Pathways to practice: Women physicians in Chicago, 1850--1902

This dissertation examines women's efforts to become doctors in nineteenth-century Chicago. By focusing on one community, I demonstrate that women pursued a variety of pathways to medical practice. They became doctors without possessing medical degrees, enrolled in the regular Woman's Medical College of Chicago, or graduated from one of Chicago's coeducational sectarian medical schools.; These findings prompt us to re-examine our understanding of the history of women physicians. Previously, historians argued that despite the absence of licensing and lack of educational standards, women---unlike men---could not gain acceptance as physicians without obtaining medical degrees. Acknowledging that women have always practiced medicine, they argued that providing medical care was part of women's gender defined roles, that women practiced medicine as midwives, nurses, or lay healers---not as doctors.; Physician registration records for Illinois show that several Chicago women self-identified as doctors, practiced medicine without degrees, and received official recognition as physicians. Non-degreed women's ability to become physicians reflects changes in and challenges to gendered ideas about medical practitioners and medical practice.; More than half of Chicago's degreed women physicians graduated from coeducational sectarian schools. This finding questions scholars' primary focus on sex-segregated medical institutions as responsible for training women physicians before 1900. Although recent histories recognize that sectarian medical schools played a role in providing women with medical education, especially before the establishment of women's medical schools, the pathways Chicago women physicians pursued suggests that sectarian schools were more significant than we have recognized thus far. Women's criticisms of regular medicine and their desire to improve medical treatment for women and children may help explain their preference for sectarian medical education.; Separatism did not necessarily characterize the experiences of nineteenth-century women physicians. Chicago's women physicians established a vibrant, supportive network that included male advocates, influential laywomen and colleagues from both regular and sectarian schools. Their membership in women's organizations, joint experiences, and common interests allowed regular and sectarian women to overcome gendered barriers and sectarian divisions, collaborate in various efforts to treat patients, improve the health of their communities, and promote success for women in medicine.