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Lecture Six: Practice and Profession

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Lecture Six for HIST 30626

Medicine for Women or Medicine by Women?

The Assumptions of Women's Medicine

  1. Women are morally superior
  2. Women are guardians of general social welfare
  3. It is appropriate that women (and possibly children) be cared for by women
  4. Heavy sectarian reliance on women practitioners
    • 1500 or 14,000 homeopaths by 1900

Women's Medical Pioneers

  1. Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)
    • 1847-1849: Geneva Medical College
    • 1854: NY Dispensary for Women and Children
    • Emily Blackwell and Marie Zakrzewska - Western Reserve University
  2. Women's Medical College (WMC) of Philadelphia, 1850
  3. Women's and Children's Hospital of New York, 1856
  4. Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906)
    • 1864: WMC
    • 1871: Professor at WMC of NY
  5. The Hopkins Deal, 1896: if women fund, women must be admitted

Marginalized or Mainstream

  1. Jacobi vs. Blackwell
  2. Is women's medicine, "medicine"?
  3. Deprofessionalization of women's medicine
    • The fall of the dispensary
    • The rise of scientific nursing
    • Nutritionists
    • Visiting nurses
    • Social work
    • Sanitary inspection
  4. 1910 - 9000 = 6%; greatest until around 1965
2007, by the Contributing Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License