About the Book
In the spring of 1889, Brooklyn's premier newspaper, the Daily Eagle, printed a series of articles that detailed a history of midnight hearses and botched operations performed by a scalpel-eager female surgeon named Dr. Mary Dixon-Jones. The ensuing avalanche of public outrage gave rise to two trials--one for manslaughter and one for libel--that became a late nineteenth-century sensation. Vividly recreating both trials, Regina
Morantz-Sanchez provides a marvelous historical whodunit, inviting readers to sift through the evidence and evaluate the witnesses. This intricately crafted and mesmerizing piece of history reads like a suspense novel
which skillfully examines masculine and feminine ideals in the late 19th century. Jars of specimens and surgical mannequins became common spectacles in the courtroom, and the roughly 300 witnesses that testified represented a fascinating social cross-section of the city's inhabitants, from humble immigrant craftsmen and seamstresses to some of New York and Brooklyn's most prestigious citizens and physicians. Like many legal extravaganzas of our own time, the Mary Dixon-Jones trials highlighted
broader social issues in America. It unmasked apprehension about not only the medical and social implications of radical gynecological surgery, but also the rapidly changing role of women in society.
Indeed, the courtroom provided a perfect forum for airing public doubts concerning the reputation of one "unruly" woman doctor whose life-threatening procedures offered an alternative to the chronic, debilitating pain of 19th-century women. Clearly a extraordinary event in 1892, the cases disappeared from the historical record only a few years later. Conduct Unbecoming a Woman brilliantly reconstructs both the Dixon-Jones trials and the historic panorama that was
1890s Brooklyn.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Saving the City from Corruption: The Eagle Launches a Campaign
2: A City Comes of Age
3: Becoming a Surgeon
4: Gynecology Becomes a Specialty
5: Gynecology Constructs the Female Body and a Woman Doctor Responds
6: "The Lured, the Illiterate, the Credulous and the Self-Defenseless": Mary Dixon Jones and Her Patients
7: Prologue: Gynecology on Trial for Manslaughter
8: Spectacle in Brooklyn
9: Meanings
Appendix: Bibliography of Dr. Mary Dixon Jones's Medical Writings
Notes
Index
About the Author :
Regina Morantz-Sanchez is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Widely published in the areas of women's history, gender, sexuality, and medicine, she is the author of In Her Own Words: Oral Histories of Women Physicians and Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Review :
"Morantz-Sanchez's thoughtfully written, thoroughly documented book deals with much more than the bare bones of Dixon Jones' story....Excellent."--Booklist
"Riveting and insightful, Regina Morantz-Sanchez...offers a spotlight on a critical series of turning points in public attitudes toward American Medicine and gender roles. Combining sophisticated analysis with page-turning prose, this book will alter definitively the way we think about masculinity, femininity and the professions in the late 19th century America."--William H. Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History
"Regina Morantz-Sanchez breathes new life into an important episode in the history of gynecology. Her insightful narrative of the career and trials of Mary Dixon Jones, an ambitious female physician accused of murder and mayhem, provides important insights into the complicated politics that surrounded women's bodies and female professionalization in the late nineteenth century America."--Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Professor
"A doctor, a woman, a libel case, a trial--the stuff of novels. In this gripping historical narrative, Morantz-Sanchez skillfully weaves these elements into an insightful and contextualized social history pertinent to issues of gender and medical authority still vital to the present day. Highly recommended!"--Judith Walzer Leavitt, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"A major contribution to social and medical history, Conduct Unbecomming A Woman is a fascinating case study that raises important issues about gender, medicine, professionalization, and urban middle-class life at the end of the nineteenth century. Sparkling writing, meticulous research, and acute analysis combine to make this work history at its best."--James H. Jones, Distinguished University Professor, University of Houston
"Conduct Unbecoming a Woman makes compelling reading. Dixon Jones was a 'difficult woman' because she dared to challenge gender stereotypes and traditional ideals of medical professionals. Morantz-Sanchez uses the story of Dixon Jones as a window on a wider world in which professionalism, local boosterism, medical specialization, and gender politics shaped events of drama and spectacle."--Medical History
"In a sensitive and sophisticated analysis, Morantz-Sanchez unpacks the complexities of the Dixon Jones story in such a way that the protagonist's guilt or innocence is almost unimportant....If this trial never achieved the place in American memory won by that other Brooklyn spectacle, the Beecher-Tilton trial, it has happily, been restored to us with its manifold meanings by her cogent analysis."--Journal of the History of Medicine
"[This] book lifts the underskirts of American medicine to reveal many of its long-term hidden problems, including medical malpractice, informed consent, hospital mortality rates, medical judgment, care of the poor, and stretching the boundaries of acceptable medical practice to include experimental procedures. These problems still appear unsolvable and continue to plague medical practice today."--JAMA
"The interweaving of these components draws a vivid, textural picture of medicine as it was practiced in the mid to late 1800's."--Frances K. Conley, M.D., Professor, Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine
"Morantz-Sanchez offers a rich serving of human drama, courtroom contestation, clashing medical therapeutics, and the negotiations of class. In this book, she shows once again how fertile courtroom trials can be for teasing out the murmuring cultural currents of a given place and time. If this trial never achieved the place in American memory won by that other Brooklyn spectacle, the Beecher-Tilton trial, it has, happily, been restored to us with its manifold
meanings by Morantz-Sanchez's cogent analysis."--Cynthia Russet, PhD, Yale University, Journal of the History of Medicine
"Adds to this scholarship in important ways: it focuses in depth on one fascinating, nineteenth-century woman doctor while simultaneously revealing incontrovertibly that an understanding of nineteenth-century women doctors provides a window into the history of nineteenth-century American society as well...[A] significant courtroom drama...[P]erceptive analysis of the tension between gender and professional identity."--American Historical Review
"Regina Morantz-Sanchez has written a richly textured, often riveting history of a highly controversial, though now largely forgotten, late nineteenth-century female gynecological surgeon, Mary Amanda Dixon Jones. However, Conduct Unbecoming a Woman is much more than just that...Though being a relatively focused case study, Morantz-Sanchez has used this brilliantly to her advantage by giving us a comprehensive account of how the cultural meanings of
gender and sex in a particular time and place shaped and were shaped by scientific knowledge and practices. Conduct Unbecoming a Woman is not only the most nuanced examination of the birth of American
gynecology to date, but it is also a path-breaking work that will be a model for future historians exploring the relationships between culture and medicine."--Reviews in American History
"This is a fascinating book and well worth reading, particularly by those interested in the history of medicine and women."--Law and History Review
