The Cure for Women Summary and Analysis

The Cure for Women by Lydia Reeder is a richly researched historical account that explores the fierce, persistent battle women fought to enter the world of medicine during the 19th century. Centered on pioneering physician Mary Putnam Jacobi, the book chronicles the scientific, social, and political challenges women faced while attempting to assert their intellectual equality and medical competency in a male-dominated field.

Through the intertwined lives of early female doctors and their opponents, Reeder tells a broader story about bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and the power of evidence-based resistance in the face of systemic exclusion. This book is as much about gender and justice as it is about science.

Summary 

The Cure for Women opens with a deep concern for the state of women’s healthcare and the limitations they faced in accessing dignified treatment. The prologue, “A Desire to Heal,” sets the tone by framing the medical field as not just indifferent but often hostile toward women—both as patients and as aspiring doctors.

The early chapters introduce Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree, who endured ridicule and rejection from male-dominated institutions. Her triumph became a catalyst for others like Ann Preston and Marie Zakrzewska, who took bold steps to open hospitals and colleges dedicated to training women in medicine.

Their work was rooted in the belief that women needed female doctors who could understand and respect their physiology and dignity. In the first part of the book, the emergence of women in medicine is portrayed as a moral and practical revolution.

These early pioneers formed the backbone of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania and other institutions that gave women entry points into the clinical world. However, their path was fraught with setbacks, including aggressive criticism from prominent male physicians.

Doctors like Charles Meigs and Walter Channing argued publicly that women were mentally and physically unsuited for medicine. They relied on pseudoscientific claims and entrenched gender norms to make their case.

The second part of the book shifts focus to Mary Putnam Jacobi, who becomes the intellectual core of the story. Trained in both America and France, Jacobi embodies a new kind of physician: rigorously scientific, fiercely analytical, and unafraid of confrontation.

Her career emerges during a period of rising backlash, with critics like Dr. Edward Clarke asserting that education and professional work would damage women’s reproductive health. Jacobi responds not just with words but with data.

She designs and executes clinical studies that examine women’s physiology, especially around menstruation. She uses her findings to debunk the myth that education harms the female body.

Her award-winning paper, The Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation, offers physiological evidence that changes the conversation around women’s health and intelligence. As Jacobi’s reputation grows, so does her opposition.

She finds herself barred from major medical societies and often pushed to the margins of influential discussions. But instead of withdrawing, she doubles down.

Her advocacy spans both science and civil rights. She fights for better education for girls, reforms in public health, and suffrage.

She mentors other women physicians, pushing them to pursue excellence and resist complacency in the face of systemic marginalization. The narrative builds around Jacobi’s battles within the medical establishment.

Even seemingly progressive institutions, such as Woman’s Hospital, are shown to reinforce male control by allowing male physicians to dominate leadership. Women are relegated to secondary roles.

Jacobi’s advocacy forces a shift in thinking, not just about what women can do, but what they should be allowed to do based on merit, not gender. In the final section, the story explores Jacobi’s late-career efforts.

She continues her scientific work while her health begins to fail, confronting both physical and institutional decline. Still, she remains a commanding presence in the ongoing fight for equity.

She rallies support and challenges regressive narratives. Her final acts reflect a merging of scientific commitment and personal resilience.

Though the story acknowledges the cost of her relentless advocacy, it also highlights the community of women she helped empower. These are women who would carry the fight forward.

The epilogue connects Jacobi’s legacy to contemporary struggles around reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. It reveals how many of the arguments she fought against still linger today.

In the end, The Cure for Women is not just about medicine. It’s about reclaiming authority over women’s bodies and futures through knowledge, solidarity, and persistent truth-telling.

Key People

Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell stands as the pioneering cornerstone of the women-in-medicine movement in the United States. Her admission as the first woman to earn a medical degree was not just a personal triumph but a catalytic moment that cracked open the doors of a field entirely dominated by men.

Blackwell was not merely content with personal success; her broader vision was institutional reform. She was resolute in her belief that women needed access to female physicians and that the male-led medical field was often dismissive or dangerously uninformed about women’s health.

Her strategy was deliberate and institutional—she helped establish women’s medical colleges and hospitals not only to serve female patients but to train new generations of women doctors. While she was inspirational and trailblazing, she was also controversial even among her supporters.

Her ideals often clashed with those of other reformers who favored more pragmatic or scientific approaches. Still, Blackwell’s moral and ideological leadership laid the essential groundwork upon which the rest of the movement built.

Mary Putnam Jacobi

Mary Putnam Jacobi is the intellectual and scientific powerhouse of the narrative. While Elizabeth Blackwell provided the movement’s moral compass, Jacobi was its empirical engine.

Her contribution was distinguished by a rigorous dedication to evidence-based medicine and scientific inquiry, most notably seen in her award-winning paper debunking the idea that menstruating women needed rest. This study, grounded in physiological data, dismantled pseudo-medical arguments used to exclude women from education and labor.

Jacobi’s pursuit of knowledge took her to the École de Médecine in Paris, and her achievements there earned her rare respect even among skeptical peers. However, she was not only a scientist but also a strategic feminist thinker.

She understood that societal views about women’s roles were deeply intertwined with biological myths and worked to untangle those through science. Despite personal struggles, including poor health and the decline of her husband, she remained fiercely active in the public arena.

In her final years, even while facing terminal illness, Jacobi transformed her body into a site of study, documenting her own decline with clinical objectivity. Her legacy is as much about transforming medicine as it is about redefining the role of women in society.

Ann Preston

Ann Preston emerges as a pragmatic builder within the movement. Less recognized than Blackwell or Jacobi, she was instrumental in institutionalizing their ideals.

As a Quaker and physician, Preston combined moral commitment with organizational acumen. She played a crucial role in the success of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania and was among the first women to become a dean of a medical school.

Her work focused on creating spaces where women could learn and practice medicine with dignity and without interference from skeptical male counterparts. She also facilitated clinical opportunities for women, understanding that theoretical knowledge needed real-world applications.

Preston’s leadership style emphasized persistence and collaboration. She was especially skilled at navigating the political landscape of conservative opposition.

She reflects a quieter form of heroism, one that prioritized endurance and the nurturing of long-term institutions over public recognition.

Marie Zakrzewska

Marie Zakrzewska was a vital transatlantic bridge between the European and American women’s medical movements. Originally trained in Germany, Zakrzewska brought a unique blend of continental medical education and reformist fervor to the American stage.

She worked closely with both Blackwell and Preston, but often clashed due to her directness and ambition. Despite this, her commitment to advancing medical education for women never wavered.

Zakrzewska founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children, which became a critical site for female clinical practice. Her pragmatism, organizational skills, and clinical experience gave her an indispensable role in building the infrastructure of women’s medicine in the U.S.

Although sometimes seen as abrasive, her uncompromising attitude was instrumental in resisting the dilution of the movement’s goals.

Edward H. Clarke

Edward H. Clarke is the principal antagonist of the book’s middle section, symbolizing institutional resistance dressed in scientific garb. His book Sex in Education argued that intellectual exertion would damage women’s reproductive health, particularly by causing infertility.

Clarke’s work was influential precisely because it masqueraded as scientific authority. It gave cultural permission to those who already believed women were biologically unfit for higher education or professional work.

His arguments were not based on rigorous data, but on anecdotal observation and sexist assumptions, which made them a direct threat to women like Jacobi. Clarke’s ideas reveal how pseudoscience could be weaponized to reinforce gender hierarchies.

His legacy is one of obstruction and distortion, using the prestige of Harvard and medicine to push regressive ideologies.

Nathaniel Jacobi

Nathaniel Jacobi, Mary Putnam Jacobi’s husband, occupies a more personal space in the narrative. His presence adds emotional depth and complexity.

A fellow physician and intellectual, Nathaniel shared many of Mary’s ideals. Their partnership was marked by mutual respect and support.

As his health began to decline, Mary was confronted with the emotional toll of caregiving alongside her public commitments. This dynamic humanized her character and emphasized the very themes she fought for.

The intertwining of personal experience with professional activism is central to her story. Nathaniel’s illness and eventual decline paralleled Mary’s own health struggles.

Their relationship illustrated the possibility of egalitarian intellectual companionship in a deeply patriarchal world.

Lydia Reeder (as Authorial Voice)

While not a character in the traditional sense, Lydia Reeder’s voice in the epilogue transforms her from a mere chronicler to an active participant in the historical dialogue. By connecting Jacobi’s 19th-century battles to contemporary issues like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Reeder underscores the enduring relevance of her subject’s fight.

Her narrative approach is both investigative and empathetic. It allows historical facts to resonate with modern implications.

Through Reeder, the reader is invited to consider not just what these women accomplished, but why their legacy matters today. She becomes a kind of conduit between past and present.

Reeder reinforces that the “cure for women” is still a work in progress.

Themes  

Scientific Authority as a Tool for Equality

One of the central themes of The Cure for Women is how women used scientific credibility to challenge entrenched gender hierarchies. This theme is powerfully embodied in the work and legacy of Mary Putnam Jacobi.

In an era where men controlled both the institutions and the dominant narratives of medicine, Jacobi insisted on bringing empirical rigor to questions of female physiology. Her landmark study, The Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation, was not only a medical rebuttal to Edward Clarke’s pseudoscientific claims but also a political document.

She deployed clinical data as a weapon to refute the widely accepted belief that education made women sick, especially by impairing their reproductive health. In doing so, Jacobi strategically placed herself within the male-dominated framework of scientific rationalism and outperformed many of her peers.

By operating within the rules of the medical patriarchy but outshining its leaders through superior scholarship, she fundamentally undermined the logic that had kept women out of professional medicine. Scientific authority became a method of activism—her work translated intellectual achievement into social progress.

This theme continues to echo into the present, as the book links Jacobi’s methods to today’s use of data and medical research in defending women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Reeder positions Jacobi as a prototype for feminist science: a figure who didn’t just demand equality based on moral grounds, but proved through evidence that women were fully capable and deserving of professional roles, academic recognition, and self-determination.

Resistance from Institutions and Culture

Another core theme in the book is the organized and sustained resistance that women faced from both institutional powers and the broader culture. From the outset, figures like Elizabeth Blackwell, Ann Preston, and Marie Zakrzewska confronted not only skepticism but outright hostility from the medical establishment.

Prestigious institutions like Harvard and its associated physicians argued that women were intellectually inferior and emotionally unstable, frequently couching these claims in paternalistic language about protecting their fragility. Reeder demonstrates how medical societies, licensing boards, and elite hospitals worked in concert to exclude women or, at best, contain them in subordinate roles.

Even when women managed to build their own hospitals and medical schools, these were often marginalized or absorbed into systems that diluted their original intent. This resistance was not just bureaucratic—it was ideological.

Popular authors like Edward Clarke provided pseudoscientific justification for the belief that education could impair female fertility, a powerful argument in a society that defined women by their reproductive capacities. The cultural weight of such beliefs proved just as formidable as policy and gatekeeping structures.

Reeder underscores that these attacks were systematic, spanning from popular literature to public policy and elite academic discourse. By detailing the backlash against early women physicians, the book reminds readers that progress is often not linear and that advances in rights and inclusion provoke aggressive pushback.

This theme of resistance also serves to highlight the extraordinary courage and persistence required of the women who challenged the status quo—not only intellectually but physically and emotionally, often at great personal cost.

Intersection of Medicine and Feminism

The book continuously explores how the medical movement for women was deeply intertwined with feminist ideals and broader political struggles for equality. Reeder shows that the push for women in medicine was never just about professional access—it was about bodily autonomy, educational equity, and social justice.

Elizabeth Blackwell’s belief that women should treat other women was initially moral and social, but it quickly took on political significance as she and her peers confronted a male medical establishment that treated women’s health as secondary or mysterious.

For Mary Putnam Jacobi, the movement evolved into a more explicitly feminist framework. She saw that the exclusion of women from medical science was both a symptom and a cause of their societal subordination.

By establishing that women’s minds and bodies were not fundamentally inferior, she attacked the root of arguments used to bar women from voting, higher education, and leadership. Her work connected issues of health with those of citizenship and self-governance.

The book also details how women physicians supported suffrage, labor reform, and education for girls—seeing these not as separate causes but as parts of the same structural inequality. In the final chapters, Reeder shows that the community of women doctors extended their advocacy to immigrant and working-class women, especially in public health campaigns.

These physicians used their positions not only to treat patients but to influence public policy, promote maternal health, and challenge gendered power dynamics. Thus, medicine became a platform through which feminist goals were articulated, debated, and slowly realized.

Collective Power and Female Solidarity

A powerful and often emotionally resonant theme in the book is the collective nature of the women’s movement in medicine. While figures like Jacobi and Blackwell are rightly highlighted for their trailblazing roles, Reeder emphasizes that none of this progress happened in isolation.

From the establishment of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania to the running of the New York Infirmary, the book showcases women forming supportive networks, mentoring one another, and building institutions from scratch.

These women were not only allies but strategic collaborators, often pooling resources and sharing hard-won knowledge. During times of intense backlash, such as after Clarke’s publications or the marginalization of women’s hospitals, it was solidarity that sustained the movement.

In the final chapters, as Jacobi battles terminal illness, her continued connection with female peers and protégés demonstrates the emotional and professional strength found in these bonds. Reeder also notes that this spirit of partnership extended beyond medicine.

Women doctors often partnered with reformers, teachers, suffragists, and activists in other fields, creating an expansive community committed to justice. This collective energy proved essential to withstanding both personal losses and systemic roadblocks.

Even when institutions failed them, these women leaned on each other to keep the mission alive. The theme of solidarity is not presented as sentimental, but as practical and essential.

It is a reminder that social change is rarely achieved by individuals alone, and that the architecture of progress is often built by many hands, many minds, and many hearts working in unison.