History of Women’s Healthcare

About the Science History Institute

We tell the stories behind the science.

Science is all around us. It shapes who we are and what we do, from the clothes we wear and the phones we carry, to the food we eat and the water we drink. But science has a past—a rich and often surprising past that reveals the origins of ideas and innovations that impact our daily lives.

The Science History Institute collects, preserves, interprets, and shares that past by exploring lesser-known and sometimes overlooked stories from the history of science and technology. And we don’t just mean discoveries made in laboratories. We dive deep into the history of scientific successes and failures, with a focus on expanding knowledge and broadening our understanding of how science and society intersect.

About the class

You know the names of great women in healthcare history, including Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, who famously modernized healthcare while treating soldiers in the Crimean and Civil Wars. But what do you know about the history of women’s healthcare, which also owes its modern origins to the 1800s? In this live, interactive class, we’ll closely examine the story that’s lesser told: the evolution of women’s healthcare from the 1800s through today. You’ll look inside a doctor’s visit from the 1840s, examine healthcare tools of the mid-19th century, and meet some of the doctors, inventors, writers, and activists that shaped the early medical industry and explore their impact on women’s health activism a century later. Together we will meet the unheralded heroes who put women’s healthcare on the map.

Meet your expert instructor, Nandini

Nandini is a gallery guide at the Institute where they research the relationship between colonial expansion, popular culture, and the development of medicine during the 19th century. Their background is in bioarchaeology and art history and they have also studied the development of medical science and its impact on human interactions with each other and the material world. They have conducted archaeological research for projects in the United States, Canada, and Romania and have worked in the curatorial departments of the Wellin Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

**photo credit: Gebbie & Husson Co. Ltd. “The Agnew Clinic.” Paper (fiber product), circa 1889. Courtesy Science History Institute.