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.

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

This book is fascinating and well-researched. I learned a lot from reading it!

Well, I knew I wasn't going to feel great as a dude at the end of The Cure for Women, but I powered through anyways. Lydia Reeder tells the story of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and various other women as they take on the medical patriarchy who are real jerks. In some cases, they were legit psychos who experimented on Black women without anesthesia.

Unfortunately, the writing in this one is what let me down. First, Reeder often goes off on tangential stories which don't have to do with Jacobi but do have to do with women in medicine. You wouldn't single out any one thread and say it's completely out of left field, but you probably would object to so many topics that don't relate directly to Jacobi's story. In fact, Jacobi herself doesn't really show up until the very end of the second chapter. This is not a fatal flaw of the book, but it is noticeable.

The other problem with the writing is much more serious and quite ironic. Reeder tends to use her own words to tell the story and avoids quoting the women directly. You get a lot of paragraphs which read like, "Then she did this. Then she did this. And she didn't like this person." These women were prolific and clearly there were sources to pull from. It made for a slog because I want to hear from the source. For instance, Elizabeth Blackwell features prominently, especially in the beginning of the book. I kept feeling like I wasn't getting to know Blackwell, but rather I was getting to know what Reeder thought of Blackwell. Later in the book, Reeder finally quotes fully a letter Blackwell sent to Jacobi. It was the first time I felt like I knew who Blackwell was as a person (and leader because her guidance in this letter was pitch perfect). Reeder does become more willing to quote towards the end. Unfortunately, this is too far into the narrative and it is not used enough to save the story.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and St. Martin's Press.)

Ate (thought the plot got lost in the explanations of stuff sometimes). Very interesting stuff about women in medicine, these people were so cool. Book was really well researched and in-depth which I liked.

I have spent most of my adult life defending and working for the rights of all women and yet through the reading of this beautiful and non fiction “The Cure For Women” there are important factions of The Victorian Era which have allowed me to glean further justification that my time was more than well spent.
Mary Putnam Jacobi was a “glass ceiling” breaking pioneering woman who broke through the male dominated field of medicine. A wonderful and informative book that deserves to be required college reading to clearly bring into focus all that women have achieved in order to pave the way for the success of all future generations.
Form my heart, thank you Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the honor of reading this masterpiece early. I will be purchasing a hard copy for my library and to share with younger humans.

Truly a tour de force, covering the history of women’s rights and discrimination not only in the medical profession but in daily life. This book is not just a biography of one of the foremost medical minds of the nineteenth century, but provides a front seat view into the struggle for women’s rights, and how misogyny pervaded every institution, socially and fundamentally. This work is written almost like narrative fiction, but with the first-person primary source material woven skillfully into the piece. I learned an astonishing amount of facts, that I was able to verify were all quite true, and would very much like to read other works by this author.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is an amazing and incredible book. I had never heard of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and that’s a shame. She has done for some in medicine than anyone. She was absolutely brilliant and very ahead of her time in thinking and understanding medicine and the human body. And many times, her work was unrecognized or stolen by male doctors. She fought hard with other women doctors to establish a medical school and hospital for women and while successful, did not live long enough to see women finally be admitted to coed education. But without her fighting so hard, it would have never happened.

She and many other women doctors of her time had studied in Europe which was more progressive and ahead of the US enabling her to get a degree in medicine and train with doctors who in my opinion, were better than those in the US at the time. She understood that women’s bodies were not controlled by mere hysteria, but had very specific biological needs. She strove to understand and properly treat women’s bodies and really changed the way we view and understand gynecology.

I hope more people read this book and find out about this amazing woman who fought so hard to give women the right to work in medicine. She has been largely ignored by history and it’s time she decided the recognition she deserves. This book does a wonderful job of telling her story.

I received this book for free in exchange for my honest review.

The Cure for Women was a very informative look at many facets of Gilded Age medicine, including how female doctors broke into the field, their role in the development of gynecology and obstetrics, and how it all intersected with the broader women's rights and suffrage movements. It also feels like an incredibly timely book, given the current landscape of reproductive rights in the United States -- the book also touches on how abortion, a previously accepted medical procedure, was turned by white, male doctors into a controversial issue (hint: it was racism).

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was that while it was well-researched and full of information, it was extremely readable, making it accessible to readers who aren't necessarily historians. Based on that, I look forward to recommending this book to colleagues and my older students who are interested in reproductive rights and Victorian history.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing a review copy.

Thanks to netgalley for the ARC! This book was suggested to me because of past reading I did. I’m honestly not sure I would’ve grabbed it in my own, and that would’ve been a mistake! I feel like this book should be on a list of required reading so we can see how far we have come and how much we need to protect our gains as current times see us losing some of them for women. I have not stopped talking about this book to people since I started reading it. First, the book had a lot of great info that was presented in an engaging manner that kept me reaching to read it every day. Although the book does concentrate mostly on Mary Putnam Jacobi, the author does a great job weaving in other stories of women who worked hard to gain both suffrage and acceptance for women physicians in education and hospitals and reputation. I also enjoyed how there was history woven in to get a feel for the time period and where we were in America and the rest of the world (ie information about Napoleon). I admit I’m not a history buff, but books like this make me want to dive into time periods and topics that newly interest me. Without giving anything away, I’ll say the book covers such important topics as women’s rights, the idiotic views and studies of how women’s brains just do not have the capacity or energy for higher education and careers because of things like menstrual cycles and how they were expected to just be wives and birth babies all while you are reading about these absolutely brilliant women like Jacobi who were surpassing men in their field and even being pioneers in things like sanitation during treatments and surgeries. Honestly, the advancements of women in education, particular medicine, and the advancements of women in medical careers at this time are phenomenal considering men and America were trying their hardest to hold them back. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the medical field, women in history, and/or women’s rights.

An excellent book telling the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate Medical School and the women who came after her, waiting to prove they had what it took to be called Doctor.

And they did. The struggles these women went through, would have had most of us choosing another career option!

But the persevered and we are so glad that they did. This is a true story of the sexism that goes on in the field of science. At this time we still don't have control over our own bodies.

I really enjoyed this glimpse of history.

NetGalley/ St. Martin's Press December 02, 2024

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5

The Cure for Women is one of the most important books ever written, in my opinion. Lydia Reeder gives us an in-depth, intense look at how women’s medicine and health has been shaped since the mid-1800s, and how women have tried to take control of their own bodies. This isn’t just a dry book with facts laid bare; Reeder has written a compelling story that shows the reader the lives of women both becoming doctors in a vast field of men clueless about women’s bodies and health, and the view of women as patients, treated as objects.

I found myself at turns furious, sad, and stunned with the realization of what has been done to women over the years, and I can’t believe we still are fighting to have our bodies treated properly. It’s fascinating to see how much and yet how little things have changed in the medical field.

My only quibble with this book is the sometimes confusing time jumps. There are several different women who are having their stories told, and sometimes coming to the end of a section means jumping back again to the beginning for another woman’s story. Overall, though, bravo. This is a book everyone should read.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I literally went through a hundred emotions reading this. Anger, fury, sadness, compassion and so on. Such an eye opening read into what went on in Victorian era. This is and will be such an important book. I can't wait to purchase a hard copy

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Mary Jacobi was a woman ahead of her times. She believed she could help in a male dominated field. This book was eye opening in what women had to go through many decades ago.

This was an incredibly well researched and well written book. It focuses on the history of women physicians in the field of medicine and those who helped pioneer us into the 20th century, including Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary Putnam Jacobi amongst others. There are some fantastic quotes and facts in this book that would be laughable if they weren’t take as fact back in the 1800s. My favorites include “A grown woman never surpassed the emotional and intellectual development of a teenage boy” regarding why women could never be physicians and “Women can never, as a class, become so competent, safe and reliable medical practitioners as men, no matter what their zeal or opportunities for pupilage.” These are direct quotes from well respected male physicians of the day just showing how in depth of research the author did. I find that often reading these books of historical facts can feel a lot like reading a textbook, but Ms. Reeder really made it feel more like a novel which was enjoyable. My one criticism of the book is that it sometimes felt like she lost the plot. You had to read dates carefully because each chapter would jump around (likely to make the story flow better) and the cast of characters was vast. I also felt that the last chapter, which focused more on women’s suffrage, while important, felt like it should have been part of a different book and strayed from the theme. Other than that, as a woman in medicine myself I learned a lot and I recommend it to anyone interested medical history.