The essays in this collection examine the intersections between gender, medicine, and conventional economic, political, and social histories in Ireland between 1700 and 1950. Gathering many of the top voices in Irish studies and the history of medicine, the editors cover a range of topics including midwifery, mental health, alcoholism, and infant mortality. Composed of thirteen chapters, the volume includes James Kelly’s original analyses of eighteenth-century dental practice and midwifery, placing the Irish experience in an international context. Greta Jones, in an exploration of a disease that affected thousands in Ireland, explains the reasons for higher tuberculosis mortality among women. Several essays call attention to the attempted containment of disease, exploring the role of asylums and the gendered attitudes toward insanity and reform. Contributors highlight the often neglected impact of nurses and midwives, occupations traditionally dominated by women. Presenting a social history of Irish medicine, the disparate essays are united by several common themes: the inherent danger of life in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, the specific brutality of women’s lives at the time, and the heroics of several enlightened figures.

The essays in this collection examine the intersections between gender, medicine, and conventional economic, political, and social histories in Ireland between 1700 and 1950. Gathering many of the top voices in Irish studies and the history of medicine, the editors cover a range of topics including midwifery, mental health, alcoholism, and infant mortality. Composed of thirteen chapters, the volume includes James Kelly’s original analyses of eighteenth-century dental practice and midwifery, placing the Irish experience in an international context. Greta Jones, in an exploration of a disease that affected thousands in Ireland, explains the reasons for higher tuberculosis mortality among women. Several essays call attention to the attempted containment of disease, exploring the role of asylums and the gendered attitudes toward insanity and reform. Contributors highlight the often neglected impact of nurses and midwives, occupations traditionally dominated by women. Presenting a social history of Irish medicine, the disparate essays are united by several common themes: the inherent danger of life in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, the specific brutality of women’s lives at the time, and the heroics of several enlightened figures.

The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental caesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as “medical superbodies” highly suited for medical experimentation. In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white “ladies.” Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities. Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups and thus restores for us a picture of their lives.

The presence of women in the practice of medicine extends back to ancient times; however, up until the last few decades, women have comprised only a small percentage of medical students. The gradual acceptance of women in male-dominated specialties has increased, but a commitment to improving gender equity in the medical community within leadership positions and in the academic world is still being discussed. Gender Equity in the Medical Profession delivers essential discourse on strategically handling discrimination within medical school, training programs, and consultancy positions in order to eradicate sexism from the workplace. Featuring research on topics such as gender diversity, leadership roles, and imposter syndrome, this book is ideally designed for health professionals, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, hospital directors, board members, activists, instructors, researchers, academicians, and students seeking coverage on strategies that tackle gender equity in medical education.

Available in paperback for the first time, this book is the first comprehensive history of Irish women in medicine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the debates surrounding women’s admission to Irish medical schools, the geographical and social backgrounds of early women medical students, their educational experiences and subsequent careers. It is the first collective biography of the 760 women who studied medicine at Irish institutions in the period and, in contrast to previous histories, puts forward the idea that women medical students and doctors were treated fairly and often favourably by the Irish medical hierarchy. It highlights the distinctiveness of Irish medical education in contrast with that in Britain and is also unique in terms of the combination of rich sources it draws upon, such as official university records from Irish universities, medical journals, Irish newspapers, Irish student magazines, the memoirs of Irish women doctors, and oral history accounts.

This book is the first comprehensive history of medical student culture and medical education in Ireland from the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1950s. Utilising a variety of rich sources, including novels, newspapers, student magazines, doctors' memoirs, and oral history accounts, it examines Irish medical student life and culture, incorporating students' educational and extra-curricular activities at all of the Irish medical schools. The book investigates students' experiences in the lecture theatre, hospital, dissecting room and outside their studies, such as in 'digs', sporting teams and in student societies, illustrating how representations of medical students changed in Ireland over the period and examines the importance of class, religious affiliation and the appropriate traits that students were expected to possess. It highlights religious divisions as well as the dominance of the middle classes in Irish medical schools while also exploring institutional differences, the students' decisions to pursue medical education, emigration and the experiences of women medical students within a predominantly masculine sphere. Through an examination of the history of medical education in Ireland, this book builds on our understanding of the Irish medical profession while also contributing to the wider scholarship of student life and culture. It will appeal to those interested in the history of medicine, the history of education and social history in modern Ireland.