(New York Times) – Lydia Reeder’s “The Cure for Women” tells the story of the remarkable Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi.

Determined to train as a physician at the highest level, in 1868 Putnam — a daughter of the prominent New York publisher George Palmer Putnam — was the first woman to persuade the Sorbonne to admit her to its medical school. With one exam left to take as the Second Empire fell, she elected to stay in Paris through the siege.

Back in America, she became a fiercely uncompromising professor of medicine and practitioner of women’s health care alongside her mentors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell at their New York Infirmary and its affiliated Women’s Medical College. (Read More)