Description: From Midwives to Medicine examines the development of modern medical treatment of women and the related history of women's health in the mid-1800s. McGregor looks not only at the medical figures who devised and practiced the innovative therapist, but also at the history of the patient experience in the development and the professionalization of a medical specialty. In exploring the controversial career of J. Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology," and the history of the Woman's Hospital of the State of New York, McGregor chronicles the emergence of a practice involving previously untried medical techniques and the use of experimentation on patients according to a social hierarchy based on race and sex.
Review Quotes: Although the bookÆs topic and arguments are intriguing, it has serious flaws that detract from its overall effectiveness. We can agree with McGregorÆs arguments that æall too oftenÆ medical history has failed to take into accounts æthe relevance of social hierarchyÆ (220), but her sources prevent her from fully developing a response to this critique.-- "Journal of the Early Republic"