Drawing on a variety of professional publications and personal writings, my paper places Van Hoosen’s notoriety as a surgeon in the context of Gilded Age and Progressive Era conflict over the presence of women in the medical profession. During the 1870s and 1880s, women worked to refute the idea that academic and medical work would harm their reproductive organs, threaten their fertility, and rob them of their femininity. Even as these ideas receded, though, many medical professionals continued to suggest that women should study and practice only “feminine” specialties – namely obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics – and avoid performing surgery altogether.
My paper demonstrates that women like Van Hoosen, who seemed to gracefully and competently combine femininity and surgery, challenged the prevailing understanding of the operating theater as a masculine space. At the same time, they also challenged the prevailing medical conceptions of the female body and the female person, suggesting that “normal” and “healthy” women could enter operating rooms – as well as scientific laboratories and dissecting rooms – without compromising their femininity.
[1] Manuscript, dated 1908, at Archives and Special Collections on Women in Medicine and Homeopathy, Drexel University College of Medicine, 4.