In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Women Medical Doctors in the United States before the Civil War: A Biographical Dictionary by Edward C. Atwater
  • Sarah Glassford
Women Medical Doctors in the United States before the Civil War: A Biographical Dictionary Edward C. Atwater Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016, xi + 389 p., $45.67, US$39.95

Given that 50 percent of early twenty-first century American medical school graduates are female, it is easy to forget that this is a relatively recent development: from 1870 to 1970 only 4 to 5 percent of graduates each year were women (1). In this welcome reference work, Edward C. Atwater shines a light on the women who carved a space for those 4 to 5 percent – the 280 women who earned MD degrees from chartered medical schools (both Regular and alternative) in the United States between 1849 and 1861. The book distills 40 years of painstaking research in medical directories, medical school catalogues, census records, professional journals, newspapers, school and local histories, and local archives into short, highly readable biographies of America's pioneering female MDs.

Although a few of the women are well known, most have slipped into obscurity. The usual problems of maiden and married names, misspellings, and sloppy census-taking practices made Atwater's research difficult. However, his persistence – and the efforts of hordes of librarians, archivists, and local historians thanked in the acknowledgements – have paid off handsomely in the resulting work. Of the 280 women on Atwater's roster of graduates, he was able to locate some sort of information about 222 of them. Because [End Page 214] of the issues with tracing specific women, he openly acknowledges the likelihood of errors in the biographies, and invites readers to submit corrections, as well as to dig deeper and flesh out the details for some of the more difficult-to-trace doctors.

The biographies, which average from half a page to two pages, offer as much information as is known about each woman's social and religious background, reason(s) for studying medicine, and personal and professional life after graduation. They will be a boon to scholars interested in particular women, or early women's medical education and career paths. Regrettably there is little information about actual clinical practice, but that is the fault of Atwater's sources. Where he has found such details, they are included. Relevant references are helpfully provided at the end of each entry, augmented by a thematically divided bibliography for the whole book. Additional resources include a 10-page introduction, a short essay on the first American-trained woman MD Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, a chronological list of the graduates and their medical schools, locations of the doctors' professional practices, and information about which doctors pursued particular career paths (author, popular lecturer, professor, Civil War nurse). An index of names provides quick access to specific biographies, and helps navigate the shifts between maiden and married surnames through cross-references.

As a reference work, the book will primarily support and contribute to the analyses of other scholars, but in the introduction Atwater gets the ball rolling by summarizing some of the patterns he found in the raw data. For instance, of the 14 American schools to award medical degrees to women before 1862, six were Regular, six Eclectic, one homeopathic, and one hydropathic/hygienic (4). All were chartered by their respective states, and taught anatomy and physiology, but their therapies varied (with the alternative schools favouring less aggressive interventions). Women earned public and popular acclaim, and became trusted physicians in their local communities, regardless of which type of school they graduated from. In fact, although the alternative schools would fall out of favour later in the nineteenth century, at mid-century their less aggressive therapies, combined with female doctors' personal understanding of women's unique health issues, meant that alternative-trained female physicians tended to do less harm than their Regular-trained peers.

Readers get similarly interesting glimpses into the women's personal lives. On average they were older than later women medical graduates would be (the average age on graduation was 33.2), and they were predominantly Protestant and from the Northeastern [End Page 215] United States. A...

pdf

Share