Well written and researched a story of the sad state of women’s health care during the Victorian era.This book is an important read and is a very timely non fiction book due to the women’s state of health care in our dangerous times.#netgalley #st.martins

Lydia Reeder's THE CURE FOR WOMEN was a fascinating, deep dive into history and views I never knew before, of brave, determined women who advocated for changes in the way that women's biology was seen, not as lesser versions of men, but as strong, powerful versions of themselves, as women seen in all their possibilities rather than traditional, confined roles. The contributions of the pioneers and the ones who supported them are highlighted in the detailed research and keen insights of Reeder's fantastic book. I'd venture to say it should be required reading for those entering medicine -- and for anyone who thinks there is a single point of view and they are the ones who know it best. I received a copy of this book and these thoughts are my own, unbiased opinions.

The Cure for Women is just fascinating. I knew a bit about the general struggles for female doctors to establish themselves in the 1800s, but Reeder’s book digs into so many details. I knew almost nothing about most of the featured women in this book—the sisters Blackwell, Mary Putnam, Marie Zakrzewska—but not only were their lives as pioneers in the medical profession intriguing, they were also adjacent to many of the renowned names of the suffragist movement.

Leeder also examines the male doctors who both assisted and hindered (and sometimes both!) these women in their attempts to integrate into the medical sphere. Leeder writes this book in a “you are there” structure, imagining the protagonists’ thoughts and actions in the moment. It worked well for me.

Of course, there are many parallels between the world of these courageous doctors and today’s world of increased medical restrictions for women, and Leeder does not disappoint in examining this as well.

The Cure for Women made me grateful for the medical struggles these women went through, as they were the suffragists of their profession, and for the benefits they brought not only to women who wanted to be doctors, but for their examination and devotion to understanding women’s medical needs as well.

This book is well written and researched, but unfortunately, it’s too distressing for me.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

The Cure for Women: Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine that Changed Women’s Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder sets out to expose how Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were only fit to be wives and mothers and the bring to light the one doctor who proved them wrong. After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school and practice medicine, more and more women came forward for the chance to study medicine. Barred from prestigious universities, these women built their own medical schools and hospitals. When their success was too large to ignore, a group of elite, white male doctors set out to shut them down and prove that a woman’s menstrual cycles make them unfit for college and professions. Enter Mary Putnam Jacobi, the daughter of New York publisher George Palmer Putnam, armed with a medical education from the Sorboone medical school, she conducts the first ever scientific research on women’s reproductive biology. Her results would open the door for women and their higher education futures.
When I received the invitation to read an advanced copy of The Cure for Women, I was intrigued to be introduced to the pioneers of women who paved the way for future generations of women. Touted to expose “the birth of a sexist science that still haunting us today as the fight for control of women’s bodies and lives continues,” I knew I was in for a wild ride. However, I was bored. I feel it was more about Elizabeth Blackwell and her sisters than Mary Putnam Jacobi. The author also went off on too many tangents that I was lost. By the time that Mary Putnam Jacobi was the focus of the book, I didn’t care. Another turn off for me was the political stance. I was hoping to read a book about women fighting for their chance, instead it became a book about female superiority and the male fight to keep women down. Overall, I feel that this book did little to bring Mary Putnam Jacobi to light. I do not recommend The Cure for Women.

The Cure for Women: Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine that Changed Women’s Lives Forever is available in hardcover, eBook and audiobook

Inspired by family stories about her great-grandmother, Lydia Reeder brings us an informative, inspiring, and often infuriating book about overcoming obstacles. Reeder started research about women in medicine and found a history of ridiculous assumptions about the reasons women were “unqualified “ to be doctors.
“The Cure for Women” is an interesting read. Sometimes you will laugh at the Victorian-era thinking used by men to explain why women shouldn’t be doctors until you remember that some people think those were the good old days.
Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder is a captivating and meticulously researched biography of the talented and daring social reformer who paved the way for women's medical education. This much-needed account sheds light on the extraordinary life of Dr. Jacobi, a trailblazer who made a lasting impact on the field of medicine and the lives of countless women.

In “The Cure for Women,” Lydia Reeder details the Women’s Rights movement during Victorian Times in America when educated and trained male doctors were making the argument that women should not be allowed to study or practice medicine. In fact, they argued, that educating women at all was detrimental to their health.

Reeder highlights the strong women who fought against these theories and men behind them. Women such as Dr. Mary Putman Jacobi, who fought for the rights of women to be educated, study and practice medicine. She partnered with others that also fought for Women’s Rights to do one of the first research projects on menstruation to determine the physical affects on women (meaning the men who spouted the nonsense never actually researched it) In fact, this research was one of the first of its kind. Reeder has presented a throughly researched, accessible account of some amazing women during the Victorian age that further the cause, and health, for all women today.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley. I had to do a lot of swearing while reading this book because it made me so angry reading about how men wrote/spoke about them in the 1800s, but with current events, it makes me think that maybe things haven't changed at all. I appreciate the author putting in some notes at the end about current events and women's bodily choices. I found it to be an informative and interesting book about women becoming doctors.

I was given an advance reading copy (arc) of this book by the publisher and NetGalley.com in exchange for a fair review. Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi was a pioneer in women’s medicine during the Nineteenth Century. The daughter of publishing magnate, George Putnam, Mary had an independent streak unheard of in the 1800s. She also had a brilliant mind and wanted to study medicine. The problem being that no medical school at that time allowed women to enroll. Her solution? She traveled to France and studied medicine there. Her story is an important one in the annals of women’s rights. She fought tirelessly for women to have the same opportunities as men when it came to education—especially in the medical profession. Unfortunately, this book often reads like a textbook and the author goes off into other tangents unnecessarily. There were some very interesting points such as the fact that abortion was legal in all states until about 1880 when it was banned for some very questionable reasons. Dr. Jacobi deserves to be recognized for her unequaled contribution not only for women’s rights, but also for her role in educating women. This book, however, doesn’t quite do her justice.

This was so well done! I really enjoyed learning about the history of women and women's issues in medicine, and while the topic may sound dry, the writing made it as interesting and suspenseful as a thriller. It was so frustrating to read about the earlier challenges, when even brilliant women were not allowed to study medicine, and when women's health issues were treated so differently because of ignorance. Medicine has come so far, even though there are still issues today. Thanks so much to NetGalley for letting me read this.

History is full of horrifying stories of the medical care and education available to women prior to mid 1900s. THE CURE FOR WOMEN centers stories on the courageous women who struggled to provide quality care to other women. Today's women owe a huge debt to these women. The book is fascinating and should be shared with every young woman today. They should see how much their care has cost in history.

“The Cure for Women” is a thoroughly researched and well-written history of the struggle of women to become physicians during the Victorian era. It focuses on Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the first woman to attend the Sorbonne’s medical college, her research into women’s reproductive biology, and the sexist barriers and challenges she faced throughout her career. Author Lydia Reeder adeptly examines and details the state of 19th-century medicine and the women’s suffrage movement and pulls no punches depicting how parochial, condescending, and grossly unfair the male medical establishment was towards women doctors and patients.

My thanks to NetGalley, publisher St. Martin’s Press, and author Lydia Reeder for providing me with a complimentary ARC. All of the foregoing is my honest and independent opinion.

Through exhaustive research, Lydia Reeder's The Cure for Women shows how gifted women like Mary Putnam Jacobi fought back. Her arsenal of weapons included things that the male physicians did not: the first-ever data-backed scientific research on women's reproductive biology. Jacobi fought back with the facts, and the medical profession has never been the same.

I learned so much from reading The Cure for Women, unfortunately, a great deal of it with my teeth clenched. Men writing "learned" treatises on women's reproductive organs when they wouldn't know an ovary or a uterus if one came up and punched them in the nose. Why? Because they'd never seen any of these organs and had no idea how they worked. You would think that we would have all the misinformation squared away here in the twenty-first century, but we don't. The fight for control over women's bodies is still happening, proving that we need more people like Mary Putnam Jacobi-- and more people to read this marvelously researched book.

Once Elizabeth Blackwell broke the glass ceiling and became the first women to graduate medical school, more women demanded the chance to study medicine. In America, men did their best to prevent this so women with means traveled to Europe, getting degrees in France and returning to practice and teach other women. In The Cure For Women Lydia Reeder introduces readers to a few of these early medical pioneers and the challenges they faced, then focuses the rest of the book through Mary Putnam and her research, challenges, and advances.

Like many of the early women who were able to travel to Europe to become doctors, Putnam was from a wealthy family (she was the eldest daughter of publisher George Putnam), though money alone never smoothed all her ways. A combination of money, charm, brilliance, stubbornness, and a refusal to fail when she knew she was in the right were the characteristics needed of all of the early women doctors, and Mary had most of these in spades.

I knew when I started this book I was going to spend a lot of it angry or fustrated by the challenges men placed in the way of women trying to reach their highest potential. I was blown away by the arrogance shown by many of the male doctors in these pages. There are doctors who treat surgery like a grand spectacle to show off their skills, doctors who refuse anesthesia to their female patients for a variety of horrific reasons. Doctors who seem to genuinely believe women aren't capable of the thought necessary for anything because of their menstral cycles, and plenty of men willing to use (and distort) Darwin's theories to promote eugenics for their own ends to control women's bodies.

It was fascinating to watch doctors like Mary Putnam Jacobi develop theories and entire processes that we now take for granted (like surveys of patients) to begin undertanding and developing new sciences of the time- hygiene, pediatrics, and women's health and gynecology. But more interesting to me was watching them take these sciences and common sense and begin to apply them to the fight for women's rights across a large spectrum of issues, such as voting and education. Jacobi became a proponent of educating women equally to men, preferrably in equal settings, and she worked with all the big names of the era in women's suffrage to fight for the causes she believed in.

The Cure for Women is overall a really interesting and well-written book, certainly well researched, accessible to everyone. I do wish the author had used more quotes from the writings of Jacobi and the other women involved to help us get more into their heads, but that's my only real complaint.

For anyone interested in the development of medical science in the nineteenth century, women's education and fight for equality, or readers of Olivia Campbell's Women in White, The Cure for Women is a book to add to the TBR list!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

The barriers that females had to break down in order to be doctors in the Victorian age was astounding. The story and struggles of these first women: Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, Ann Preston, Marie Zakrzewska, and especially Mary Putnam are expertly told in this book. While most of the book centers on Dr. Putnam Jacobi, the stories of the prominent male doctors who helped form public opinion against women participating in any sphere outside the home, especially medicine, are delved into as well. I found their stories to be equally interesting even though it was difficult to stomach the thoughts and words they expressed. What I found the most fascinating, (and so much of this book is) was the written reactions of the women at the time to these pigheaded men. I didn’t realize any women expressed those thoughts that sounded more like what a woman would have said during the women’s movement of the 60’s and 70’s. But this was 100 years earlier! Dr. Jacobi was a master at the retort. These early female doctors worked tirelessly to get themselves and other women in the profession and with the highest standards employed. The drama and politics involved was truly fascinating.
The tangents that the author includes are all extremely interesting, so I didn’t care when it seemed the main story of Dr. Jacobi was repeatedly absent for several pages.
I give this book 5 stars for all but the last 2 and 1/2 pages. Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi passed away 118 years ago. Even the author can’t speak for Mary’s beliefs on the current research on gender and the recent Supreme Court case because the current medical data may have led her to a different conclusion.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my opinion. I highly recommend it!

This book was both fascinating and depressing. I loved reading about Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi - what a fascinating and intelligent woman she was. She contributed so much to the advancement of medicine, and the care of women. What was depressing was how full circle this has all become. This book started in the mid 1800's and men thought they knew best about women's bodies. They took away the right to abortion and made it an imprisonable offense for both the mother and doctor. The men felt that the baby's life was more important than the mother's life. Women were considered less than, and their value was as a wife and mother only. Does this sound familiar? I think every woman should read this book. It should scare you, but it should also empower you.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine that Changed Women’s Lives Forever is an intense book, one that will stay with you long after you have finished reading. We all think we know how difficult it was for woman to be accepted into roles that were traditionally reserved for men, but it’s very powerful to read so many stories and instances of the times women were thwarted again and again, regardless of how competent, talented, or dedicated they were. How very few men would stand up for or beside them.

Equally powerful and thought-provoking is the revelation of just how often and in so many underhanded ways they were discriminated against, harassed, forced out by other physicians, hospitals, institutions of higher learning. You can’t help but admire and be in awe of these strong, brave women who dared to step out of bounds.

The Cure for Women is enthralling and almost impossible to put down once you start reading. I recommend it. I received an advance copy via NetGalley. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and The Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women's :oves Forever is one crazy but true deep dive into real events of the history of how women fought, and fought hard, for every inch of the right to learn and practice medicine, and boy oh boy are we living the ramifications of that fight. The book starts out with the frontrunners that helped pave the way for Mary Putnam to follow, but Mary Putnam also did not have an easy time of it. She broke through barriers that her predecessors couldn't, but also paved the way for women following behind her. This reads more like a well researched biography of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi than a historical fiction novel, but it's well worth diving into and reading for yourself. Unbelievably true!!! Job well done!
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*

I downloaded this title expecting historical fiction, but it reads like a documentary. I would've enjoyed it more as fiction based on history.