Janice P. Nimura is the winner of a 2017 Public Scholar award from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the author of the New York Times bestselling The Doctors Blackwell and Daughters of the Samurai, a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in New York City.
"Nimura writes fluidly, and her book is an engaging and
meticulously documented guide not only to the sisters’ lives but
also to the medical practices of their time. We hear about obsolete
medical treatments (intravaginal leeches), student ingenuity
(stuffing medical textbooks under clothes to avoid paying taxes)
and New York trivia (the Blackwell’s infirmary on Bleecker Street
was a former Roosevelt residence). But the greater part of Nimura’s
achievement lies in how she brings new life to the story of two
extraordinary and idiosyncratic physicians who forever changed the
medical profession."
*Danielle Ofri - American Scholar*
"This nonfiction story of the first hospital staffed entirely by
women could not be more timely."
*Seija Rankin - Entertainment Weekly*
"A riveting dual biography of America’s first female physicians...A
compellingly portrayed and vividly realized biography of triumph
and trailblazing."
*Kirkus (starred review)*
"Janice P. Nimura has gifted us with more than a splendid history
of the Blackwell sisters. Gripping, vividly written, and moving, it
is also a surprisingly timely history of the misogynist, limited,
still evolving Anglo-American medical profession."
*Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volumes 1–3*
"Nimura shocks and enthralls with her blunt, vivid storytelling.
She draws on the writings of Elizabeth and Emily in an intimate way
that makes it feel like she knew the sisters personally. Alongside
glaring descriptions of culturally ingrained sexism and
discrimination, the biography also touches on how our standards of
medicine have changed over the decades, showing how even the most
scientific of professions are subject to major culture shifts."
*Jennifer Walter - Discover Magazine*
"Ms. Nimura’s portrait of the Blackwells’ America blazes with
hallucinatory energy. It’s a rough-hewn, gaudy, carnival-barking
America, with only the thinnest veneer of gentility overlaying
cruelty and a simmering violence. It’s an America yearning for
relief from disease, besotted with séances and spiritualism, quack
cures and phrenology; a deeply divided America, with bloody
fissures between rich and poor, North and South, city and
countryside."
*Donna Rifkind - Wall Street Journal*
"The Doctors Blackwell should be required reading in all medical
schools, indeed for anyone who has ever consulted a doctor. This
rousing story of two brilliant and determined nineteenth-century
sisters is also a history of American medicine—how it was practiced
and by whom. That the Blackwells arrived in the United States
during a cholera epidemic and made it their mission to provide
medical care to the underserved, while also promoting the twin
causes of women’s rights and abolition, brings this narrative
hurtling into the twenty-first century, demanding our attention
today."
*Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Margaret Fuller:
A New American Life*
"A captivating biography...In recounting the lives of two ambitious
figures who opened doors for many who came after
them, Nimura casts a thoughtful and revelatory new light
onto women’s and medical history."
*Publisher's Weekly (starred review)*
"All doctors and all patients owe a debt to these eccentric,
determined, brilliant characters, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell,
who found their way across the strange and bloody landscape of
nineteenth-century medicine and transformed it forever, all
brilliantly conjured in Janice P. Nimura’s wonderful book."
*Perri Klass, author of A Good Time to Be Born*
"Even if you know who Elizabeth Blackwell is — the first woman to
receive an MD in the United States — you may not know her sister
Emily’s name. Nimura (Daughters of the Samurai) examines Emily
Blackwell’s brilliance, and how the sisters’ achievements and (at
times contentious) partnership changed the landscape of American
medicine for good."
*Bethanne Patrick - Washington Post*
"The Blackwell sisters took on the medical establishment and won.
They are heroines, not just of their time, but for every age. Their
incredible story has been crying out to be told, and in Janice P.
Nimura they have the ideal biographer. The Blackwells live and
triumph again."
*Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire*
"With the fiercely intelligent, prickly sisters at the center,
Nimura’s engrossing and enlightening group biography is highly
recommended."
*Sara Jorgensen - Booklist (starred review)*
"Nimura has done extensive research on her subjects, using
archives, letters, contemporary writings, and secondary materials
to bring their stories to life... This book is an excellent read
for those interested in the history of medicine and those who enjoy
a well-written biography."
*Library Journal (starred review)*
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