PETTICOAT DOCTORS: THE FIRST FORTY YEARS OF WOMEN IN MEDICINE AT DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY Enid Johnson MacLeod Lawrencetown Beach (N.S.), Potters field Press, 1990. 128pp, paper, $11.95, ISBN 0-919001-60-2 Distributed by Potters-field Press, R.R. 2 Porters Lake, N.S. B0J 2S0. CIP Grades 10 and up/ Ages 15 and up Reviewed by Catherine R. Cox. Volume 18 Number 6 1990 November Dr. Enid Johnson MacLeod gradu­ated from Dalhousie Medical School in 1937. She practised medicine in Sydney, N.S., and later taught in the Department of Physiology at Dalhousie. The first woman to graduate in medicine from Dalhousie University was Annie Isabel! Hamilton, in 1894. By 1989,566 women had done the same, and it was thought appropriate to celebrate that accom­plishment. This book comes out of that celebration. Doctor MacLeod catalogues the first forty-six women who graduated during the first forty years women were permitted to study medicine at Dalhousie Medical School. There is a picture and a brief biography of each one of them. Some biographies are briefer than others, being mainly the details one would obtain from a news­paper obituary. Others are longer where more information was available. Although I did not expect to, I became quite interested as 1 read these women's stories. Some of them married and never practised medicine. Other had happy lives with no story. Some of these women — the missionaries who went to work in places like China, Manchuria and Korea — had fantastic, adventurous careers. Two of the doctors who went to the mission fields did write books about their experiences. Jean Whittier (1929) wrote My Life's Tapestry and Florence Murray (1919) wrote At the Foot of Dragon Hill. The latter is a book I want to read! This book would have benefited from a ghost writer or a good editor to clean up some of the awkward sen­tences strung together with "and." The bibliography is not informative enough and the research is inconsistent. The biographies are not of anybody famous or "important"; however, they do provide insight into the careers of some intelligent and courageous women in the first thirty years of this century. This book is a little gem that has a place in the women's studies collection in your library. Recommended. Catherine R. Cox, Moncton High School, Moncton, N.B.