women in medicine – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi & the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever

By Scott J. Pearson | March 2, 2026March 2, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

By the end of the Victorian age, men had dominated medical practice for centuries, but women were beginning to make inroads into the profession. A few, Mary Putnam Jacobi being the first, made inroads in European training centers and returned to the US to integrate women into American medicine. In this book, Lydia Reeder narrates their struggle and eventual victory that depathologized being a woman. By pursuing their personal questions, these women physician-scientists brought obstetrics…

Biography-Memoir Healthcare Science

What’s Past is Prologue: The Personal Stories of Women in Science at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

By Scott J. Pearson | February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

“What’s past is prologue; what’s to come, in yours and my discharge,” wrote Shakespeare centuries ago in The Tempest. For the most part, women have been excluded from the enterprise of biomedical research throughout history. However, that practice has been changing in recent decades, and the trend will likely continue in coming decades. The challenge is mostly obvious: How can a woman balance a career demanding high performance with a fulfilling personal life, often with…

Biography-Memoir Healthcare

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine

By Scott J. Pearson | September 21, 2020September 22, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, is well known as the first woman doctor in America. Less well known is her sister Emily in becoming a physician. Emily followed Elizabeth’s path through the hardships of initially not receiving a degree despite doing the work. They co-founded a women’s hospital in New York City along with a women’s medical college. Today, around half of all medical students are female. Their careers are the Blackwell sisters’ legacies. Florence Nightingale saw…