Many thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the free audiobook in exchange for my honest review. Sara Sheckells narrates this and does a fantastic job! I highly recommend this!

This is a very well researched and fascinating story of the contributions made to the medical field of women's medicine by Dr Jacobi. It is hard to imagine a time when women's health was taboo or solely directed by men who believed it customary to discount women's health to the vapors or insanity.

I really enjoyed the parts about Dr Jacobi that were more like reading a novel than some of the other tangential parts that jumped around. I still highly recommend this one as a must read for women to appreciate those who went before us!

thank you to netgalley, dreamscape media and author lydia reeder for this fabulous arc.
this book was very interesting and told the story of women’s healthcare through the victorian era highlighting key players and visionaries.
reading attitudes towards women’s health care during this era made me feel like we’ve been in a perpetual fight for catered care, equality in health care and understanding of afab centric care for eons. history is cyclical, this book was excellently written and i enjoyed every moment of the book. i learned a lot, like the history of midwifery and the importance in the change of women’s health care.

If you've enjoyed books about the Edinburgh Seven or the Blackwell sisters, this is a perfect book for you. This non fiction accounting of Dr, Mary Putnam Jacobi is incredibly well done and incorporates the other (numerous) relevant players in a way that is both comprehensive and not confusing. I really enjoyed this, and the narrator did a fabulous job.

This was absolutely fantastic! As someone who loves medical history and woman's history this was fascinating. I had a lot of general knowledge about the things and times discussed in this book but there was so much more I didn't know. I honestly couldn't put this down because I just kept wanting to know more about these amazing women.

A wonderful tale about a severely overlooked heroine in the Western medical and early feminist movements. The audiobook narration was superb. The story is detailed and rich, taking us through lifetimes and life connections of all kinds. And of course the rage-inducing injustices meted out by male peers, notably members of the Ivy League or equivalents outside of the US and Eugenicists. Hm! At the same time, I was annoyed at how much time was spent on the lives of the various men in Mary Putnam Jacobi's life. I recognize that more material is available on them, but surely these bits could have been cut down, given the (overlong) tale and its pursuit of centring the women. The author also personifies the various "characters" in the tale, rather than using source material to give them voice. In the audiobook version, this worked well, most of the time, but I can imagine the text version may not fare so well on this point. There were a few times (I'm afraid I didn't make a note of them while listening) where the author fills in the blanks and makes assertions that I'm not sure the people in question actually felt or would have agreed with. Finally, the plot is meandering and hard to follow. The material is incredibly rich, so the fact that the author was able to maintain some semblance of a thoroughfare across the storied life of Putnam Jacobi and fiends is admirable.

Not that anyone needs more of a reason to be annoyed at men for shunting women's growth in 98263596 ways... But if you're looking for some, you're in the right place.

How I didn't know about the majority of these instances is beyond me, our education systems should be ashamed.

Not only does this book highlight super interesting achievements made by women and explain the vital roles they've played in advancing medicine, it also enlightens readers on the reception of women by the field of medicine over time.

Specific to the audiobook, I LOVE Sara Sheckells narration. Her voice and intonation was made for nonfiction.

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Lydia Reeder, Sara Sheckells, St Martin's Press and Dreamscape Media for the ALC in exchange for my honest review!}

With a title that grabs attention and a subtitle that could have been broader to more fully and accurately capture the content of the work (ie "Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the women who changed Victorian Medicine forever" or something like that), The Cure for Women is a fantastic little deep-dive into the specific struggles surrounding women's education in medicine and the development of medicine as a science in general.

Written in a wonderfully cinematic style, the core narrative has the feel of a big streaming network prestige drama as the stories of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the Blackwell sisters & their various supporters and detractors weave in and out of each other to tell a broader story of the way women in medicine were perceived, their contributions to the field of medicine, and of course their struggle for acceptance in a male dominated field. Entire chapters devoted to secondary characters in the tale provide a fantastic bit of insight into their worldview and helps to illuminate certain figures beliefs and motives. It should be noted that this is not a historical treatise, but a commendable piece of historical research intended for popular consumption. As such, the author does not refrain from offering her own musings on what some of the key characters may have been thinking or feeling. These asides are fairly presented as her own musings and not stated as fact, but given the obvious amount of research that went into this book, I can understand if these editorial interjections are jarring to others. For me, it felt like putting as fine a point as needed on the story being explored.

As a piece of feminist narrative nonfiction, Reeder doesn't shy away from pointing out certain perils and injustices of the time period that parallel or are devastatingly/disappointingly still relevant to us in the modern era, but it never feels overwrought. With a single exception, I felt that Reeder was largely content to let the men of the era and their actions and writings speak for themselves regarding the disdain, contempt and outright hostility they had for women and people of color in general. That noted exception was of a single chapter that in my opinion went on for far too long detailing to the greatest degree possible Mitchell's "Rest Cure" which was about as horrific as it sounds benign. This was in part to drive home the extent to which women suffered under the purview of male doctors so thoroughly convinced of their superiority that they actively harmed women to put them in their place, but even so it felt a bit gratuitous. Perhaps that was the point, and if so, it is a point excessively made to my taste.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that I personally took from this story wasn't even necessarily about the women themselves - though their lives and efforts were certainly incredible. It was the way in which men of the era actively caused harm to women - to people - rather than simply admit they didn't know what the hell they were talking about. They supposed, they conjectured, they philosophized, and when shown hard data proving them wrong, they turned away and continued to put more people in harm's way. They didn't do something as simple as washing their hands because it wasn't manly, they went from surgery to surgery spattered in gore because it showed how practiced they were, and for all the claims of being logical and unmarred by emotions, they were showmen and shysters, crybabies throwing tantrums, and basically... imbeciles.

Don't worry, this is the part where we #NoTallMen (heavy eyeroll) - Reeder is not shy about pointing out those men who were genuinely interested in helping women's campaign for access to medical education, both for altruistic and opportunistic reasons. Similarly, many of the women work against each other at times and with each other as is convenient to their ends. They were real people who lived and had personal goals that coincided and conflicted. But it is humbling as a man to read about so many well-intentioned men in this history being seemingly on the right side of history but still blinded by their own bias. It is certainly an invitation for us men in the modern era to examine ourselves and our biases. We say we treat women equally or believe in equality, but the intentional action of living up to those words is so easy to fall short of in a society that too easily forgives and excuses men for bad actions.

Still, the story being told here isn't about the evils of men, but about the arc of justice. It took a depressingly long time, but women doctors are today very normal and it is largely thanks in part to Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and her allies. She was, as we all are, merely human. She wanted to study medicine for herself, not for women everywhere. She knocked down doors to get in the room for herself, not for women everywhere. But when women everywhere wished to follow her into the room, she helped propped the door open. I think that is a very real and relatable message, and something that all of us can take inspiration from: she was not the hero of a story, merely a person who followed her ambitions without regret.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape for early access to this audiobook. Book to be released Dec 3, 2024.