Book Review – Petticoat Surgeon: The Extraordinary Life of Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen

Historian Maureen Thalmann has penned a fascinating biography about AMWA founder and “petticoat surgeon,” Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen. Based on years of research, the biography takes the reader through Dr. Bertha’s upbringing on the family farm, her early student years in Michigan, her later success as a surgeon, and her final years back at the farm where she continued to practice and write. The book is full of humorous anecdotes – about her personal and professional life. Thalmann has a gift for storytelling that brings Dr. Bertha to life as a vibrant, formidable woman physician who succeeded, against all odds, in a male dominated profession. More than succeed, her legacy has continued to live on through the many “surgical daughters” she mentored and the organization she founded, AMWA, which continues to support and promote women in medicine, now one century later. To order an autographed copy of the book, click here