Domina

I won't say too much and spoil this for anyone. I just recommend you read it, and learn what it was like to be a woman doctor in the gilded age days. You'll learn something about medicine back then, conditions in hospitals, what women went through, both because of childbirth, unplanned pregnancy, and medical "cures" that did much more harm than good. Dr. Samantha Hargrave does her best to fight the system and give her patients the best care she can, despite opposition.

She also has her share of happiness and heartaches along the way, and you'll be rooting for her to have the happy ending she deserves.

Fascinating story of a girl who, through many struggles, becomes a doctor in the latter half of the 19th century, when medicine was just emerging from its primitiveness. The story takes us from the slums of London, where we meet Samantha, daughter of a zealous Christian preacher, and takes us to New York City, Upstate New York, where she attends medical college, finally to San Francisco, where she opens a charity hospital with the help of her well-heeled friends, and "muckrakes" against patent medicine, all opium-laced, the scourge of Victorian women. We get a sense of what it must have been like for a woman at that time, the prejudices one would have had to overcome, and the development of modern medical techniques. Story was show more fast-moving and always interesting and informative. "Domina" was her title as a female doctor, written on her diploma. show less

I recently found this book again after not having read it since the late 80s. What a fabulous re-introduction Wood's novel is to me. Sometimes you pick up a book you loved as a much younger person and you wonder what you ever saw in it. That's not the case with Domina...still an amazing read!

This is one of the best books I've ever read.

Samantha Hargrave nació en Londres en 1860, en un barrio humilde. Desde muy pequeña se había sentido atraída por el tremendo universo del dolor físico y la esperanzadora posibilidad de su remedio. Así que, cuando creció, no tuvo duda sobre qué quería ser. Sin embargo, estudiar -y ejercer- la medicina durante el siglo XIX resultaba prácticamente imposible para una mujer. Por ello, se vio obligada a trasladarse a Estados Unidos donde, no sin dificultades y humillaciones, logró su ansiado título. Con todo, el camino de su triunfo -la plenitud del amor, el reconocimiento profesional, la lucha por una medicina más humana- sería aún largo y costoso.

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