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Dr. Harriot Kezia Hunt
Nineteenth-Century Physician and Woman’s Rights Advocate
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
248 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.80 in, 6 b&w photos
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Harriot Kezia Hunt was a pioneer in a number of ways. The first woman to establish a successful medical practice in the United States, she began seeing patients in Boston in 1835 and promoted a new method of treatment by listening to women's troubles or their "heart histories." Her unsuccessful efforts to attend lectures at Harvard's Medical School galvanized her activism in the woman's rights movement. During the 1850s she played a prominent role in the annual woman's rights conventions and was the first woman in Massachusetts to publicly protest the injustice of taxing propertied women while denying them the franchise.
In this first comprehensive, full-length biography of Hunt, Myra C. Glenn shows how this single woman from a working-class Boston home became a successful physician and noted reformer, illuminating the struggle for woman's rights and the fractious and gendered nature of medicine in antebellum America.
In this first comprehensive, full-length biography of Hunt, Myra C. Glenn shows how this single woman from a working-class Boston home became a successful physician and noted reformer, illuminating the struggle for woman's rights and the fractious and gendered nature of medicine in antebellum America.
Myra C. Glenn is professor of American history at Elmira College and author of Jack Tar's Story: The Autobiographies and Memoirs of Sailors in Antebellum America.
"Harriot Hunt was an important figure in nineteenth-century women's rights and reform movements. During her lifetime, she changed the landscape of medical practices. This is the biography she has long deserved."—Anne M. Boylan, author of The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797–1840
"In this meticulously researched and richly contextualized biography, Myra Glenn recovers the life of an important figure in nineteenth-century medicine, woman's rights, and social reform. Exploring Harriot Hunt's distinctive approach to treating women's ills through 'heart histories,' as well as her literary self-fashioning, struggles to attain professional standing, and outspoken social activism, this compelling narrative brings alive the centrality of gender to antebellum female experience. Hunt may have titled her memoir Glances and Glimpses, but Glenn offers a deep and searching examination of a fascinating life."—Tamara Thornton, author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life
"[A] carefully contextualized account of a remarkable Bostonian and her times . . . The author has afforded us many insights into antebellum American society in general as well as contemporary female medical practice."—Journal of Medical Biography
"Myra C. Glenn’s work on Harriot Kezia Hunt (1805–1875) recovers the life of a nineteenth-century woman doctor and participant in reform movements while examining intersections of race, gender, class, religion, and histories of medicine in Massachusetts as factors that shaped Hunt’s long, fascinating, and under- studied career."—Journal of the Early Republic
"Glenn shines a light on an amazing life . . . Making particular in-depth use of Hunt's autobiography, Glances and Glimpses (1856), Glenn tells the story of an extraordinary life."—CHOICE
"Most people with a passing interest in the history of women have heard of Dr. Harriot Kezia Hunt, but few know more than her name. Hunt has been the subject of encyclopedia articles and one or two journal articles, but Glenn is the first to write a book-length biography of Hunt."—Journal of American History
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