"Drawing on rich archival sources and her own extensive interviews with women physicians, Ellen More shows how the ideal of balance informed and influenced the practice of healing for women doctors in America over the past 150 years. She argues that the history of women practitioners throughout the twentieth century fulfills the expectations constructed within the Victorian culture of professionalism.

Restoring the Balance demonstrates that women doctors - collectively and individually - sought to reconcile the interests and culture of women with the claims of disinterestedness, scientific objectivity, and specialization of modern medical professionalism. That goal, More writes, reaffirmed by each generation, lies at the heart of her central question: what does it mean to be a woman physician?"--BOOK JACKET.