Synopses & Reviews
In the late nineteenth century, as Americans debated the "woman question," a battle over the meaning of biology arose in the medical profession. Some medical men claimed that women were naturally weak, that education would make them physically ill, and that women physicians endangered the profession. Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906), a physician from New York, worked to prove them wrong and argued that social restrictions, not biology, threatened female health.
Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America is the first full-length biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the most significant woman physician of her era and an outspoken advocate for women's rights. Jacobi rose to national prominence in the 1870s and went on to practice medicine, teach, and conduct research for over three decades. She campaigned for co-education, professional opportunities, labor reform, and suffrage--the most important women's rights issues of her day. Downplaying gender differences, she used the laboratory to prove that women were biologically capable of working, learning, and voting. Science, she believed, held the key to promoting and producing gender equality.
Carla Bittel's biography of Jacobi offers a piercing view of the role of science in nineteenth-century women's rights movements and provides historical perspective on continuing debates about gender and science today.
Review
"It's astonishing that we haven't had a first-rate biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi. Now we do. Bittel's careful research and well-balanced presentation illuminate the ways in which time- and place-specific configurations of class, gender, and professional values can shape individual choices. Jacobi's life tells us much about the world of elite and would-be scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century America."
Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University
Review
"This is a first-rate study of one of the most important American nineteenth-century medical scientists of either sex, one who tackled an amazing variety of issues concerning gender and who wrote about most of them in an extremely prescient way. A gripping intellectual biography."
Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College
Review
"At long last, a biography that captures Mary Putnam Jacobi in all her complexity! Jacobi's extraordinary intelligence and keen analytic mind informed her transgressive unconventionality in myriad ways, making her a role model for today's young people who are not satisfied with the world as it is. Carla Bittel's book serves scholarship, history, and all readers determined to follow their own path. Bravo!"
Regina Morantz-Sanchez, University of Michigan
Review
"Thoroughly researched and well written. . . . The book's depiction of Jacobi's professional and public lives is flawless."
-Choice
Review
"A comprehensive intellectual biography of a critical nineteenth-century thinker. . . . A highly informative read."
-Nursing History Review "A pathbreaking biography of the accomplishments of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the premier science-based female researcher/practicioner of the nineteenth century. . . . A must-read; it richly enhances the scholarship in American cultural studies, the history of medicine, and women's studies."
--The Journal of American History "This study . . . not only gives us a deep insight into the life and work of Jacobi but also weaves together several related fields within the history of medicine."
-Social History of Medicine "A major and very welcome addition to the growing literature on the history of women in American medicine. . . . Excellent and closely argued."
-Journal of the History of Medicine "This is a first-rate study of one of the most important American nineteenth-century medical scientists of either sex, one who tackled an amazing variety of issues concerning gender and who wrote about most of them in an extremely prescient way. A gripping intellectual biography."
Barbara Sicherman, Trinity College "It's astonishing that we haven't had a first-rate biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi. Now we do. Bittel's careful research and well-balanced presentation illuminate the ways in which time- and place-specific configurations of class, gender, and professional values can shape individual choices. Jacobi's life tells us much about the world of elite and would-be scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century America."
Charles Rosenberg, Harvard University "At long last, a biography that captures Mary Putnam Jacobi in all her complexity! Jacobi's extraordinary intelligence and keen analytic mind informed her transgressive unconventionality in myriad ways, making her a role model for today's young people who are not satisfied with the world as it is. Carla Bittel's book serves scholarship, history, and all readers determined to follow their own path. Bravo!"
Regina Morantz-Sanchez, University of Michigan "Thoroughly researched and well written. . . . The book's depiction of Jacobi's professional and public lives is flawless."
-Choice
Review
"A major and very welcome addition to the growing literature on the history of women in American medicine. . . . Excellent and closely argued."
-Journal of the History of Medicine
Review
"A pathbreaking biography of the accomplishments of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the premier science-based female researcher/practicioner of the nineteenth century. . . . A must-read; it richly enhances the scholarship in American cultural studies, the history of medicine, and women's studies."
-The Journal of American History
Review
"Finally, scholars have a comprehensive biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi worthy of the most universally respected female physician of the Gilded Age. Carla Bittel deserves praise for….A compelling analysis of Putnam Jacobi's life and achievements that fills many gaps in the historical record….The book appeals…to scholars with a wide range of interests."
-The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Review
"Successful biographies negotiate a perfect balance between the subject's life and the historical context. Carla Bittel has realized such an equilibrium in her groundbreaking study of nineteenth-century physician and feminist Mary Putnam Jacobi. . . . This highly readable study deserves a wide audience."
-American Historical Review
Review
"This study . . . not only gives us a deep insight into the life and work of Jacobi but also weaves together several related fields within the history of medicine."
-Social History of Medicine
Review
"[A] groundbreaking study....Bittel's work stands out for its contextualizing of Jacobi's life....[and] will appeal to a broad range of historians....This highly readable study deserves a wide audience."
-The American Historical Review
About the Author
Carla Bittel is assistant professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.