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

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For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness—a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society.

Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman’s place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges—creating for the first time medical care for women by women.

With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today.

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: Vahe
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: how to get an A on your next book report on women in history
Review: This book is an excellent, information dense book. It has so much fascinating information about women’s history as re the women’s suffrage movement and medicine as an institution. It illustrates the very real fight for women to gain better educations that would both enable them to earn good wages. Women doctors would make moves that served to improve the lives of women in every social class. It also compares how women doctors were viewed and treated in America versus the UK which was quite different. The author pointed out many key figures in the history of establishing avenues for women to obtain MD’s, gain experience and earn money as doctors. Many of them were quakers even though I also noted that none of the early female doctors mentioned were of this group. Women found it much easier to become doctors in the US, but were omitted from gentile society, whereas women doctors in the UK were welcomed in intellectual circles and high society. The early MD students received such abuses from the medical establishment in the UK that they gained a lot of sympathy from the general public. Politicians from the House of Commons supported their cause due to its popularity and it helped greatly that many of the poorest people benefited from the free and low cost clinics set up by these women as they were getting their feet into the profession. I believe that this would be an excellent source of info for anyone wishing to shine a new light on female trail blazers and how they effected change. Florence Nightingale deserves all support she received by the public for her contributions to healthcare but, at the same point in history other women were forcing the doors of the medical establishment open and arguably making far more wide reaching impacts on the health of women and their potential to earn money and free themselves from the patriarchy. Women who were less praised in their lifetime and more easily forgotten with the passage of time

Reviewer: Avonna
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Women in White Coats
Review: WOMEN IN WHITE COATS: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine by Olivia Campbell is a historical biography which follows the lives of three Victorian women who fight to earn MDs from universities in the early 1800’s.This book follows Elizabeth Blackwell MD, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson MD, and Sophia Jex-Blake MD as they fought for first their medical educations and degrees against male prejudice and then strived to improve the health of women and children. Their determination opened doors and led the way for more women to follow.I liked this book, but I was hoping for more. The determination of any trailblazer must be applauded, and these women’s accomplishments are astonishing as each did it in her own way in a repressive time period. The medical descriptions of practices and procedures in the Victorian era covered in this book are fascinating and it is a wonder anyone lived with some of the treatments given, but there is so much detail that the narrative gets bogged down in places. Also, as the story continues, there are friends and acquaintances added which leads to my having difficulty keeping track of who was doing what and where they were located without sometimes flipping back in the story.This was an interesting biography of these determined women.RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars (Rounded up)

Reviewer: Arlene Cawthorne
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent her story
Review: I knew it had been rough for the first women doctors but I had no idea how difficult it really was. I don’t know where we’d be today without their dogged perseverance.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Not my favorite
Review: I like history, especially stories of strong women who made a difference. I really tried to like this book, but the style it was written in dragged a bit. I didn’t have a hard time putting it down.

Reviewer: Linda Battersby
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book
Review: Great book, I enjoyed reading it, I learned about women who lead the way for other women, a good read, please read it

Reviewer: Lois J. Miller
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Interesting.
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Queen Esther
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Incredible medical history that is little known today
Review: I knew – or assumed- that women had a difficult time reclaiming the right to practice medicine, but I had no idea the extremes the first women had to endure to achieve legitimate MDs status. I previously assumed males wanted to keep women out of the profession to keep the lucrative and status benefits to themselves, but it apparently went way beyond this. The prejudice and ridiculous assumptions about women – their smaller brains, their emotionality, their inability to concentrate were used to keep women out of the one place they certainly belonged: women’s diseases and childbirth! Since women in general were reluctant to go to a male physician for these issues, the health of women deteriorated. Women themselves wanted and needed access to female doctors. And this is even true today as I can attest to. I have renewed appreciation for these original women who battled prejudice and ridicule and physical and emotional abuse to open the path for females – I should say re-open – because over the millions of years it was area where only women delivered babies etc. The resistance and persistence they showed in the face of extreme misogyny was amazing. They were true heroines.

Reviewer: D. Swenson
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Well researched. A fascinating read.
Review: “Women in White Coats” is a fascinating and educational read. The author is skilled in his craft and did an excellent job researching and writing about women in medicine. These stories show that no matter the era, medicine is the ‘good ole’ boys club’ and women still have to struggle to prove their worth and expertise to survive in healthcare. If you like reading about history, medicine, and a woman’s place in history this is a must read.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: my wife enjoyed reading it

Reviewer: P. Gordon
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: … 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, etcetcI 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?’

Reviewer: T. Schopflocher
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 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.

Price effective as of Mar 23, 2025 19:03:02 UTC

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