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Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians and the Writing of Medicine
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, two thousand women physicians formed a significant and lively scientific community in the United States. Many were active writers; they participated in the development of medical record-keeping and research, and they wrote self-help books, social and political essays, fiction, and poetry. Out of the Dead House rediscovers the contributions these women made to the developing practice of medicine and to a community of women in science.
Susan Wells combines studies of medical genres, such as the patient history or the diagnostic conversation, with discussions of individual writers. The women she discusses include Ann Preston, the first woman dean of a medical college; Hannah Longshore, a successful practitioner who combined conventional and homeopathic medicine; Rebecca Crumpler, the first African American woman physician to publish a medical book; and Mary Putnam Jacobi, writer of more than 180 medical articles and several important books. Wells shows how these women learned to write, what they wrote, and how these texts were read.
Out of the Dead House also documents the ways that women doctors influenced medical discourse during the formation of the modern profession. They invented forms and strategies for medical research and writing, including methods of using survey information, taking patient histories, and telling case histories. Out of the Dead House adds a critical episode to the developing story of women as producers and critics of culture, including scientific culture.
Susan Wells combines studies of medical genres, such as the patient history or the diagnostic conversation, with discussions of individual writers. The women she discusses include Ann Preston, the first woman dean of a medical college; Hannah Longshore, a successful practitioner who combined conventional and homeopathic medicine; Rebecca Crumpler, the first African American woman physician to publish a medical book; and Mary Putnam Jacobi, writer of more than 180 medical articles and several important books. Wells shows how these women learned to write, what they wrote, and how these texts were read.
Out of the Dead House also documents the ways that women doctors influenced medical discourse during the formation of the modern profession. They invented forms and strategies for medical research and writing, including methods of using survey information, taking patient histories, and telling case histories. Out of the Dead House adds a critical episode to the developing story of women as producers and critics of culture, including scientific culture.
- GenresHistory
312 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 2001
39 people want to read
About the author
Susan Wells
49 books4 followersSusan Wells is an author with a keen interest in law enforcement and emergency response procedures. A graduate of the Citizen’s Police Academy in 2018, she used her knowledge and firsthand insights gained from consulting and interviewing professionals in the field—such as police officers, detectives, EMTs, and medical staff—to create authentic narratives in her writing. Wells is currently working on a mystery/thriller titled Samaritan Sins, which features the same detective team as in her previous book, Secret Lives.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2024
I needed wells to either explain more thoroughly throughout her analysis or just define her ideas better up front!
Like loved the idea of the masquerade gender but how was Ann displaying it.. she kinda just assumes her aud read the work Ann wrote and knows what she's talking about. Whereas it needed to be stated explicitly.
That being said Wells does revolutionize how we think about women medical doctors and how they transformed the medical field through their writing.
Like loved the idea of the masquerade gender but how was Ann displaying it.. she kinda just assumes her aud read the work Ann wrote and knows what she's talking about. Whereas it needed to be stated explicitly.
That being said Wells does revolutionize how we think about women medical doctors and how they transformed the medical field through their writing.
January 7, 2009
In Out of the Dead House: Nineteenth Century Women Physicians and the Writing of Medicine, Susan Wells explores the theses, journals, and written records of women physicians in the 19th Century. She looks at their rhetorical practices as they operate in a masculine - and almost exclusively male - profession. She writes that:
“Women physicians developed distinctive strategies for speaking and writing in a hostile profession. Many wrote as if they were men of the received order: they insisted on the regularity of their medical views and the rigor of their education. These women sometimes argued for a wider sphere for women or claimed that their gender gave them a special understanding of some neglected (and usually undervalued) aspect of medicine, such as hygiene, public health, or prevention. Theirs was a strategy of masquerade: the woman physician wrote as male but did not present herself as ‘a man.’ Instead, she was ‘a doctor as good as any man’; her disguise is foregrounded as a performance, rendered memorable by the special skill she brought to it” (Wells 5).
Wells discusses much of their writing as what she calls "cross-dressed rhetoric" and as "gendered performance." She writes about the ways these women position their discourse so that they can develop a sense of ethos within both the medical community (which regularly scorned their presence and society as a whole.
One thing that fixed my attention throughout the text was the problem of women patients seeing male doctors and the lack of comprehensive medical attention they received as a result of the 'need' to maintain modesty. I'm fascinated by the manuals for women that were published during this period. Before I returned to school, I had a job that allowed me to collect antiquarian books. These types of manuals and guides were among my favorites. The medical/health advice, as well as the rules for proper comportment, come out in Wells' descriptions of the poor health care women received due to a generally poor understanding of women's bodies and health concerns, as well as this reluctance (and often refusal) to disrobe and submit to examinations performed by male doctors. These women doctors were often able to use these situations to argue for the need for female doctors, to establish their importance and status.
“Women physicians developed distinctive strategies for speaking and writing in a hostile profession. Many wrote as if they were men of the received order: they insisted on the regularity of their medical views and the rigor of their education. These women sometimes argued for a wider sphere for women or claimed that their gender gave them a special understanding of some neglected (and usually undervalued) aspect of medicine, such as hygiene, public health, or prevention. Theirs was a strategy of masquerade: the woman physician wrote as male but did not present herself as ‘a man.’ Instead, she was ‘a doctor as good as any man’; her disguise is foregrounded as a performance, rendered memorable by the special skill she brought to it” (Wells 5).
Wells discusses much of their writing as what she calls "cross-dressed rhetoric" and as "gendered performance." She writes about the ways these women position their discourse so that they can develop a sense of ethos within both the medical community (which regularly scorned their presence and society as a whole.
One thing that fixed my attention throughout the text was the problem of women patients seeing male doctors and the lack of comprehensive medical attention they received as a result of the 'need' to maintain modesty. I'm fascinated by the manuals for women that were published during this period. Before I returned to school, I had a job that allowed me to collect antiquarian books. These types of manuals and guides were among my favorites. The medical/health advice, as well as the rules for proper comportment, come out in Wells' descriptions of the poor health care women received due to a generally poor understanding of women's bodies and health concerns, as well as this reluctance (and often refusal) to disrobe and submit to examinations performed by male doctors. These women doctors were often able to use these situations to argue for the need for female doctors, to establish their importance and status.
May 15, 2011
A deep, well-written account focused on nineteenth-century European and American female physicians and the struggles they went through to practice medicine. This was a time when medical schools were first allowing women to study medicine yet most of society was still very biased against the concept of female doctors. The depth of scholarship here cannot be overstated: the author—who won an award for this book—not only presents strong research on the lives and practices of these women, but considers how their experiences as women and female doctors changed how medicine was practiced and how its history was written. A very powerful and much-needed contribution to the historiography of allopathy.
December 5, 2010
A dense, scholarly work examining women practicing medicine and writing science in the 19th Century. Ms. Wells looks closely at the language both women and men in medicine used, comparing to get deep insights into how doctors viewed themselves, and how they negotiated their relationships with their patients and colleagues. By no means a light read, but well worth the effort.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews