A riddle from my childhood goes like this: A father and son are injured in a serious car accident, and each is taken to a different hospital. As the boy is being prepped for surgery, the surgeon rushes in and exclaims in horror: “I can’t operate! He’s my son.” How is this possible? That the ludicrously obvious answer — the surgeon is a woman — eluded every member of my family except me, a 12-year-old girl, in 1975, makes the subject and the chronology of Wendy Moore’s new book all the more thrilling.

“No Man’s Land” tells the story of the Endell Street Military Hospital, which treated the casualties of war pouring into London during World War I — and which, except for the occasional male orderly, was staffed entirely by women.

“From the physician who assessed the condition of the patients to the surgeon who inspected their wounds, from the radiologist who ordered X-rays to the pathologist who took swabs, from the dentist who checked their teeth to the ophthalmologist who tested their sight, every one of the doctors was female,” Moore writes.

This was as shocking as it was revolutionary. Female doctors were almost unheard-of. Barred from studying at most institutions except for the London School of Medicine for Women, they were relegated to low-status, low-paying jobs in schools, prisons and asylums; most treated only other women and children. None of the men who would come to the Endell Street hospital had ever been treated by a woman before.