THE CURE FOR WOMEN

A pioneering American female doctor gets her due.

Written with a somewhat novelistic flair, this is a fascinating, detailed biography of the gifted, impetuous social reformer and trailblazer for women’s medical education, Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906), a doctor at a time when male doctors believed that women shouldn’t even study medicine. Reeder first discusses a few of the key women doctors in America. In 1860, Jacobi was 17 when she started working at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, eventually graduating from the New York College of Pharmacy. At the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, she wrote her thesis in Latin. Her first job was an exhausting internship at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, followed by work in a private lab. In 1866 she went to Paris, interned at hospitals, and conducted scientific research, which she excelled at. After numerous attempts, she was finally accepted at the prestigious École de Médecine. “Her research and education,” Reeder writes, “made her one of the best educated doctors in America.” Next Jacobi became a professor at the women-run Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, updated its curriculum, and was accepted into many prestigious associations, all while finding time to do some private practice out of her home. In 1873 she married a doctor, Abraham Jacobi. On their honeymoon, she updated his book, Infant Diet, for women readers. Her writing on menstruation won the prestigious Boylston Medical Prize; she later published it as a book. Reeder discusses Putnam’s “tremendous capacity for work,” her many articles and books, including fiction, and her relentless fight for suffrage and women’s rights in medicine and labor reform. Despite occasional lengthy digressions that slow down the narrative, this is an impressive, important biography.

A much-needed biography of an extraordinary woman.