An examination of the development of modern medical treatment of women and the related history of women's health in the mid-1800s. McGregor looks not only at the medical figure who devised and practiced the innovative therapies, but also at the history of the patient experience in the development and the professionalization of the medical specialty. In exploring the controversial career of J. Marion Sims, the father of gynaecology, and the history of the Woman's Hospital of the State of New York, McGregor chronicles the emergence of a practice involving previously untried medical techniques...