I’VE BEEN WORKING on a story that’s set in Ireland during World War II. One character—and I’ve yet to decide if he’s a good guy or bad guy (he’s a little bit of both)—tells my protagonist: “You know what the opposite of fear is, don’t you? It’s abundance.” “You mean only rich people aren’t…
Women can’t be doctors because they’re needed to make tea
“Women’s nerves are too fragile to practice medicine, and they’re needed to make tea.” Where did I find this quote, which in my notes I have attributed to the Journal of the American Medical Association? Usually I’m scrupulous about dates and publications. But it was not an unusual sentiment for the time, which is maybe…
The Physician’s Daughter: Sneak Peek
Chapter One ‘Hysteria is often excited in women by indigestion.’ (On Diseases Peculiar to Women, Dr. Hugh Lenox Hodge, 1860) June 1865 Lark’s Eye, Massachusetts VITA WAS SITTING ON THE front stairs in a shaft of sunlight reading On Diseases Peculiar to Women when they carried the Boston man into her house. Her mother and…