“On the Same Footing as Gentlemen”: Inroads into Coeducational Medical Training at the Cleveland Medical College in the 1850s
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article traces the unique set of factors that allowed mid-nineteenth-century coeducation at a medical college traditionally reserved for men. I argue that in the period 1850-1856, a window of opportunity offered a small group of women the chance to pursue medical education at the traditionally all-male regular Cleveland Medical College, at a time when medical training was inaccessible to women. A unique confluence of factors inspired this development, including a temporary fluidity of standards in medical training and practice, rising prospects for women’s access to higher education, the rapidly changing Cleveland urban environment and its progressive women’s network, and the College’s internal dynamics. The female graduates of the Cleveland Medical College joined a pioneer generation of women physicians in the mid-nineteenth-century US who chipped away at long-standing barriers limiting the role of women in medicine.
Source: History of Education Quarterly
Author: Snejana Slantcheva-Durst
Institution: University of Toledo
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4412925871