intelligent, influential and mostly rich women to organize, entertain and convince others to join.

Breaking the “glass ceiling” has never been easy, but standouts names are Mary Putnam Jacobi, Elizabeth Blackwell, Harriet Hunt, Marie Zakrzowska and Rebecca Cole. This eventually led to women’s suffrage, cracking that ceiling even more. A four star inspiring non-fiction book.

This was a detailed and narrative history of the first women to break through the barriers in American and European educational institutions to enter, prove their ability and merit the certification and role of their peers. This history features

In their attempts to control the birth rate, safeguard the racial health of white people, and purge society’s defectives, eugenicists primarily targeted women. [Horatio Storer] asked whether the United States would “be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question that our own women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.” Criminalizing abortion would put control of women’s reproduction in the hands of male doctors and politicians and tip the racial balance in the white man’s favor. Physicians from across the country sent letters to Storer thanking him for alerting them to the dangers and the need for action.

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While Storer was sterilizing perfectly healthy women in order to demonstrate his surgical prowess, he was also leading the physicians’ crusade against abortion. In 1863, he persuaded the AMA to hold a competition for the best essay written by a doctor on the subject of abortion. The prize committee was chaired by his father, David Humphrey Storer, who proceeded to award his son the first prize for his essay “Why Not?” In the essay, Storer argued that abortion was infanticide...


Chapter 9: Battle Lines Are Drawn painfully reminds this contemporary reader that "Great Replacement" conspiracy theories are not merely the domain of the current alt-right.


The declining birth rates among white women led academics and politicians to fear being replaced by the invading Mexican, South Asian, Chinese, Jewish, and Irish immigrants. Their beliefs coalesced to form the popular idea of “race suicide”— nonwhite immigrants and lower-class populations becoming the majority.


Jacobi received Harvard University's Boylston Prize in 1876 for an original essay, later published as a book, The Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation. She was the first woman to win the Boylston Prize. Jacobi's essay was a response to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's earlier publication, Sex in Education; Or, a Fair Chance for the Girls (1875), a book claiming that any physical or mental exertion during menstruation could lead to women becoming infertile. Jacobi did not believe this was the case, and to test the idea she collected extensive physiological data on women throughout their menstrual cycle, including muscle strength tests before and after menstruation. She concluded that "there is nothing in the nature of menstruation to imply the necessity, or even desirability, of rest." This "rest cure" is really a horrid, cruel confinement with sexist motivations and something I first encountered in this revolting detail in The Yellow Wallpaper.

From Chapter 10: Counterattack:

Jacobi’s essay became part of the contentious public response to Clarke’s book; numerous articles appeared, and four books rebutting his arguments were published in 1874. The books, titled The Education of American Girls, Sex and Education, No Sex in Education, and Woman’s Education and Woman’s Health, contained essays written by leading educators, philosophers, and activists and were reviewed in major newspapers and journals across the country. The authors recognized the threat of leaving Clarke’s theories unchallenged. Using fiery rhetoric and passionate appeals to sanity, they denounced Clarke’s attempt to enforce moral discipline on women through an alleged expertise over their bodies.
...
“He knows if he succeeds . . . and convinces the world that woman is a ‘sexual’ creature alone, subject to and ruled by ‘periodic tides,’ the battle is won for those who oppose the advancement of women.”


Jacobi provided her own alternatives to the rest cure as detailed in Chapter 12: God’s Gift to Women:

Within a week, Jacobi’s patients improved. Since they were sleeping much better at night, Jacobi increased their daily food intake and prescribed a few days of bed rest followed by regular activities. But unlike Mitchell, Jacobi limited the amount of rest and preferred to stimulate her patients with the use of cold packs.


Chapter 13: Success, but at What Cost? explores the sharp turn into the battle for political relevance:

Mary Putnam Jacobi turned to women’s suffrage and found a family of activists waiting. Ironically, she had been indifferent about suffrage for years, not publicly denouncing it but not endorsing it either. Women’s education and work in the professions were bigger priorities for her because she believed that they could provide the true means for gender equality. But at this stage, science and suffrage became inseparable. She now considered “the real basis of democracy, republicanism and justice” equality among human beings. When women were denied the vote and full political participation, they were also prevented from being fulfilled and complete human beings. Jacobi believed this denial explained a “large share of . . . the physical ill health of women, not to speak of [their] moral unhappiness.” In 1885, in an article in the Woman’s Journal, she vowed her support for women’s enfranchisement: “Please count me henceforth among those who believe in woman suffrage.” Besides the idea that women’s full participation in society led to a healthier democracy, she was forging a life without her husband at her side. A year later, Jacobi achieved one of her highest goals: she became the first woman to enter the New York Academy of Medicine.

Physician Silas Weir Mitchell is perhaps best remembered for his “Rest Cure” for nervous women, depicted by his onetime patient Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). From Chapter 14: The Agony of Her Mind:

For Mitchell, there was no such thing as an independent woman. He literally could not imagine a woman being a successful doctor or lawyer. If women did succeed, it was only because they had stolen those powers from their fathers, brothers, or husbands. These beliefs left him with the constant dread of women gaining equality with men, ushering in eternal chaos.
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Because Winifred’s case was extremely difficult, the cost to Howells was enormous, nearly two thousand dollars. When she arrived at the hospital in Philadelphia, she weighed fifty-seven pounds. As with his other patients, Mitchell gave her a thorough examination to rule out any organic illness. Once he declared the emaciated girl physically healthy, he began the same treatment that she had already received from other doctors— he would restore her physical strength through force-feeding and then treat the hysteria. He was determined to succeed where lesser men had failed. But feeble Winifred proved to have a strong and sturdy will. From the outset of her treatment, she argued with Mitchell and told him that he was wrong, that something else was the cause of her illness. Over and over, she told him about her intense pain. He never listened. When she refused to eat, he began a brutal force-feeding regimen.
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She did not write in her journal for three years after undergoing the rest cure. Finally, one night, as the shadows grew closer, she began writing the autobiographical story that would cleanse the haunted remains of the treatment from her being and make her famous. She titled it “The Yellow Wall Paper.”


Chapter 15: Organizing to Win winds up this history on a hopeful note:

...college education among women was fast becoming a strong agency for social change. From the 1870s through the 1920s, between 40 and 60 percent of women college graduates did not marry, an astronomical number compared to only 10 percent of women overall who remained single. Women’s colleges had created a basis for the generation of real female power.


From the Epilogue I thought this "depathologize" neologism(?) is actually an apt summary:

Leta Stetter Hollingworth continued Jacobi’s research and her efforts to depathologize menstruation, providing empirical data that proved women’s intellectual capacity.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: Dec. 3, 2024
Lydia Reeder’s second book, “The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever” examines the history of women physicians, especially Mary Putnam Jacobi and her colleagues, and the challenges they had to overcome in order to be acknowledged in the medical field.
“Cure” discusses Dr. Putnam Jacobi and other influential female warriors in the fight for educational equality in North America. Readers are introduced to Mary et.al first as people, as women, mothers, partners, wives and as the intelligent, capable and respectable doctors they wish to be. The story takes place during the nineteenth century so Mary’s fight also happens to coincide with the suffrage movement. It is difficult to consider one fight without considering the other and, of course, Mary played a huge part in both. Reeder gives a rather large section of the book to the suffrage movement and the fight for equality for women in the nineteenth century.
Reeder does justice to the men involved in the story as well. Of course, Mary and her comrades had opponents, and rather vocal ones, but it was her male supporters (and their financial contributions) that Reeder makes sure receive the credit they deserved. “Cure” is not a feminist hate-on the entire male gender, but there are parts of it that made my female blood boil. I was fascinated in the archaic (and often false) views that male physicians had on the female body at the time and yet, they continued to tout themselves as “experts”, even over women themselves.
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi was a white woman from an influential family (Putnam, as in Putnam books) so she had quite the podium to preach from. However, because of her, medical schools like John Hopkins and Harvard were finally able to cast their misogyny aside and accept female students (John Hopkins did not accept female medical students until the late twentieth century!). This, of course, led the way for females of colour to find their footing in medical school (although there are still huge racial differences in medical school student applications).
“Cure” was well-written and interesting, honest and heartfelt. It should be a surprise that I have never heard of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi before but, sadly, her name has not been given the recognition that it should. The medical field still has a long way to go before female patients are given the medical care they deserve, but “Cure” helps us remember how far we’ve come, and pays respect to the female heroes who brought us there.

The Cure for Women is the history of a crusading doctor who embraced science over false narratives, hygiene and diet over cruel operations and procedures. She fought for equal, co-education for women in medical schools and supported women’s suffrage. In a society based on systemic misogyny and male superiority, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi forged an outstanding career. And watched as men claimed her discoveries as their own.

The Cure for Women is a shocking read.

It was a male doctor who noted declining birth rates among white, Protestant women. A believer in eugenics, he feared the decline of the white population and became obsessed with criminalizing abortion. The procedure had been traditionally available until ‘quickening,” which each woman determined for herself.

It was a male doctor against educating women who believed that women living together in school dormitories would become lesbians, prostitutes, or nymphomaniacs!

It was a male doctor who observed dogs in heat and concluded that women were fertile during menstruation! Women were advised with the absolute wrong information for conceiving, lowering birth rates.

(It was Dr. Putnam Jacobi who discovered when ovulation occured, her discovery leading to the rhythm method.)

A popular male doctor advised that women marry at puberty and stay pregnant as a way of curing the “morbid state of menstruation!”

It was Dr. Putnam Jacobi who understood that menstruation was part of the “process of forming nutritional reserves” in preparation for pregnancy.

It was a male doctor who taught that mental exercise could render a woman sterile for life! Male educators believed that women were incapacitated during menstruation and could not be relied upon to attend school or work.

There was the male doctor who removed the ovaries of women epileptic patients as a cure. (No surgeon gelded a man as a medical treatment!)

A male doctor promoted a ‘rest cure’ for women that involved complete dependence, loss of all control, confined bed rest, and forced feeding. Dr. Mitchell taught women to suppress emotions and schedule every minute of their day.

Jane Addams underwent the rest cure for her depression; when she saw no change, she left and traveled to Europe where she visited settlement house and returned to America with a purpose.

One victim of his ‘cure’ died of an organic ailment, and another left his care to write The Yellow Wall Paper, a novel based on the experience. He diagnosed commercial artist Charlotte Perkins Stetson with neurasthenia. He thought she was a frivolous and spoiled woman who had the perfect life as a wife and mother, but was unhappy. He sent her home with instructions to “live as domestic a life as possible…And never touch pen,brush, or pencil as long as you live.” She realized that the ‘cure’ was driving women mad, and wrote what is now considered a groundbreaking feminist book.

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi married a respected and wealthy Jewish doctor for love. They worked together and co-authored a book and had children. But over time, her husband became less supportive, pressuring her to be more domestic. She believed in the theory of bacteria causing sickness, but when their oldest son became ill with the disease her husband had studied, he took over medical care. The boy died, furthering tension in the marriage.

Putnam Jacobi became involved with the suffrage movement, raising money through parlour meetings, and she supported humanitarian causes and spoke out against corrupt politics.

Women today are up against regressive legal and governmental restrictions limiting their autonomy and control over their own body. The Cure for Women reminds us of how the fight for equality and self determination is ongoing, how far we have come, and how much we stand to lose.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

A fascinating and interesting history of the fight for equal access to education and professional standing for women in medicine against a league of Victorian men.

A great book about the hard road women plowed to be able to become doctors and practice medicine. Also, a great history on how women's health choices were taken away from other women/midwives by male doctors and hospitals. You see the consequences in women's perpetual fight to make choices for their own bodies in this shift.

Great book on the history of women's health care. It describes the difficulties of women attempting to become doctors, the mistreatment of women by male 'health' care workers, and the origin of the difficulties women still have in obtaining healthcare that is not based on male bodies. Should be read by everyone who plans to become a health care professional, or who is female.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

This is a fascinating account of the pioneering American women who championed medical training and degrees for women physicians in the late 19th century, and the politics and prejudices they faced.

Filled with details about their lives and careers, it also features the male medical misogynists who put all kinds of obstacles in their way, both in training and treatment. (A large section focuses on the “rest cure” for women. Some of this information is quite shocking and yet strains of it still abound today.)

In fact, while the subtitle focuses on Mary Putnam Jacobi, and she was quite a heroine both in skills, persistence and innovative thinking, many other outstanding figures share the story, both female and male. Dr. Putnam Jacobi is an important part, but only a part, of this gripping and dramatic history.

The writing is engaging, giving both scope and details of the women’s lives and careers, but the organization is not as good as one would hope: repeatedly, histories are interrupted to insert interesting but not relevant anecdotes that are out of the timeline. It can also be distracting to move back and forth between Putnam-Jacobi’s life and the extended social history context in which she lived it.

Despite this, the book is lively, entertaining and informative, and can be highly enjoyed by lovers of American history, medicine’s history, or women’s history.

Certainly timely, given how tired we are of "Old White Guys" attempting to legislate what to do with our bodies. Especially ridiculous when legislators know little to nothing about female physiology. And so, be prepared to be angry when time after time the author documents how intelligent, exceedingly competent women were brushed aside, ignored, ridiculed, and excluded from a field in which they are now allowed to excel. I was heartened to see how many women are now OB/GYNs, especially, and we owe a great deal to the female physicians Ms. Reeder features in The Cure for Women for having the bravery to soldier on through the world of male ridicule (and male insecurity). The research required to complete this book was surely formidable. It could also serve as a textbook based on the extensive research and the references provided on the subject.

For an American woman wanting to be something more than a broodmare(i.e. wife and mother only) in the 1800s--let alone using her mind or becoming a professional doctor--was anathema to the powers that were (i.e. upper class white males). And yet Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, as well as Mary Putnam Jacobi, and others became medical doctors in spite of the many obstacles thrown in their way. This lavishly footnoted book explores the early pioneers who debunked so many of the misogynistic myths that surrounded women and the physical and mental issues and illnesses that they faced. It focuses primarily on the life of Mary Putnam Jacobi, a brilliant, articulate physician who epitomizes what a woman had to go through to become a respected professional in the 19th century. The author has a tendency to be a bit polemic at times, but on the whole this is a very worthwhile book, that ,sadly, shows that the battles these women faced are not over yet.

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder was a tough read for me. It was well researched and very medically detailed. I was expecting it to more about the life of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and her accomplishments rather than so much of her written medical reports. This book also has a lot of information about other medical pioneers. I’m sure anyone more interested in the medical field would find this book a fascinating read. It just wasn’t what I expected and it didn’t hold my interest. Thank you to NetGalley.

It’s astonishing to read about how one woman, Mary Putnam, was able to follow her passion and dreams of becoming a physician in the 1800s. Why? Because of the viewpoints held by most men. It was a time when leaders said women were inferior. “If they strained their delicate systems with too much brainwork, they’d become infertile.”

Some of what I read was unbelievable like Mary Putnam as a young adult going through the front lines of the Civil War searching for her brother in the south to help him when it was ill. Thankfully, she made it. Mary Putnam didn’t let anything stop her from her long-term goals of helping women with their health issues. She was arrogant and yet brilliant. Dr. Putnam released numerous publications from years of working in labs and collecting scientific data. She paved the way for other women to follow her lead.

This book highlights a few others that made history -- some of the chapters overflowing with names. A few women were able to go beyond the role of being mothers and followed their intellectual destinies in the medical field setting up women’s schools and hospitals. They had the constant struggle against men who viewed a woman’s role as “birthing machines.” Yet, to read about some of the male doctor’s cruel medical procedures was shocking.

Most of us know that it’s been a long haul since the early 1800s for women’s rights in all fields. Lydia Reeder starts by addressing how women’s rights are critical now more than ever mentioning how in 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade. It’s gratifying to know that the author, a woman, spent a huge amount of time putting this book together. It’s educational and full of discussion points.

My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of December 3, 2024.

The Cure for Women is a fascinating story of the contributions Dr Jacobi made to the medical field specifically as it relates to women during a time when women’s health was a taboo topic. I enjoyed the book but there were many tangential discussions that made it hard to settle into the story.

I’d like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Cure for Women, by Lydia Reeder is a fascinating portrait of Mary Putnam Jacobi and other inspiring female trailblazers such as Elizabeth Blackwell, Marie Zakrzewska, and others. It's also a shocking account of racism and gender discrimination/bias within the medical field. I found myself cheering for the women and cursing many of the men. Highly recommend!

I received a free copy of The Cure for Women, by Lydia Reeder, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, was a women born before her time, Men did not want women doctors, they were not welcome din most medical schools. Women were to have children, not be doctors. Dr. Jacobi was admitted to Sorbonne Medical School in France, though Dr, Jacobi had connections, her father was a well known publisher. Returning to New York, life was not east for a women doctor, but Dr. Mary Jacobi engineered the first ever data back scientific research study on women reproductive health, and we thank her for it today. This was a very interesting book, on a very interesting women.

One of those books you alternately love and want to throw against the wall. I spent a lot of time shaking my head over the way women were treated as mentally and physically inferior to men, and the fortitude with which so many them pushed through all the roadblocks and frustrations during their journeys toward gaining equality in their pursuit of degrees in medicine.
It's not a quick read, because it's packed full of information and footnotes, but well worth taking the time to delve into. Afterwards, I got a smug sense of satisfaction in searching statistics on college enrollment and confirming that female students now outnumber males.

I was lost at the outrage for the over turning of roe v. wade. I didn’t realize this was going to be such a political piece. I was looking forward to learning the history and about women’s struggle to overcome education restrictions.

This was a detailed, fabulous discussion of the history of women in medicine. I never knew that my hero should be Mary Putnam Jacobi, but now I do. She did so much for women in medicine and women in general! This was a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

I so tried to get into this story but it just didn't hold my attention. I'm sure it's a wonderfful novel but just not for me. Much to dry for my taste.

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi played a major role in allowing women to study medicine. And, although it didn’t happen until after she died, she also played a big role in moving the Suffragettes forward. She had some flaws, most notably that she wrote that “middle class white women” were somehow different from other races. But it’s undeniable how much her work changed what it meant to be a woman in the United States.

Several things stand out to me from this book, but the most notable isn’t about Jacobi. Instead, it was the revelation that the anti-abortion movement was sparked by a man who believed that white women had better stop getting abortions and start having babies. Why, you ask? Because the same guy was a white supremacist. 🤦🏽‍♀️ Even worse, the AMA decided to back him, and it basically kept them operational.

It seems impossible that we’re still fighting for the right to have reproductive care now when it was completely legal in the US in the 1850s. If it hadn’t been for one man, it might never have become controversial. Before then, most religions believed that a fetus wasn’t “ensouled” until around the 20th week.

Did the facts I mentioned above infuriate you, but also make you want to learn more? Check out this book. It was eye-opening.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.