Book Description

Vital to the acceptance of medical women was the willingness of patients – largely women and children – to be treated by them. By the end of 1914, this more usual patient base was expanded to include injured soldiers. To provide a full consideration of the medical and surgical world of this period, it is necessary to explore patients in order to explore how gender affected the relationship between patient and practitioner. This volume examines the contemporary fear that hospital patients, mostly of working-class origin, were being experimented upon by their overly eager, ambitious, and vivisecting doctors; something in which surgeons especially were seen to be complicit. Women too, however, carried out abdominal and gynaecological surgery, and performed clitoridectomies. How medical women justified their actions, as well as how their patients viewed them, is the focus of this volume. Additionally, the voice of those who experienced ‘medical tyranny’ is considered to examine what happened when patients fought back publicly against the medical establishment. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this title will be of great interest to students of Women's History and the History of Medicine.