Alice Bunker Stockham (b. November 8, 1833 in Cardington, Ohio – d. December 3, 1912 in Alhambra, California) was an obstetrician and gynecologist from Chicago, and the fifth woman to be made a doctor in the United States. She promoted gender equality, dress reform, birth control, and male and female sexual fulfillment for successful marriages.
A well-traveled and well-read person who counted among her friends Leo Tolstoy and Havelock Ellis, she also visited Sweden and from her trips to schools there she brought back the idea of teaching children domestic crafts, thus single-handedly establishing shop and home economics classes in the United States.
Stockham lectured against the use of corsets by women, made public endorsements of the healthiness of masturbation for both men and women (still controversial when echoed by US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders more than 100 years later), advocated complete abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and believed in women's rights.
Stockham was very concerned with the economic plight of divorced women with children and prostitutes who wanted to get off the street. She felt that these women had no marketable skills and would be unable to support themselves, so she had copies of her book "Tokology", a layperson's guide to gynecology and midwifery, privately printed and gave them to "unfortunate women" to sell door-to-door in Chicago. Each copy came with a bound-in certificate signed by Stockham and entitling the bearer to a free gynecological exam.
Read more about Alice Bunker Stockham: Karezza, Bibliography
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““I couldn’t afford to learn it,” said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. “I only took the regular course.”
“What was that?” inquired Alice.
“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
“I never heard of ‘Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)