A New and Untried Course


Book Description

Before 1850, the field of medicine was almost completely closed to women. In 1850, a group of radical reformist male Quaker physicians and associates founded the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania to offer formal medical training to women. By the 1890s, under the guidance of a series of pioneering women deans, the school grew into a progressive medical collegem re-named the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMC). This development occurred despite the stubborn and at times near violent opposition of most of the male medical community of Philadelphia.




The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence


Book Description

By far the most influential work on the history of the body, across a wide range of academic disciplines, remains that of Thomas Laqueur. This book puts on trial the one-sex/two-sex model of Laqueur's Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud through a detailed exploration of the ways in which two classical stories of sexual difference were told, retold and remade from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Agnodike, the 'first midwife' who disguises herself as a man and then exposes herself to her potential patients, and Phaethousa, who grows a beard after her husband leaves her, are stories from the ancient world that resonated in the early modern period in particular. Tracing the reception of these tales shows how they provided continuity despite considerable change in medicine, being the common property of those on different sides of professional disputes about women's roles in both medicine and midwifery. The study reveals how different genres used these stories, changing their characters and plots, but always invoking the authority of the classics in discussions of sexual identity. The study raises important questions about the nature of medical knowledge, the relationship between texts and observation, and the understanding of sexual difference in the early modern world beyond the one-sex model.




Women and the Practice of Medicine


Book Description

This text offers a new interpretation of the dramatic changes that occurred in women in medicine over the course of the last seventy years, starting from the 1950s when women physicians were a curiosity to the present day when their presence is accepted and their achievements are broadly acknowledged. In seven chapters arranged by decades, this book examines the seminal events that shaped what has been described as “the changing face of medicine.” Using the lived experiences of women physicians featured as vignettes throughout the narrative, the book traces the effects of the quota system for admissions, second wave feminism and Title IX legislation, the restrictions of the “glass ceiling,” and a cascade of “equity issues” in career advancement and salary to offer a new account of the roles women played in shaping the standards and the contributing to progress in the field of medicine. Women faced gender specific challenges to enter, train and practice medicine that did not abate as they strove to balance work and family. As the book shows, such challenges and the attendant institutional responses offered by medical schools and government rulings shaped how women “do” medicine differently. Women and the Practice of Medicine offers a unique interpretation of this history and accounts for the changes in social norms as well as in women’s perspectives that have made them an invaluable “new normal” in the contemporary world of medicine. This book fills a gap in the more recent history of women in medicine, much of which is written by academic historians or sociologists; this book contributes a clinician’s “on the ground” point of view. It includes a researched, structured historical narrative spanning the last 70 years, but it seeks to frame this narrative with the personal stories and accomplishments of women physicians who lived through the time in question. The book also provides an overview of how much has changed in the practice of medicine as well as a reminder of what has not changed and what needs to further evolve for women to be equitable partners in medicine as well as other professional disciplines. The book concludes with two appendices containing a questionnaire used in interviews of 40 women conducted at the start of the book project, and a summary of the qualitative findings from the semi-structured interviews.




Women Medical Doctors in the United States Before the Civil War


Book Description

An invaluable reference work chronicling the lives of over 200 women who received medical degrees in the United States before the Civil War.




The English Professor


Book Description

Across the span of more than forty years, Raphael Dorman O’Leary, a professor of English rhetoric and English literature, taught his students at the University of Kansas to think straight, to put sinew into their sentences, and to embrace the magnificent literary treasures of their mother tongue. The English Professor, by authors Margaret R. O’Leary and Dennis S. O’Leary, offers a narrative of the life, work, and times of a revered Midwestern university English teacher. This memoir narrates how the professor, born in 1866, was raised on a Kansas farm in the post-bellum era. Like his father before him, he was committed to a life of learning and teaching. His colleagues knew him for his unpretentious exterior, honesty, and integrity, and his flashing anger at cheapness, vulgarity, pretense, and, above all, charlatanism. When Professor O’Leary died after a short illness in 1936, his personal effects passed through two generations to his grandson, Dennis S. O’Leary, who, with his wife, Margaret, discovered his papers while restoring a family house. The trove of material served as the core resource for the compilation of The English Professor. It provides insights into the histories of Kansas and the University of Kansas and of Harvard University, as well as perspectives on higher education, including the teaching of English rhetoric, language, literature, journalism, and oratory in the United States.




History of Science in United States


Book Description

This Encyclopedia examines all aspects of the history of science in the United States, with a special emphasis placed on the historiography of science in America. It can be used by students, general readers, scientists, or anyone interested in the facts relating to the development of science in the United States. Special emphasis is placed in the history of medicine and technology and on the relationship between science and technology and science and medicine.




Nurses' Work


Book Description

Designated a Doody's Core Title! Winner of an AJN Book of the Year Award! "Every nursing student and practicing nurse would benefit from reading this book." Score: 91, 4 stars --Doody's "The excerpts taken from original writings and events provide readers with a sneak peak into a forgotten world....This book is a must for anyone in the nursing profession. Essential. All levels."--Choice With contributions from some of the most renowned nursing scholars and historians, the real-life history of how nurses worked and how they endured the ever-changing economic, social, educational, and technological milieus is presented in a captivating collection of articles. Through time and place, experts chronicle the rich variety of nurses' work by presenting actual accounts of clinical practice experiences. Tracing the evolution of nursing from the role as family caregiver to roles in clinical practice today, the contributors approach this history by focusing on four thematic categories: Who does the work of nursing? Who pays for the work of nursing? What is the real work of nursing? How have our nursing predecessors struggled with the relationship between work and knowledge? Nurses' Work, provides an incredible collection of significant historical scholarship and contemporary themes that encourages us to understand and think these questions and the future of nursing.




History of Pennsylvania


Book Description




The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science


Book Description

Edited by two of the most respected scholars in the field, this milestone reference combines "facts-fronted" fast access to biographical details with highly readable accounts and analyses of nearly 3000 scientists' lives, works, and accomplishments. For all academic and public libraries' science and women's studies collections.