When Charlotte Perkins Gilman published “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, it was a resounding hit among Victorian readers. What many did not know was that the story was a fictionalized account of Gilman’s own experience with the madness-inducing “rest cure” popular among doctors at the time, used to subdue any sort of mental or emotional complaint brought to their attention by women—or by their husbands. Gilman, in the throes of postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, had undergone the treatment, which unsurprisingly offered her no relief, while in the care of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. She did eventually find relief, however—not at the hands of the male doctors who brushed off her symptoms, but with the help of one of the first eminent female physicians in America, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi.
Lydia Reeder’s monumental The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever recounts the incredible life and achievements of her subject. Somewhere between Jacobi’s adventures in wartime Paris during her medical school days, her unrelenting efforts to open the doors of first-class medical schools to women, and her dogged work for women’s suffrage, she conducted research into women’s menstrual cycles by collecting data from women themselves—the first time any doctor or scientist had done so. As demonstrated by Gilman’s case, Jacobi treated her patients by listening to them and accepting them as fellow partners in their own health.
Jacobi’s research compelled other women to follow; Reeder notes that today, 60% of practicing physicians under the age of 35 are women. Yet it is possible to draw a direct line from the now obviously absurd and cruel “cures” Victorian doctors prescribed for women and the many ways that women’s health care remains lacking 150 years later. Neuroscientists are still confronting research effected by biological determinism and gender essentialism that echo the Victorian belief that women’s abilities are limited by their biology. By restoring Jacobi’s fascinating story to the forefront of the historical imagination, Reeder returns to us a much-needed, inspiring voice that is equally suited to our current moment in time.
