Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine

my wife enjoyed reading it

Slow read but interesting history of women in medicine.

… but too many minute details.!!! The epilogue should have been the prologue so that the concise summary of women’s many contributions to medicine both in research, diagnostics, surgical and treatment were stated at the get go. THEN say ‘.. and here is how they got there.’ I grew weary of the back and forth to USA, Edinburgh, Paris, London, Zurich etc. If I grew weary, imagine what these strong women felt. But it became too much detail for the reader . Almost to the point I was going to give up. I also got terribly confused by so many women mentioned —-Elizabeth, Lizzie, Emily, Sophia, etcetc I needed one of those story boards to show who was related to who, who was friends/ lovers with who. In the end I just gave up trying to keep anyone but the two Blackwell sisters straight. *** interesting tidbit… on 2023 Jeopardy Masters Tournament, one of the clues was ‘last name of two sisters Elizabeth and Emily in recent book about women doctors’ I thought no one would guess but Andrew He answered correctly ‘Who are the Blackwells?’

As a nurse I was super interested in the topic. However, the book is dense and I had trouble keeping characters straight. Not an easy read.

This book describes the barriers that women had to overcome, to be recognized as legitimate and competent physicians in a field that was dominated by men. It tells of the triumphs and the disappointments that women endured in their fight to be recognized as equals to men. In the end, they managed to prove that in some instances, they were better than men.