Petticoat Doctors: The First Forty Years of Women in Medicine at Dalhousie University

Margaret Conrad is a professor of History at Acadia University, author
of No Place Like Home, and editor of They Planted Well: New England
Planters in Maritime Canada.

The path to women’s entry into the medical profession has been strewn
with obstacles. In Nova Scotia, 566 women have graduated from the
province’s only medical school—most in the last two decades. Between
1881, when the medical school first opened its doors to women, and 1933,
the closing date of this study, only 46 women took degrees in medicine.
Petticoat Doctors, written by a 1937 graduate, provides brief
biographical sketches of these pioneer women. Not surprisingly, great
gaps in sources produce an inevitable unevenness in the information
available. Fortunately, several of these women, including the first to
graduate from the school—feminist temperance advocate Annie Isabella
Hamilton, class of 1894—left a rich documentary legacy.

Both scholars and the general reader will find much of interest in the
life stories of these women. Collectively, their professional profile
differed considerably from that of their male colleagues. More than a
quarter of the female doctors worked in foreign missions, and a
significant number practised alongside their husbands or not at all.
Others went on to achieve considerable renown. Most of them married. The
ridicule they faced and the double standard they endured are vividly
recorded here. In the 1890s, for example, female medical students were
forced to intern in the United States because no Nova Scotia hospital
would accept them. This useful reference work contains a list of sources
as well as historical notes on women’s medical organizations and the
Dalhousie Medical School.