author
Alice B. (Alice Bunker) Stockham
1833–1912
An early woman physician and reformer, she wrote frankly about childbirth, marriage, and women’s health at a time when those subjects were often kept quiet. Her work mixed medical guidance with a strong belief in women’s education, bodily autonomy, and social change.
1 Audiobook
Tokology : A book for every woman
by Alice B. (Alice Bunker) Stockham
About the author
Born in Ohio in 1833, Alice Bunker Stockham became one of the earliest women physicians in the United States, building a career in obstetrics and gynecology. She practiced in Chicago and became widely known not only as a doctor, but also as a lecturer, publisher, and advocate for women’s rights.
Stockham wrote books and pamphlets on childbirth, sexual health, marriage, and dress reform, aiming to make practical information available to ordinary readers. Her best-known book, Tokology, helped popularize her ideas about pregnancy and childbirth, and her writing was unusually direct for its era.
She is remembered as a complicated but important reform figure: a physician who pushed public conversations about women’s health into the open, and an author whose work sat at the crossroads of medicine, feminism, and social reform in the late nineteenth century.