Drawing on a unique archive of patient records from the 1850s to the 1930s, Janet McCalman vividly recreates the lives of patients and the daily work of the hospital. She follows doctors, nurses, and patients through times of growth and economic depression, through the grim history of criminal abortion, and through the inspiring story of medical science and surgery since the coming of anesthesia.

Sex and Suffering is a groundbreaking work, telling the often shocking story of women's desperation to gain control over their lives and their health, and of medicine's struggle to comprehend and manage the mysteries of nature. This history of Australia's oldest specialist women's hospital is, therefore, also a history of women in the age of modern medicine.