Bonner

“The ironic result of the social and scientific changes that had rocked medical education in North America was a diminution of women’s role in it. Across the Atlantic, by contract, no corresponding decrease in the number of places in the government-run medical schools or sudden raising of premedical requirements or tuition costs to the student affect the women of Europe. . . . It was the laissez-faire structure of American medicine, so long the despair of reforms and the subject of ridicule by Europeans, that made change so difficult and its effects so uneven” (Bonner, 156, 157). “More significant in explaining the failure of the medical women’s movement in America, following its period of greatest triumphs, was almost certainly the prolix and private character of much of the medical, hospital, and licensing structure that served the American profession” (165).