Medical Women: Two Essays

Sophia Jex-Blake was not writing theory. She had already done the impossible: earned a medical degree in 1877 despite being told women couldn't be doctors, opened a clinic for women and children because male physicians refused to treat female patients, and fought through mobs that physically assaulted her and her fellow female medical students. These two essays, published in 1886, are her reasoned, impassioned argument for why women belonged in medicine, and why the 'arguments' against them were hollow. She dismantles the claim that medicine is 'unnatural' for women by tracing centuries of female healers and midwives, then dissects the social customs and pseudo-science used to bar women from hospitals and universities. But this isn't dry polemic. Jex-Blake writes as someone who had faced down every obstacle and won, with the quiet confidence of experience. For anyone interested in medical history, women's fight for professional equality, or the long tradition of women refusing to accept 'no' as an answer, these essays remain essential.