Conduct unbecoming a woman: medicine on trial in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn

In 1889, the Brooklyn Eagle published a series of sensationalist reports on Dr Mary Amanda Dixon Jones, a leading gynaecological surgeon, painting a picture ofa conniving woman guilty of malpractice and financial and medical fraud. The Citizen, another Brooklyn newspaper, entered the fray in defence of the doctor, depicting her as a paragon of the late-nineteenth-century womanly virtue of caring. This publicity led to two trials, one for manslaughter and one for libel. Regina Morantz-Sanchez explores how the drama swirling around Dixon Jones discloses geographical, professional, and gender tensions that were becoming more apparent in the period. Morantz-Sanchez follows her colourful summary of the articles in the Eagle and the Citizen with a history of the development of US newspapers in the period, from mouthpieces of political parties to independent, profit-seeking enterprises, and an examination of Brooklyn's relationship with New York City in the years before and after the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883. This is important background for understanding the various political and social factors that fuelled the Dixon Jones case. The heart of the book analyses nineteenth-century medical education, especially the medical training ofwomen; the history ofgynaecology as a surgical specialty; and the role of medical science and medical practitioners in defining women's health. Most interesting are the sections that draw out the relationship between Dixon Jones's pathological studies and surgical practice and the development of her understanding of the origins of women's ill health. Each of these chapters highlights the evident generational differences that arose among medical practitioners and within the larger society, and they delineate the basic lines of MorantzSanchez's analysis, namely that the Eagle's diatribes were not rooted in sex discrimination per se but rather in Dixon Jones's defence of radical, and controversial, gynaecological surgery. The relationships between Dixon Jones and her patients, at least the ones who have left some form of historical record, suggest that patients came to the doctor with some sense of their problem and the potential of a surgical solution. Dixon Jones, in effect, reinforced their beliefs, while they legitimated her therapies. Other patients were less sure of the need for surgery and were often told they had only a short time to live unless they submitted to the procedure. Evaluating the evidence, MorantzSanchez concludes that "Dixon Jones took a kind, but decisively authoritative stance with her patients" (p. 155). So, what happened? Was Dixon Jones guilty of manslaughter? After days of listening to testimony from family members and neighbours of the deceased as well as medical experts, ajury exonerated Dixon Jones. But, the situation did not end there as Dixon Jones pursued a libel case against the Eagle in a court action that, in Morantz Sanchez's words, "milked the dramatic, the sensational, and the sentimental for all it was worth" (p. 166). This trial was much longer than the previous one and delved into more aspects of Dixon Jones's career. On the one hand, New York physicians who met her through formalized, professional contacts regarded her highly, perhaps, Morantz-Sanchez concludes, because they were more interested in defending the emerging specialty than in supporting an individual practitioner. On the other hand, Brooklyn physicians who worked directly with her regarded her as an aggressive practitioner with a grating personality, a characterization that the jury found persuasive. Patients too testified both in her favour and against her. After arduous deliberation, the jury returned a verdict for the defendant. Conduct unbecoming a woman makes compelling reading. Dixon Jones was a "difficult woman" because she dared to challenge gender stereotypes and traditional ideals of medical professionals. Morantz-Sanchez uses the story of Dixon Jones as a window on a wider world in which professionalism, local boosterism,