Women Who Rocked the World: Heroines of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century US America

Since this issue of aspeers explicitly focuses on the topic of American (Anti-)Heroes and Heroines, I began thinking about the relevance of this notion of heroes and heroines in my own work. Moreover, the invitation to contribute to this issue also specified that transnational, intersectional, and transdisciplinary aspects would be most welcome in my contribution. Since I am currently working on the completion (hopefully soon) of a book on doctors/physicians—both historical and fictional—in nineteenth-century US American culture, I remembered a handbook project to which I had contributed a number of essays. The book’s title, Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History (2022), immediately suggests that these women made significant contributions to world history. Their lives were extraordinary in many ways and paved the way for future generations of women—no matter their national, ethnic, class, religious, etc. backgrounds (not only) in US American society. These women, such as Margaret Fuller, Julia Ward Howe, Mary Seacole, or Sojourner Truth, accomplished important work in distinct ways, under very different circumstances, and from significantly diverse social perspectives and positions. Calling them heroines is not only possible but adequate. For me, they have always been heroines because they decided, at a time when this was hardly possible for White women, let alone for Black women, to take their lives into their own hands, overcoming various kinds of obstacles, prejudices, and stereotypes as well as legal and economic hindrances in order to become what they had dreamed of. Each of these dreams was individual, contingent on the respective circumstances, and socioculturally unimaginable.