Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995

Ellen S. More

Harvard University Press, Jul 1, 2009 - Medical - 352 pages

From about 1850, American women physicians won gradual acceptance from male colleagues and the general public, primarily as caregivers to women and children. By 1920, they represented approximately five percent of the profession. But within a decade, their niche in American medicine--women's medical schools and medical societies, dispensaries for women and children, women's hospitals, and settlement house clinics--had declined. The steady increase of women entering medical schools also halted, a trend not reversed until the 1960s. Yet, as women's traditional niche in the profession disappeared, a vanguard of women doctors slowly opened new paths to professional advancement and public health advocacy.

Drawing on rich archival sources and her own extensive interviews with women physicians, Ellen More shows how the Victorian ideal of balance influenced the practice of healing for women doctors in America over the past 150 years. She argues that the history of women practitioners throughout the twentieth century fulfills the expectations constructed within the Victorian culture of professionalism. "Restoring the Balance" demonstrates that women doctors--collectively and individually--sought to balance the distinctive interests and culture of women against the claims of disinterestedness, scientific objectivity, and specialization of modern medical professionalism. That goal, More writes, reaffirmed by each generation, lies at the heart of her central question: what does it mean to be a woman physician?

What people are saying

Review: Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995

User Review  - Cassandra - Goodreads

In Restoring the Balance, Ellen S. More illustrates the multi-faceted nature of professional womanhood. She focuses specifically on how women physicians have juggled their personal and professional ...

Review: Restoring the balance

User Review  - Cahners Business Information.

A number of books about women physicians are available, but most focus on the lives of women doctors during the 19th and early 20th centuries. More's book covers these eras, but its real strength lies ...

Contents

• Restoring the B l nce?: 1
• 1 The Professionalism of Sarah DolleyMD: 13
• Late Victorian Medicine in the Wom n s Sphere: 42
• Women Physicians in the Progressive Era: 70
• Women Physicians and American Hospitals1900 1939: 95
• The Medical Women s National Association and World W r I: 122
• The Eclipse of Maternalist Medicine: 148
• 7 Resisting the Feminine Mystique 1938 1968: 182
• 8 Medicine and the New Women s Movement: 216
• Reconciling Equality and Difference: 248
• Notes: 261
• Index: 333

About the author

Ellen S. More is Head of the Office of Medical History and Archives at Lamar Soutter Library and Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995
• Author: Ellen S. More
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0674041232, 9780674041233
• Length: 352 pages
• Subjects: Medical / History; Medical / Physicians; Social Science / Women's Studies