Mary Putnam Jacobi and the politics of medicine in nineteenth-century America
By: Carla Bittel.
Series: Studies in social medicine
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 328
ISBN-13: 9780807832837
Subjects: Jacobi, Mary Putnam, -- 1842-1906; Jacobi, Mary Putnam, -- 1842-1906; Women physicians -- New York (State) -- Biography; Women's rights -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Sex differences -- History -- 19th century; Physicians, Women -- United States -- Biography; History, 19th Century -- United States; Women's Rights -- United States -- Biography; Women's Rights -- history -- United States
Genres: Biography
Description: In the late nineteenth century, as Americans debated the "woman question," a battle over the meaning of biology arose in the medical profession. Some medical men claimed that women were naturally weak, that education would make them physically ill, and that women physicians endangered the profession. Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906), a physician from New York, worked to prove them wrong and argued that social restrictions, not biology, threatened female health. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America is the first full-length biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the most significant woman physician of her era and an outspoken advocate for women's rights. Jacobi rose to national prominence in the 1870s and went on to practice medicine, teach, and conduct research for over three decades. She campaigned for co-education, professional opportunities, labor reform, and suffrage--the most important women's rights issues of her day. Downplaying gender differences, she used the laboratory to prove that women were biologically capable of working, learning, and voting. Science, she believed, held the key to promoting and producing gender equality. Carla Bittel's biography of Jacobi offers a piercing view of the role of science in nineteenth-century women's rights movements and provides historical perspective on continuing debates about gender and science today. --Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Conversions of youth; title: On the borderland : a medical and political education in Paris; title: Science and social emancipation; title: Fighting science with science; title: A medical marriage; title: Highly evolved organisms; title: Epilogue : a gauze veil.