Fine, Eve (Author)
This dissertation examines women's efforts to become doctors in nineteenth- century Chicago. By focusing on one community, I demonstrate that women pursued a variety of pathways to medical practice. They became doctors without possessing medical degrees, enrolled in the regular Woman's Medical College of Chicago, or graduated from one of Chicago's coeducational sectarian medical schools. These findings prompt us to re-examine our understanding of the history of women physicians. Previously, historians argued that despite the absence of licensing and lack of educational standards, women--unlike men--could not gain acceptance as physicians without obtaining medical degrees. Acknowledging that women have always practiced medicine, they argued that providing medical care was part of women's gender defined roles, that women practiced medicine as midwives, nurses, or lay healers--not as doctors. Physician registration records for Illinois show that several Chicago women self-identified as doctors, practiced medicine without degrees, and received official recognition as physicians. Non-degreed women's ability to become physicians reflects changes in and challenges to gendered ideas about medical practitioners and medical practice. More than half of Chicago's degreed women physicians graduated from coeducational sectarian schools. This finding questions scholars' primary focus on sex-segregated medical institutions as responsible for training women physicians before 1900. Although recent histories recognize that sectarian medical schools played a role in providing women with medical education, especially before the establishment of women's medical schools, the pathways Chicago women physicians pursued suggests that sectarian schools were more significant than we have recognized thus far. Women's criticisms of regular medicine and their desire to improve medical treatment for women and children may help explain their preference for sectarian medical education. Separatism did not necessarily characterize the experiences of nineteenth- century women physicians. Chicago's women physicians established a vibrant, supportive network that included male advocates, influential laywomen and colleagues from both regular and sectarian schools. Their membership in women's organizations, joint experiences, and common interests allowed regular and sectarian women to overcome gendered barriers and sectarian divisions, collaborate in various efforts to treat patients, improve the health of their communities, and promote success for women in medicine.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/08 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3278791.
Chapter
Fine, Eve;
(2009)
Women Physicians and Medical Sects in Nineteenth-Century Chicago
(/isis/citation/CBB001031395/)
Chapter
Rogers, Naomi;
(2009)
Feminists Fight the Culture of Exclusion in Medical Education, 1970--1990
(/isis/citation/CBB001031394/)
Chapter
Munro Prescott, Heather;
(2009)
Women Physicians and a New Agenda for College Health, 1920--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001031397/)
Chapter
Nye, Robert A.;
(2009)
The Legacy of Masculine Codes of Honor and the Admission of Women to the Medical Profession in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001031391/)
Article
Singh, Maina Chawla;
(2006)
Gender, Thrift, and Indigenous Adaptations: Money and Missionary Medicine in Colonial India
(/isis/citation/CBB001030831/)
Article
Kirschmann, Anne Taylor;
(1999)
Adding Women to the Ranks, 1860-1890: A New View with a Homeopathic Lens
(/isis/citation/CBB000111786/)
Chapter
Flecha García, Consuelo;
(2001)
La Educación de la Mujer Según las Primeras Doctoras en Medicina de la Universidad Española, Año 1882
(/isis/citation/CBB000101357/)
Book
Wells, Susan;
(2001)
Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians and the Writing of Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000100335/)
Article
Patessio, Mara;
Ogawa, Mariko;
(2005)
To Become a Woman Doctor in Early Meiji Japan (1868--1890): Women's Struggles and Ambitions
(/isis/citation/CBB000670051/)
Book
Peitzman, Steven J.;
(2000)
A New and Untried Course: Woman's Medical College and Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850-1998
(/isis/citation/CBB000111182/)
Chapter
DenBeste-Barnett, Michelle;
(2001)
Publica o Perece: las Publicaciones Científicas de las Médicas en la Rusia Tardoimperial
(/isis/citation/CBB000101359/)
Chapter
Quanquin, Hélène;
(2011)
Elizabeth Blackwell, “The Singular Doctor”: Representing and Locating the Pioneer Woman Physician in the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001221552/)
Book
Boyd, Julia;
(2005)
The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Female Physician
(/isis/citation/CBB000600218/)
Thesis
Michaelsen, Kaarin Leigh;
(2003)
Becoming “Medical Women”: British Female Physicians and the Politics of Professionalism, 1860--1933
(/isis/citation/CBB001562096/)
Article
Thomson, Elaine;
(2001)
Physiology, Hygiene and the Entry of Women to the Medical Profession in Edinburgh c. 1869--c. 1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000100745/)
Book
More, Ellen S.;
(1999)
Restoring the balance: Women physicians and the profession of medicine, 1850- 1995
(/isis/citation/CBB000111179/)
Chapter
Meyer, Paulette;
(2001)
La Práctica sin Licencia en la Clínica de Médicas de Berlín: La Trayectoria Profesional de Franziska Tiburtius (1843-1927)
(/isis/citation/CBB000101358/)
Book
Cabré, Montserrat;
Ortiz, Teresa;
(2001)
Sanadoras, Matronas y Médicas en Europa
(/isis/citation/CBB000101360/)
Book
More, Ellen Singer;
Fee, Elizabeth;
Parry, Manon;
(2009)
Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001031385/)
Article
Brookes, Barbara;
(2008)
A Corresponding Community: Dr. Agnes Bennett and Her Friends from the Edinburgh Medical College for Women of the 1890s
(/isis/citation/CBB000774864/)
Be the first to comment!