Subtitle: Woman's Medical College and Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850-1998
Author: Stephen J. Peitzman, M.D.
Subject: History of Medicine/Women's Studies
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2815-1
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2816-X
Pages: 272 pp., 30 b&w illus.
Description: A look at the founding, growth, and evolution of the World's first school established specifically to offer M.D. training to women--- The Woman's Medical College and its coeducational successor, The Medical College of Pennsylvania

"Lively, readable, and meticulously researched, Steve Peitzman lovingly and valiantly retrieves the fascinating history of the premiere training institution for women physicians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will join a list of 'must-reads' for those interested in the history of women physicians in the United Statese, as well as appeal to historians of medicine, women, and the professions."-Regina Morantz-Sanches, author of Conduct Unbecoming a Woman: Medicine on Trial in Turn of the Century Brooklyn

"A New and Untried Course is a fascinating and superbly executed study of an important medical school -- richly researched, beautifully written, highly nuanced, and elegantly contextualized in women's, medical, and cultural history. It will become a model for writing the history of medical schools."-Kenneth M. Ludmerer, author of Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care

Before 1850, the field of medicine was almost completely closed to women, who were excluded from virtually every orthodox medical college. In 1850, a group of radical reformist male Quaker physicians and associates founded the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania to offer formal medical training to women. By the 1890s, under the guidance of a series of pioneering women deans, aided by loyal male allies, the school grew into a strong and progressive medical college, renamed the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMC). This development occurred despite the stubborn and at times near-violent opposition of most of the male medical community of Philadelphia.

Steven J. Peitzman describes how WMC survived periods of crisis and instability, making it not only a remarkable experiment in single-sex professional education, but also a rare 19th-century case of female-male collaboration in science and medicine. Other women's medical schools followed the bold experiment in Philadelphia, but, largely for financial reasons, all of these closed by 1921. Through its unique survival, WMC provided rare opportunities for women physicians and scientists to teach and carry out research, while maintaining a secure assurance of medical education free from gender discrimination. Later in the twentieth century, external forces and a wavering sense of purpose led leaders of the school to opt for admitting men to the medical classes and changing the name to Medical College of Pennsylvania.

More than any other medical school history, this book explores the lives and work of the medical students, including African American and Jewish women, who gained admission to WMC by the 1870s. The book is richly illustrated and includes a number of rare archival images.

Steven J. Peitzman, M.D., is a professor of medicine and former archives historian at MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine.