From this moment, male doctors became unique, powerful shareholders and experts on women’s bodies—while women’s healing and knowledge were downgraded and dismissed as old wives’ tales. And in the coming years, the professional field of medicine would stratify along gendered lines into doctors on one side, nurses on the other: a world where male superstars performed miracles while female supporting actors mopped up the mess. The role of women was proscribed in medicine as in society, bolstered by the stereotype of the female nurturer: Doctors cured. Nurses cared.
