Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Women in Medicine
An Encyclopedia
Laura Lynn Windsor
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Windsor, Laura
Women in medicine: An encyclopedia / Laura Windsor
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–57607-392-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Women in medicine—Encyclopedias.
[DNLM: 1. Physicians, Women—Biography. 2. Physicians,
Women—Encyclopedias—English. 3. Health Personnel—Biography. 4.
Health Personnel—Encyclopedias—English. 5. Medicine—Biography. 6.
Medicine—Encyclopedias—English. 7. Women—Biography. 8.
Women—Encyclopedias—English. WZ 13 W766e 2002] I. Title.
ABC-CLIO, Inc.
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
Women in Medicine
Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, 1 Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34
Abouchdid, Edma, 3 Bocchi, Dorothea, 35
Acosta Sison, Honoria, 3 Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35
Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4 Bourgeois, Louise, 36
Ali, Safieh, 5 Britton, Mary E., 37
Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5 Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37
American Medical Women’s Association, 6 Brown, Edith Mary, 38
American Women’s Hospitals, 7 Brown, Rachel Fuller, 39
Andersen, Dorothy Hansine, 7 Brundtband, Gro Harlem, 39
Anderson, Charlotte Morrison, 8 Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine, 40
Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, 8
Angwin, Maria Louisa, 10 Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor, 41
Apgar Score System, 11 Canady, Alexa Irene, 41
Apgar, Virginia, 11 Chevandier Law of 1892, 42
Ashby, Winifred Mayer, 13 Chinn, May Edward, 42
Aspasia, 14 Claypole, Edith Jane, 43
Avery, Mary Ellen, 14 Cleveland, Emeline Horton, 44
Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44
Bacheler, Mary Washington, 17 Cole, Rebecca, 45
Bain, Barbara, 18 Comnena, Anna, 45
Baker, Sara Josephine, 18 Comstock Act of 1873, 46
Balfour, Margaret Ida, 19 Conley, Frances Krauskopf, 46
Barnes, Alice Josephine, 20 Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz, 47
Barriers to Success, 20 Correia, Elisa, 48
Barringer, Emily Dunning, 23 Craighill, Margaret D., 49
Barry, James, 24 Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49
Barton, Clara (Clarissa Harlowe), 25 Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50
Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina, 26 Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50
Bayerova, Anna, 27
Biheron, Marie Catherine, 27 Dalle Donne, Maria, 55
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 27 Daly, Marie Maynard, 55
Blackwell, Emily, 33 Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56
vii
Contents
viii
Contents
ix
Contents
x
Foreword
In any arena there is a need for compiled mentors and the impact of previous pio-
data to delineate milestones, identify neers on the subsequent generations. Al-
pathfinders and leaders, and document the though the primary role of this encyclope-
progress. Laura Lynn Windsor has done just dia may be compilation of data for historical
that for the issues surrounding women in research purposes, there may well be those
the profession of medicine. This work who will turn its pages and find encourage-
should be of assistance to those writing or ment for their own dreams—mentors not
speaking on the topic of women in medicine yet met who can bridge across time to en-
and, while the work is comprehensive in courage a young lady to reach further,
data covered, it serves as well as a timely dream bigger, and then just do it!
update on recent additions. Although women who aspire to a role in
As the material is reviewed, it is notewor- medicine may be appreciative of those who
thy that while some may argue that women came before, clearly our patients and com-
have achieved equity, a substantial number munities have much for which to be grateful
of the entries represent the last quarter of as well. From scientific discovery that
the twentieth century and virtually all of the changed lives to commitment to public
entries represent barely a century of effort. health and well-being, women have raised
Although there is work yet to be done, per- standards, created new understanding, and
haps there is encouragement in so much al- touched lives. Ms. Windsor is to be ap-
ready accomplished, challenged and con- plauded for creating an encyclopedia that
quered—dreamt of, then realized. includes so much humanity amidst its data
Throughout these pages, Ms. Windsor and facts.
has done a nice job of identifying important Nancy W. Dickey, M.D.
xi
Preface and Acknowledgments
xiii
Preface and Acknowledgments
the crisis was past and social norms were re- included, such as Rossiter’s Women Scien-
instated, women were again subject to lim- tists in America: Struggles and Strategies to
ited opportunities. 1940 (1982); Kass-Simon and Farnes’s
Women of color have encountered even Women of Science (1990); Sammons’s Blacks
more obstacles in pursuing medical careers. in Science and Medicine (1990); Bailey’s Amer-
There is a dearth of information on women ican Women in Science (1994); Shearer and
of diverse ethnic backgrounds in medicine. Shearer’s Notable Women in the Life Sciences
Some valuable references do exist, among (1996); McGrayne’s Nobel Prize Women in
them Staupers’s No Time for Prejudice: A Science (1998); Proffitt’s Notable Women Sci-
Story of the Integration of Negroes in Nursing entists (1999); Ogilvie and Harvey’s Bio-
in the United States (1961); Morais’s History of graphical Dictionary of Women in Science
the Negro in Medicine (1969); Sammons’s (2000); and Haines’s International Women in
Blacks in Science and Medicine (1990); and Science (2001).
Hine’s Black Women in America (1993) and Some standard sources that are now out
Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in of print but are nonetheless quite useful are
America (1997). The “Women of Color in Hurd-Mead’s A History of Women in Medi-
Medicine” entry explores some of the obsta- cine from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of
cles faced by women of color. I hope in the the Nineteenth Century (1938), Lovejoy’s
years to come there will be more scholar- Women Doctors of the World (1957), Morantz-
ship and information devoted to the histor- Sanchez’s Sympathy and Science (1985), and
ical significance of contributions of men and Alic’s Hypatia’s Heritage (1986). Stille’s Extra-
women of all races and ethnicities. ordinary Women of Medicine (1997), Kent’s
This project has reaffirmed my belief that Women in Medicine (1998), and Hunter’s
very little information can be found on the Leaders in Medicine (1999) are very good ju-
internet for free, and the most abundant and venile books with a select number of the
reliable information still occurs in books, in more well-known women in medicine.
microfilm sets that captured historical docu- We do have a fair amount of material in
ments before they disappeared, on old letters written by women practitioners be-
opaque cards, and in print indexes that may fore 1950. Gelbart’s The King’s Midwife: A
never be converted to electronic format. History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray
However, the internet was very useful in (1998); Morantz-Sanchez’s Conduct Unbe-
providing access to a myriad of electronic coming a Woman: Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-
databases upon which the scholarly world the-Century Brooklyn (1999), which chroni-
relies, such as ABC-CLIO’s Historical Ab- cles the life of Mary Amanda Dixon Jones;
stracts and America: History and Life, the Web and Comfort’s The Tangled Field: Barbara Mc-
of Science, OCLC’s databases, various Clintock’s Search for the Patterns of Genetic
women’s studies databases, numerous Control (2001) are three examples of excel-
newspaper databases, university catalogs lent current biographies.
around the world, legal databases, the ERIC A number of biographies are very good,
site, PsychInfo, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and but many are out of print. There is an obvi-
Health and Wellness Center, to name just a few. ous reason for the lack of biographies and
Other helpful reference sources were Ameri- autobiographies on women. Men who con-
can National Biography, Dictionary of American tributed to the medical field normally had
Medical Biography, Dictionary of National Biog- faculty status at universities with a bit of
raphy, and Dictionary of Scientific Biography, time to write about their accomplishments
along with standard country-specific ency- and personal life; these biographies have
clopedias such as Who’s Who and biography been very valuable to those of us interested
databases—BGMI, Biography Index, New York in the history of medicine. Most women in
Times Obituaries Index, and Palmer’s. medicine, however, have not had the leisure
Current literature on women in medicine to write memoirs. With few exceptions prior
is limited to the broader topic of science in to the twentieth century, many were not al-
general with selected women in medicine lowed to have their own laboratories or any
xiv
Preface and Acknowledgments
academic rank, and even today most how hard it has been to achieve this
women nurses, physicians, and other health progress. Catalogers are the heart of the li-
care workers are too busy working a long brary system. I found things I never knew
day and then, in many instances, caring for existed by simply using the library catalog.
a family. Everyone who works to process and keep
items in order, whether they are books, mi-
Acknowledgments crofilm boxes, photos, or journals, saves pa-
Acknowledging all of the libraries around trons a tremendous amount of time in ac-
the world that assisted with this project cessing the libraries’ treasures. Subject-
would take numerous pages. Many of the specialist librarians who can put their hands
entries would not have been possible with- on information without looking in any cata-
out the help of librarians in the United States log or index are invaluable. Patrons over the
who supplied interlibrary loan materials years who have challenged me with hard
and librarians in other countries who for- questions have helped make me a better li-
warded information from local publications. brarian, able to find sources that didn’t
I’d like to express my deepest apprecia- come to mind right away. I hope librarians
tion to these and other people who work in keep working as hard as they do to make re-
libraries. sources like this one possible.
I know that many writers acknowledge
the phenomenal progress librarians have Laura Lynn Windsor
made as a profession. As a librarian, I know
xv
Introduction
Nature has given women so much power for centuries. King Louis XV respected An-
that the law has very wisely given them gelique du Coudray enough to commission
little. her in 1759 to train midwives all over
—Samuel Johnson, 1892 France, Florence Nightingale organized
medical staff in order to treat soldiers on the
Women as Natural Healers battlefields of Scutari during the Crimean
From the earliest of times, women have War, and Elsie Inglis organized and ran the
been the natural nurturers, healers, and Scottish Women’s Hospitals in World War I.
soothers of those in pain. Taking care of hus- Many of the women in this volume at-
bands, parents, children, or friends, they tained leadership abilities through dealing
have been the tirelessly caring individuals, with the challenges of their profession.
often charged by men to heal the sick in the Nancy Dickey, the first female president of
home. It was only natural that they eventu- the AMA; Antonia Novello, who became
ally desired more medical knowledge in or- the first female surgeon general of the
der to do more, be more, and feel more con- United States; and Gro Harlem Brundtband,
fident in their endeavors. who is the first woman to head the World
In ancient times midwives were the norm, Health Organization (WHO), are outstand-
and for centuries distances between ing examples of what women have come to
birthing mothers and a traditional health achieve.
care institution were far too great to even
consider another health care provider. This Social and Economic Forces
situation changed very slowly; even today, Affecting Women’s Careers
the majority of the world’s population live From the earliest times to the present, forces
in rural areas. Only in the eighteenth cen- besides gender have played a part in
tury, when physicians began to feel threat- women’s long struggle to succeed. In rela-
ened by midwives, did laws requiring li- tively recent times, increased awareness of
censes and the regulation of midwives’ social problems and public health—an
activities become a reality. awareness in large part brought about by
With these requirements came women’s women in the medical field—have created
realization that they could advance beyond opportunities for women to work in their
the restrictions with a better education. chosen professions.
They encountered many problems with ob- As industrialists built factories that trans-
taining the education they were suddenly formed working conditions, crime, poverty,
required to have, but they persevered. pollution, and disease grew with the further
expansion of large urban areas. Social-set-
Women’s Leadership Abilities tlement houses such as Toynbee Hall in
Those of us who look at the history of London, Hull House in Chicago, and the
women in medicine see that women have Henry Street settlement in New York City
also been demonstrating leadership abilities were the beginnings of social activism by
xvii
Introduction
both men and women. Women physicians and the right to vote. They organized to gain
and nurses such as Alice Hamilton and Lil- a voice in a changing world. They formed
lian Wald saw the tremendous needs of the clubs, societies, and regional and national or-
poor and put their training, care, and con- ganizations to advance women’s status and
cern into action. Wald, who founded the to meet the need for social services. Religious
Henry Street Settlement, also formed the groups also played a role in working to help
Visiting Nurses Service in New York City, the homeless and poor.
which served as a model for many other Since so many of the early female physi-
cities. Both Hamilton and Wald believed cians were relegated to working with the
that each person had a right to adequate nu- poor, they saw firsthand the abuse many in-
trition, housing, and working conditions. dustrial workers, especially women and
Like many other women who had gained a children, experienced. Their work to in-
medical education, they utilized their skills crease awareness led to labor unions that
to serve the poor and make cities better worked for reforms in the length of the
places for the growing urban population. workday, restrictions on child labor, and
“Women volunteers saved the American better working conditions.
city at the turn of the twentieth century by Changing economies worked both for
converting religious doctrine and domestic and against women in the workplace. The
ideology into redemptive places that pro- dual-income family began to seem desirable
duced social order at a critical moment in in order to bring about better living condi-
the nation’s development” (Spain 2001, 237). tions. However, many felt women were tak-
Influenced by Jane Addams, one of the ing jobs away from men, especially during
founders of Hull House in Chicago, Hamil- the Depression in the United States. The
ton became a resident at Hull House for work women did during the war years as
many years, tending to individuals as a physicians and nurses did not carry over to
nurse, physician, baby-sitter, housekeeper, peacetime. They came home to their coun-
and teacher. She witnessed firsthand the tries and were not offered work.
health problems created by industry and In 1932 in the United States, the National
authored some of the first reports on the un- Economy Act limited federal civil service to
satisfactory working conditions for men, one member of the family. Thus many
women, and children in factories. She lob- women had to leave government jobs. In
bied for occupational health and safety. Great Britain, the National Insurance Act re-
With the sweeping social-settlement move- duced women’s roles in the workplace.
ment, many “educated middle-class women William Beveridge, the British economist,
who joined the movement were given a “was aware of the value of married women’s
chance to move beyond the traditional con- unpaid work, and wives and husbands were
fines of the home and to enter the working treated differently under the National Insur-
world in positions of leadership, achieving ance Act of 1946. Single women were treated
a level of equality with their male col- like men, but married women were nor-
leagues” (Barbuto 1999, ix). mally exempted from the work related pro-
Even by the early twentieth century, the visions and insured as housewives” (Siim
medical community was still hesitant to hire 2000, 93). Women physicians, despite their
women physicians at hospitals and clinics education and skill, had to play minimal
no matter how good their training was. As roles when it came to working for a wage.
the government became involved in social The birth-control movement also had a
services, regional and national public health large impact on women. As public health
organizations created jobs for women. Many nurses such as Margaret Sanger saw the toll
women, such as Sara Josephine Baker, found frequent childbirth was taking on mothers,
their calling in the public health sector. they begin to feel that more information
As women moved into the workforce, they about sex education and contraception was
became empowered. They wanted the option needed. They fought on through numerous
of working outside the home with equal pay roadblocks in the way of legislation and so-
xviii
Introduction
cietal resistance. The Comstock Act of 1873 on the role of caregiver for their children, it
was a major setback for health care is important to remember that many
providers wishing to provide birth control in women did not accept men as adequate in
the United States, and birth control wasn’t that role. “Not until the founding of the Na-
even discussed in medical schools until tional Organization for Women in 1966 did
1937. “In 1928, the timing of ovulation was a major group contend that men and
established medically, but the safe interval women should share responsibility for paid
for intercourse was mistakenly understood work, child rearing, and housework”
to include half the menstrual period” (CDC (Burstein and Bricher 1997, 161). Acceptance
2000, 326). By 1933, however, family size had of men as caregivers required an adjustment
declined in the United States. When more by both men and women.
women were able to learn about methods for More men have recognized the impor-
limiting childbirth, they realized a career tance of a woman’s role as wife, mother, and
was a viable option for them even if they wage earner as living expenses have in-
had chosen to marry and have a family. creased (Gabor 1995, 46). More are accept-
ing of shared parental responsibilities. In
The Unrecognized Heroes—Men many countries, government, educational,
An encyclopedia on women and medicine and corporate organizations are addressing
would not be complete without a word about the importance of adequate childcare.
the many men who have taken risks to men-
tor women whose potential was evident and Women Extraordinaire
to encourage spouses, daughters, students, The social, cultural, and legal problems
and colleagues to pursue what many of their women encountered in obtaining higher ed-
friends felt was a waste of time. Society owes ucation and medical training have been well
a debt to men such as Samuel Blackwell, who documented over the past several decades.
felt his daughters should have the same good Many had to obtain a medical education
education as his sons; Dr. William Osler, who outside their own country and learn in to-
encouraged Maude Abbott even after she tally inadequate facilities and on the battle-
was relegated to a museum of defective field. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and
hearts following the denial of a faculty posi- many other early physicians served the
tion; and Dr. Alan Whipple, who encouraged poor and homeless because no one believed
Virginia Apgar to go into anesthesiology in- a woman could do the job of a physician.
stead of surgery. Such men exercised a great Many early women physicians were rele-
deal of foresight and genuine concern. gated to nursing because no one would hire
Even male medical students had to adapt them. May Edward Chinn performed biop-
to situations that were uncomfortable. Un- sies in secret in order to help diagnose tu-
like in many other professions infiltrated by mors, and Mary Mahoney became a private-
women, males in medical education had to duty nurse because hospitals would not hire
deal with sharing with women discussions black nurses in the 1870s.
and demonstrations on topics considered These and other women who preceded
taboo in mixed company: anatomy, repro- and followed them found opportunities to
duction, sex. Some objected to the presence contribute. Some, such as Elizabeth Garrett
of women in their institutions, but others Anderson and Elizabeth Blackwell, worked
were accepting, particularly in Europe, within traditional arenas to further their ed-
where many women sought additional ucation and obtain their objectives. Others,
training after obtaining their degrees else- such as Sophia Jex-Blake, fought the general
where. Emily Blackwell, Eva Salber, and injustice they accurately perceived or went
Mary Putnam Jacobi are just a few of the to extremes: James Barry impersonated a
women who sought more clinical training man for an entire lifetime in order to prac-
after their initial medical degree. They were tice her skills.
able to gain that experience in Europe. Over the years, nurses have soothed,
Even if most men were unwilling to take washed, fed, visited, and cared for numer-
xix
Introduction
ous individual patients in a day. Today, they for another strain of polio all led to better
are expected to have the highest standards health and a better society.
and certifications. From the late nineteenth Virginia Apgar’s score system for infants
and early twentieth centuries, they have has been in use for nearly fifty years. Maude
risen from basic helpers to well-educated Abbott became the leading expert on congen-
professionals, thanks to the work of the ital heart disease during her lifetime. Elsie In-
early pioneers in nursing education. Lillian glis and her fellow women physicians trav-
Wald and Annie Goodrich were exceptional eled around war-torn Europe to mend the
professionals who raised public awareness wounded during World War I. Adelaide
and the status of nurses. Hautval treated sick Jewish women in Nazi
Female physicians, nurses, and researchers concentration camps. He Manqiu used sticks
are like other professionals in that they teach and dirt because she didn’t have pencil and
along the way whether or not teaching was paper and found her laboratory cadaver in
their initial objective. Those who see a need the field during the Red Army’s long march
within the profession and have the organiza- in 1935. All these women had heart, determi-
tional and administrative skills take on a pri- nation, character, and a desire to heal the sick.
mary role as educator. Elizabeth Blackwell
founded a hospital and medical college so References: Barbuto, Domenica M., Ameri-
that other women physicians could gain clin- can Settlement Houses and Progressive Social
ical experience. Ann Preston, Emeline Cleve- Reform: An Encyclopedia of the American Settle-
land, and Margaret Craighill all contributed ment Movement, Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press
substantially to women’s medical education. (1999); Burstein, Paul, and Marie Bricher,
Women desperately needed additional op- “Problem Definition and Public Policy: Con-
portunities during the past two centuries be- gressional Committees Confront Work, Fam-
cause it was very difficult or impossible for ily, and Gender, 1945–1990,” Social Forces
them to gain admission to male colleges, 76:1 (September 1997): 135–168; Centers for
nurses were subject to higher expectations Disease Control (CDC), “Achievements in
and needed more rigorous training, and, Public Health, 1900–1999: Family Planning,
most important, women needed the collec- JAMA 283, no. 3 (19 January 2000): 326ff.;
tive voice that could be realized only if they Gabor, Andrea, “Married, with House-
were a part of higher education and related husband,” Working Woman 20:11 (November
professional organizations. 1995): 46–50; Johnson, Samuel, The Letters of
Both male and female medical missionar- Samuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale’s Genuine
ies are one of the most overlooked groups of Letters to Him, vol. 1, no. 157, Oxford: Claren-
physicians. These missionaries were bold don Press (1952); Lorber, Judith, “Why
and dedicated. Once educated, they worked Women Physicians Will Never Be True
with limited medical facilities but in many Equals in the American Medical Profession,”
instances obtained great success. Ida Scud- in Elianne Riska and Katarina Wegar, eds.,
der founded the Vellore Hospital and Med- Gender, Work, and Medicine: Women and the
ical College, Catharine Mabie educated na- Medical Division of Labour, London: Sage
tives in the Congo on the importance of (1993); Siim, Birte, Gender and Citizenship:
good hygiene, and Anna Dengal was tire- Politics and Agency in France, Britain, and Den-
less in treating the poor in India. Society mark, New York: Cambridge University
owes an immeasurable debt to the women Press (2000); Spain, Daphne, How Women
nurses, researchers, educators, and physi- Saved the City, Minneapolis: University of
cians in this volume. Frances Kelsey’s re- Minnesota Press (2001); Yedidia, Michael J.,
fusal to allow thalidomide on the drug mar- and Janet Bickel, “Why Aren’t There More
ket, Alice Hamilton’s copious statistics on Women Leaders in Academic Medicine? The
workers suffering from industrial pollution, Views of Clinical Department Chairs,” Acad-
and Dame Annie Jean Macnamara’s search emic Medicine 76, no. 5 (May 2001): 453–465.
xx
A
Abbott, Maude
Elizabeth Seymour
1869–1940
1
Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour
came to appreciate her work. At this time, Abbott earned only a small income in her
her ambition was to return to Montreal and position at the museum and still longed for
obtain a faculty position at McGill. a faculty position. It wasn’t to come until
Abbott’s first duties when she returned she received an honorary L.L.D. from
to Montreal were in the Royal Victoria Hos- McGill in 1936. In the meantime, she had
pital. It was here that she began research done enough research to begin her monu-
in cardiology and pathology with Dr. mental work, the Atlas of Congenital Cardiac
Charles Martin and Dr. J. G. Adami, respec- Disease.
tively. Soon thereafter, one of the most influ- Abbott’s Atlas, just over sixty pages, in-
ential men in her life, Dr. William Osler, en- cluded excellent plates labeled clearly, a
couraged her to reorganize the pathology comprehensive index, diagrams inter-
museum at McGill. This endeavor led to im- spersed throughout the work, explanations
mense advancement in the medical knowl- of various heart problems, and acknowledg-
edge of the heart. ments of all who had contributed to the
Much of the pathology museum was project. She had accumulated much of the
made up of postmortem specimens, many knowledge for this project through diagnos-
of which showed signs of cardiac defects. ing heart specimens at the request of clini-
Abbott studied the various hearts and their cians all over the continent who recognized
defects and wrote a piece for Osler on con- her as the world authority on congenital
genital heart disease. In this work, she spec- heart disease. Although Abbott tried to re-
ified cyanotic and acyanotic categories, then tain her faculty position beyond retirement
a useful distinction. age, McGill forced her to retire in 1936. Sub-
At the same time, she began to be very in- sequently, her reputation in the medical
volved in the overall operation of the mu- community now secure, she lectured
seum and in promoting the use of cadavers around the country. She received numerous
in anatomy classes in medical schools. She awards and accommodations during her
created the International Association of lifetime, including being named a fellow of
Medical Museums (now called the Interna- the New York Academy of Medicine.
tional Academy of Pathology), an organiza- Abbott’s deep interest besides pathology
tion she remained active in for the next was medical history. She wrote on the his-
thirty years. tory of nursing, the history of medicine in
In 1919 Abbott underwent successful sur- Quebec, and the history of the medical fac-
gery for an ovarian tumor. While continuing ulty at McGill. Abbott never married. After
her work at the museum during World War her grandmother died in 1890, her only fam-
I, she took on the responsibility of editing ily was her sister, Alice, who depended on
the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Af- Maude for financial support. In 1898, Alice
ter Osler’s death in 1919 she began the mon- came down with diphtheria and lost much
umental project of compiling a memorial of her mental capacity. Maude, typically un-
bulletin of the International Association of selfish in all her relationships, tried in vari-
Medical Museums. That famous work, Bul- ous ways to help her sister, but despite her
letin No. IX, eventually became known as efforts and an operation, Alice never recov-
the Osler Memorial Volume, a very well- ered. Maude continued to care for her sister,
received book of over 600 pages that took planning outings when Alice was doing
six years to complete and contributed to the well. They both lived in St. Andrews all of
knowledge of heart disease. their lives.
She was now gaining respect for her sci- Maude tended to be accident-prone. Al-
entific knowledge and diligence. She was though she had worn glasses since she was
offered a position at the University of Texas a young girl, many of her close friends felt
as an acting professor of pathology during her accidents were due to the fact that she
World War I and as an associate professor was very nearsighted and tended to walk
thereafter. However, she remained in Can- with her head down. In Montreal, she col-
ada, as her loyalty was always with McGill. lided with an automobile and two street-
2
Acosta Sison, Honoria
cars. In New York City, she was hit by a taxi. Abouchdid lived during a time of tremen-
None of these accidents, however, caused dous change in Lebanon. Massive human
her serious harm. Abbott died on September losses during the Balkan Wars and World
2, 1940, from a cerebral hemorrhage. She War I pushed women into occupations that
propelled the field of cardiology from the had traditionally been dominated by men in
pathology table toward actual treatment for Abouchdid’s region. During the two world
the living. wars, women physicians with the American
Women’s Hospital Service as well as with
References: Abbott, Maude E., Atlas of Con- other Foreign Service initiatives worked in
genital Cardiac Disease, New York: American Lebanon. Abouchdid attended a conference
Heart Association (1936); MacDermot, in New York in 1953 and expressed grati-
Hugh Ernest, Maude Abbott: A Memoir, tude for the many American women physi-
Toronto: Macmillan (1941); Roland, Charles cians who had spent time in Lebanon work-
G., “Maude Abbott, MD, ‘Madonna of the ing and encouraging others who wanted to
Heart,’” Medical and Pediatric Oncology 35, enter the profession. She died of heart fail-
no. 1 (July 2000): 64–65. ure on October 11, 1992.
3
Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth
There, she worked for a year in the mater- son, Maryland. Alexander seemed much
nity hospital before returning to the Philip- more interested in sports than studies while
pines to work. there but did study bacteriology and physi-
In the Philippines, she worked as an as- ology and graduated with an A.B. degree in
sistant in obstetrics at St. Paul’s Hospital be- 1923. Her degree enabled her to obtain a job
fore obtaining a position at the University of with the U.S. Public Health Service as a bac-
the Philippines in the department of obstet- teriologist. Three years later she worked
rics and gynecology. Women were not well with the Maryland Public Health Service.
accepted in the field at this time, but Acosta The experience gained in these two jobs
Sison persevered and eventually, in 1942, prompted her to apply for admission to
earned the rank of professor and head of the medical school at Johns Hopkins. There,
department. (Her husband, Antonio Sison, more mature and focused, she was an excel-
served as dean of the College of Medicine lent student, obtaining her M.D. degree in
and director of the Philippine General Hos- 1930.
pital.) Like many women physicians, she Her first internship was in pediatrics at
managed the duties of career, wife, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. The second was at
mother. Two of her three children also be- Babies Hospital, which was part of Colum-
came physicians. bia-Presbyterian Medical Center. During
Acosta Sison published extensively in the these internships she witnessed the devas-
field of obstetrics and gynecology and re- tating effects of bacterial meningitis, which
ceived many honors over the years, includ- seemed to afflict so many infants and was at
ing a presidential medal for medical re- the time fatal.
search. Ten years after her death in 1970, the In searching for a better treatment for in-
Philippines issued a stamp in her honor. fluenzal meningitis, a common form of bac-
terial meningitis, Alexander began to build
References: Agris, Joseph, “Honoria Acosta on a successful antipneumonia serum de-
Sison: Pioneer Gynecologist and Obstetri- veloped at the Rockefeller Institute by Ken-
cian,” Journal of Dermatologic Surgery and neth Goodner and Frank Horsfall Jr. By the
Oncology 6, no. 3 (March 1980): 178; Kyle, 1940s the mortality rate for bacterial menin-
Robert A., et al., “Honoria Acosta-Sison,” gitis had dropped significantly in the
JAMA 246, no. 11 (11 September 1981): 1191; United States. She continued her work, ex-
Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of the perimenting with combinations of anti-
World, New York: Macmillan (1957). serums, sulfa drugs, and eventually antibi-
otics, finding a cocktail that nearly
eliminated fatalities.
Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was one of the first to discover
1901–1968 that some strains of bacteria seemed resis-
tant to treatment. With this realization, she
Hattie Alexander was a pediatrician and mi- focused on the genetic makeup of bacteria
crobiologist who contributed to lowering and its importance in understanding resis-
the number of infant deaths from influenzal tance to antibiotics. Her findings also
meningitis. She was also one of the first re- strengthened the theory that DNA held the
searchers to discover that bacteria can be re- key to so many diseases. Later she turned
sistant to antibiotics and thus contributed to her attention to viruses, particularly the po-
the theory that DNA held the key to many liovirus and its RNA, and assisted others at
diseases. Columbia in this research.
Alexander was born on April 5, 1901, in Alexander published numerous papers
Baltimore, Maryland, to William Bain and received much recognition over the
Alexander and Elsie May Townsend. She years. She was the first woman to be elected
was only an average student while attend- president of the American Pediatric Society.
ing Western High School in Baltimore but Her skepticism as a teacher, along with her
went on to attend Goucher College in Tow- stern, formal manner and insistence on ac-
4
Alvord, Lori Arviso
5
American Medical Women’s Association
School. As an educator and physician, she ganization’s request to allow women physi-
strives to incorporate Navajo ways of heal- cians, the American Red Cross did accept
ing into Western medicine, believing that the offer of assistance. Thus the AMWA’s in-
caring, culture, and tradition have a place in volvement in caring for civilian casualties of
the healing process. “As a physician, war abroad became indispensable.
teacher, and mother, she hopes to weave to- Women missionaries and others working
gether two worlds that have so much to of- abroad in the aftermath of World War I
fer each other” (Mangan 1999, A12). alerted the organization to the enormous
She married Jon Alvord and changed her need for physicians in many parts of the
name to her grandmother’s maiden name of world. The AMWA’s physicians traveled
Arviso, thus becoming Lori Arviso Alvord. abroad and set up clinics and hospitals,
She has two children. many in cooperation with U.S. agencies and
with foreign aid agencies overburdened
References: Alvord, Lori Arviso, “Navajo with providing medical care to those in
Surgeon Combines Approaches,” Health need.
Progress 80, no. 1 (January–February 1999): During the Great Depression in the early
26; Alvord, Lori Arviso, and Elizabeth Co- 1930s, the AMWA helped with caring for the
hen Van Pelt, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, sick and underfed in the United States. It
New York: Bantam Books (1999); Mangan, also set up care units for hurricane victims
Katherine S., “Enlisting the Spirit in Medical in Florida and health care, including educa-
Treatment,” Chronicle of Higher Education 45, tion, for pregnant women in rural areas of
no. 42 (25 June 1999): A12. the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and
Virginia. Many qualified male physicians
joined it in these efforts.
In 1940 the AMWA tried once again to
American Medical gain commissions for female physicians, but
Women’s Association neither the AMA nor the army and navy
1915– surgeon general supported the change. In
1943, the demand for physicians was so
The American Medical Women’s Associa- overwhelming because of World War II that
tion (AMWA; known as the MWNA, Med- objections were withdrawn. Dr. Margaret
ical Women’s National Association, until Craighill was the first woman to receive a
1937) was founded in 1915. Even though the commission. She joined the Army Medical
American Medical Association seated its Corps as a major on April 16.
first woman in the same year, many women Today, the AMWA focuses on varied is-
physicians felt that a male-dominated orga- sues ranging from funding for female med-
nization would not address their concerns. ical students to public health care in rural
They established the AMWA to share these areas. It continues to play a major role in
mutual concerns and to learn from one an- promoting women as physicians world-
other. Also, since many women physicians wide.
of the time worked in isolation, the organi-
zation would serve to draw women doctors
into the larger medical community and to See also: American Women’s Hospitals;
give them a voice in this community. Bertha Craighill, Margaret D.; Van Hoosen, Bertha
Van Hoosen was the AMWA’s first presi- References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
dent. The organization did not include mi- Physicians and Surgeons: National and Interna-
norities and medical students until after tional Organizations, Livingston, NY: Liv-
1940. ingston Press (1939); More, Ellen Singer,
In June 1917, the AMWA formed the War Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and
Service Committee, which operated as the the Profession of Medicine, 1850–1995, Cam-
American Women’s Hospital Service. Al- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1999).
though the War Department refused the or-
6
Andersen, Dorothy Hansine
7
Anderson, Charlotte Morrison
from the disease on March 3, 1963. She is Anderson never married. She is retired
best remembered for her work on cystic fi- and lives in Australia.
brosis.
References: Allen, Nessy, “A Pioneer of
References: Damrosch, Douglas S., “Doro- Paediatric Gastroenterology: The Career of
thy Hansine Andersen,” Journal of Pediatrics an Australian Woman Scientist,” Historical
65, no. 4 (October 1964): 477–479; McMur- Records of Australian Science 11, no. 1 (June
ray, Emily J. Notable Twentieth-Century Scien- 1996): 35–50; Anderson, Charlotte M., and
tists, Detroit: Gale (1995). Valerie Burke, eds., Paediatric Gastroenterol-
ogy, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific (1975);
Who’s Who in Australia, Melbourne: Informa-
Anderson, Charlotte Morrison tion Australia (1998).
1915–
8
Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett
9
Angwin, Maria Louisa
10
Apgar, Virginia
11
Apgar, Virginia
herself as a surgeon, especially during the bia to hold the rank of full professor. She
depression. He encouraged her to specialize held that position until 1959.
in anesthesiology because there was a great It was as a practitioner that Apgar became
need for better methods, and at the time, concerned about quickly ascertaining new-
few physicians were specializing in the borns’ physical status. Having seen many
field. heart and lung disorders that she felt could
In 1938 and for the following eleven have been prevented with immediate exam-
years, Apgar worked at Columbia-Presby- ination, she wanted a simple test that even a
terian Medical Center as head of the divi- delivery-room nurse could administer.
sion of anesthesiology. She taught, did re- Apgar developed her score system by de-
search, and continued as a practitioner. termining what needed to be checked im-
During her time there, her workload in- mediately following the birth of an infant.
creased dramatically because so many men Her system has been invaluable in prevent-
left to join the armed forces before and dur- ing further damage from birth abnormali-
ing World War II, and she fought very hard ties. She first presented her method in 1952
for adequate compensation for her work, at the Annual Congress of Anesthetists.
even threatening to resign her position at The Apgar score system did more than
one point. She remained adamant about just help the infants. It also better prepared
equal pay for women until her death. In new physicians and interns to handle a situ-
1949 she became the first female at Colum- ation in which the infant needed immediate
12
Ashby, Winifred Mayer
resuscitation or other emergency care. She challenges, and felt women were liberated
also researched anesthesia agents, believing the day they were born; they just had to be
that local anesthesia rather than general better at what they did to succeed in a man’s
anesthesia was always preferable for in- world or profession. She was unbiased re-
fants. She quit using one of her favorites, cy- garding gender, race, and religion.
clopropane, after research fellows under her Apgar died on August 7, 1974, at Colum-
found that the agent suppressed their im- bia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New
mune system. York City, where she had trained and
Honesty about mistakes, without which worked for so many years. She was in-
there could be no learning, was of utmost ducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in
importance to her, and she emphasized 1995.
honesty to her students. During her surgi-
cal residency, when few admitted any References: Apgar, Virginia, “A Proposal
wrongdoing if an infant died, she secretly for a New Method of Evaluation of the
entered the morgue to check a dead infant Newborn Infant,” Current Researches in
after being unable to obtain an autopsy per- Anesthesia and Analgesia 32 (July–August
mit. She discovered that a small artery had 1953): 260– 267; Calmes, Selma Harrison,
been clamped and that she had done it. She “Virginia Apgar: A Woman Physician’s Ca-
immediately admitted her mistake to the reer in a Developing Specialty,” Journal of the
surgeon. American Medical Women’s Association 39, no.
In 1959 Apgar went to Johns Hopkins 6 (November–December 1984): 184–188;
University to work on a master’s degree in Duffin, Jacalyn, “Apgar, Virginia,” American
public health. She had become increasingly National Biography, New York: Oxford Uni-
interested in doing research on birth defects. versity Press (1999); James, L. Stanley,
While she was there, the National Founda- “Fond Memories of Virginia Apgar,” Pedi-
tion–March of Dimes asked her to head its atrics 55, no. 1 (1975): 1–4; Ogilvie, Marilyn
new division of congenital malformations. B., Biographical Dictionary of Women in Sci-
Although she felt she was not yet qualified, ence: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to
she determined to learn on the job. She also the Mid-20th Century. New York: Routledge
felt she could go no further in anesthesiol- (2000); Wyly, M. Virginia, “Apgar, Virginia,”
ogy at Columbia. She had become inter- Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement
ested in genetics as well, so she finished her 9, 1971–1975, New York: Scribner’s (1994).
master’s degree and took the position in
1960. She stayed with the March of Dimes
for the rest of her career, becoming vice- Ashby, Winifred Mayer
president and director of basic research in 1879–1975
1967 and senior vice-president of medical
affairs in 1973. Winifred Ashby was the first person to de-
Apgar was also extremely dedicated to al- termine the life span of erythrocytes (red
leviating deformities and ailments before blood cells). Her “Ashby method” is in-
birth. She was very concerned about prena- cluded in many hematology books. The
tal care, the effects of radiation on the fetus, technique involves mixing different types of
and nutrition for pregnant women. She red blood cells in patients and following
coauthored a book in 1972 with Joan Beck those cells over time to observe the disap-
called Is My Baby Alright? pearance of different cell types. She con-
She was a much sought-after speaker and cluded that human red blood cells can circu-
was invited frequently to speak at confer- late in the body for up to 110 days. Prior to
ences and meetings. Although she eventu- her work, it was thought that they survived
ally won international recognition, she re- only two to three weeks. Many disputed her
mained an unassuming and modest findings initially, but over time her conclu-
woman. sions were found to be accurate. Her work
She walked and talked very fast, loved went largely unnoticed until the 1930s.
13
Aspasia
14
Avery, Mary Ellen
her M.D. in 1952, Avery developed tubercu- as possible. She is a strong advocate for ba-
losis. She was sent to Trudeau Sanitarium for sic medical service to children of economi-
a year but left after just a few days because cally depressed countries, evidenced by her
she didn’t think bed rest for a year could involvement in UNICEF.
possibly help. She recovered at home and, Avery has served in various faculty roles
during her illness, began to read more about over the years. She worked at Johns Hop-
tuberculosis and other lung ailments. kins until 1969, then took a position at
During her days at Harvard on a research McGill University in Quebec as professor of
fellowship, she discovered RDS firsthand in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital. In 1974
the autopsy room. She spent a lot of time she began work as the physician in chief at
there studying newborn infants who had Boston’s Children’s Hospital while serving
died of RDS, a condition no one then under- as professor of pediatrics at Harvard. She
stood. In order to learn more about lung has written extensively on newborns, re-
function, she began work with Dr. Jere ceived numerous awards, and been a very
Mead at Harvard. busy speaker abroad. She has left a perma-
Together they discovered that a foamy nent mark on the field of pediatrics.
substance called pulmonary surfactant
was lacking in newborns who had died of References: Bailey, Martha J., American
RDS. Avery realized that this substance Women in Science: 1950 to the Present, Santa
was of great importance for newborns to Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1998); Contempo-
breathe normally. She also discovered that rary Authors Online, Detroit: Gale (2000); No-
glucocorticoid hormones assisted with table Twentieth-Century Scientists Supplement,
lung development; they are now given to Detroit: Gale (1998); Shearer, Benjamin F.,
pregnant women who are at risk for pre- and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the
mature delivery. Life Sciences, Westport, CT: Greenwood
Avery feels that research findings must be Press (1996).
disseminated to a wide audience as quickly
15
B
Bacheler, Mary Washington younger ones might eventually benefit from
1860–1939 the missionaries’ religious teachings. In the
meantime, they were helping to educate
The degradation of women in India in the young women, a practice that initiated an
late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- expectation in Indian society.
turies motivated the Free Baptists to move In 1883 Mary returned to the United
into the mission field there. Mary Bacheler, States for seven years, much of that time be-
an active medical missionary in India, car- ing spent at the Women’s Medical College
ried out their work for decades. of the New York Infirmary for Women and
Bacheler was born in New Hampton, Children, where she graduated with her
New Hampshire, on February 22, 1860. Her M.D. degree in 1890. She returned to Mid-
father was a medical missionary and had re- napore and the Brown Dispensary to work
turned with his wife for the birth of Mary, with her father. At one point they were see-
the ninth of ten children. In 1866, leaving ing over 3,000 patients a year. Mary traveled
the other children in the United States, often to homes, as many women were now
Mary’s mother took Mary to India for the willing to let a female physician see to their
first time. There she got an early look at her needs. Her popularity grew so fast that after
father’s work in treating the Indians in and her parents left in 1892, she became totally
around Midnapore. immersed in health care and ministering to
In the late nineteenth century in India, the people. After several years, she suffered
many women were not allowed to permit a a complete breakdown and had to return to
man to examine them if they had an ailment, the United States. Her parents both died
and thus many of them suffered from poor soon thereafter. Her health regained, Mary
health. Medical missionary women like returned to India and her work in 1903.
Bacheler often were able not only to cure the During the next three decades she worked
women of their ailments but also to thereby in various roles as assigned by the Free Bap-
establish trust and win converts to the faith. tists. She oversaw an orphanage, tended to
An earlier development had given the administrative duties, and was tough on
Free Baptist missionaries access to Indian new missionaries, insisting they be better
women. In February 1866, the Hindus be- acquainted with the Bible. She herself en-
gan to allow outside women into the joyed telling Bible stories while she tended
zenanas, the female part of the household. to the ill. She also was a tireless advocate of
Missionary women of the time were al- women’s and children’s health care.
lowed in some instances to gather with She retired in 1933, left India for the last
Hindu women and teach various domestic time in 1936, and died in the United States
practices as well as crafts. Some Free Baptist on November 5, 1939. Her friends and pa-
supporters were disappointed that this type tients in India were still receiving Christmas
of outreach did not bring about many con- presents from her when they learned of her
versions, but Mary was certain that the death.
17
Bain, Barbara
Bain, Barbara
1932–
18
Balfour, Margaret Ida
women. She then turned down an opportu- References: Baker, Sara Josephine, Fight-
nity to intern at the New York Infirmary be- ing for Life, New York: Macmillan (1939);
cause she wanted to work in a large general Morantz-Sanchez, Regina, “Baker, Sara
hospital. However, since none of them took Josephine,” American National Biography,
women interns, she settled on Boston’s New vol. 2, New York: Oxford University Press
England Hospital for Women and Children, (1999); Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists,
whose staff included many very well- Detroit: Gale (1995).
trained women physicians.
In Boston, Baker also cared for outpa-
tients of the hospital who lived in the slums, Balfour, Margaret Ida
in time realizing that she had found her life- 18?–1949
work. She took a practical view of her mis-
sion, concluding that someone had to deal Margaret Balfour was a physician very ac-
with the effects of an unjust society. tive in organizing activities in connection
She attempted private practice among the with the Medical Women’s International
poor but realized she could not make a liv- Association and the Women’s Medical Ser-
ing. Then, after she had worked briefly as a vice in India. She was a leader in foreign
medical examiner for an insurance com- medical services and became an expert on
pany, New York City’s Health Department Indian medical care and facilities as well as
hired her in 1907 to head the Bureau of worked in many African countries. Her
Child Hygiene. It was here that she began prolific correspondence and other writings
her contributions to public health. She could during the early twentieth century alerted
see that giving the poor medical treatment many in the world to the unhealthy envi-
was not enough; legislation, regulations, ronments in many countries, particularly to
and staff adequately trained to work with the needs of women and children in India
the population would be necessary. Because and Africa. She also was indispensable in
of her efforts in training midwives, New organizing medical education for women in
York City achieved the lowest infant mortal- India and Africa. Her book The Work of Med-
ity rate of any large city. ical Women in India was a source on many
Baker was a feminist, a lesbian, and an ac- aspects of Indian social and cultural life. It
tive suffragist. She associated with many in- also documents the progress that had been
fluential and unconventional women made to date and has good statistics on fe-
throughout her life; most of these women male practitioners.
were members of the Heterodoxy Club, Balfour was born in Edinburgh, the
founded in 1912. Members met to discuss daughter of Robert Balfour. Little is known
mutual concerns, women’s rights, and how about her early life and education except
to handle the inequality women were facing that she did attend Edinburgh University.
professionally. Her interests in medicine focused on the
Baker felt it was important to have the health of women, particularly when preg-
public image of an exceptional professional nant, and of children in Asia.
in order to make improvements in public
health. By continually focusing, without References: Balfour, Margaret I., and Ruth
racial prejudice, on the plight of mothers and Young, The Work of Medical Women in India,
children, she was able to influence political London: Oxford University Press (1929);
leaders on their behalf; it was difficult for a Lovejoy, Esther P., Women Doctors of the
politician to be against mothers and children. World, New York: Macmillan (1957); Who
She authored many books and articles Was Who, 1941–50, “Balfour, Margaret Ida,”
and retired to Bellemead, New Jersey, where London: A & C Black (1951); Who Was Who
she had a farm and lived with her partner, among English and European Authors,
Ida Wylie, the novelist, and Louise Pearce, a 1931–1949, “Balfour, Margaret Ida,” Detroit:
physician. She died of cancer on February Gale (1978).
22, 1945, in New York City.
19
Barnes, Alice Josephine
20
Barriers to Success
been problematic. Even in the late 1600s and early twentieth centuries even if they held
1700s, when wet nurses and governesses in- no academic position. This was possible in
creasingly served the upper classes of Eu- disciplines that required no laboratory
rope, women did not find encouragement. work. Few women that managed to achieve
“Women’s desires to engage like men in an appropriate education were equally suc-
productive lives free of the cares of parent- cessful in acquiring the academic position
ing came into conflict with growing beliefs that would have given them access to ade-
that those nations were strongest which had quate facilities for research in certain clinical
the largest population” (Schiebinger 1989, areas. They were nevertheless productive in
218–219). Governments believed that the writing about others’ findings, researching
high infant mortality rate could be lowered the literature of their fields, and using their
only by educating women on infant care own observations and practices, particu-
and having them take care of their own larly in Russia, the United States, and Great
young. Britain. The major focus of their studies dur-
Margaret Cavendish spoke for many in ing this time was pathology, neurology,
the seventeenth century when she wrote physiology, and anatomy.
that “women’s brains are simply too ‘cold’ There appeared to be only four U.S.
and ‘soft’ to sustain rigorous thought” schools—“Michigan, Chicago, and Cornell,
(Schiebinger 1989, 2). This view has contin- and Bryn Mawr College” (Creese 1998, 135)
ued to evolve and wear different faces. —that trained a meaningful number of
“The alleged defect in women’s minds women for medical careers in the late nine-
has changed over time: in the late eigh- teenth and early twentieth centuries. Also of
teenth century, the female cranial cavity was note is Johns Hopkins University, which ac-
supposed to be too small to hold powerful cepted an endowment for its medical school
brains; in the nineteenth century, the exer- in 1889 on the condition that it admit
cise of women’s brains was said to shrivel women as well as men. In other countries,
their ovaries. In our own century peculiari- educational institutions changed even more
ties in the right hemisphere supposedly slowly.
make women unable to visualize spatial re- Many people were against coeducation of
lations” (Schiebinger 1989, 2). Over the cen- any kind, particularly in medicine. Others
turies, many educated men and women felt women were not physically up to the
have held such views. task. Still others argued that women should
Many colleges and universities constantly be educated as physicians only if they at-
turned females away simply because they tended women’s colleges. Women felt that
were women. A few women were able to the public needed to be assured they were
gain admission to appropriate medical col- being trained as well as men and that some
leges, but such admissions were rare even women’s schools would produce—in fact
after Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to they sometimes did produce—substandard
Geneva College in 1847 in the United States. physicians. The Blackwells’ New York Infir-
Many women were able to find the educa- mary for Women and Children and Jex-
tion they wanted only when new occupa- Blake’s Edinburgh School of Medicine for
tions materialized. Physiology, for example, Women accomplished the task of providing
was considered an appropriate area for exemplary training for women physicians.
women because it involved public hygiene Based on the premise that a woman had
and required work in the cities and public to achieve extraordinary training in order to
schools. Since such work was not seen as in enter a man’s domain, the Blackwells strove
men’s domain, physiology became part of for standards higher than those required by
the curriculum in many women’s colleges the traditional medical schools of the time.
in the late nineteenth century in the United The curriculum that evolved at the New
States. York Infirmary provided more clinical expe-
Many women were able to do research rience than was available in the traditional
and publish during the late nineteenth and schools. Women trained there were also
21
Barriers to Success
much more likely to be more experienced able to enter the profession, particularly in
with female difficulties during pregnancy Russia. There, most men entered other areas
and early-birth difficulties than their male of study, and a degree in medicine did not
counterparts. carry the prestige it did in other countries.
Women who wished to be physicians had Except for Chile and Brazil, Latin American
another problem besides education. Even if countries were slow to let women enter the
they could find a school willing to admit profession. A decree by the Chilean govern-
and train them, who would want a woman ment in 1877 allowed women to take exam-
physician, and where would they practice? inations for a profession as long as they
This concern still applies today for many were trained just like men. Chile was well
women physicians around the world. Most ahead of many countries.
women who were pioneers in education, in- In Asia circumstances varied greatly by
cluding Elizabeth Blackwell, had a hard country. In Japan a long and strong tradition
time winning patients in private practice, of women as housekeepers and mothers was
and many hospitals did not accept women crucial. Medical schools for women now ex-
physicians. Numerous women eventually ist, but change came about very slowly.
died in debt or poverty because their prac- China, in contrast, has been very supportive
tice was limited to those who couldn’t af- of women seeking a career in medicine. In-
ford medical care or they provided care in dia has a high number of women physicians,
their own homes for donations. Thus a and a huge percentage in obstetrics and gy-
woman physician’s qualifications became necological care. Many Indian women will
meaningless because no one in the tradi- allow only a female to examine them, and
tional establishment wanted women in the this attitude is well accepted.
profession. In the Islamic world, change for women
Countless women died because they did has been slower due to cultural and reli-
not feel it was appropriate to allow males to gious beliefs and laws. However, since the
examine their bodies. Nuns would not al- end of World War II a few women have been
low an examination by a male. Perhaps this able to enter the medical profession. Within
attitude led to so many women becoming Africa, poverty rather than restrictions
interested in obstetrics and gynecology. against women is the problem. There are
Even some men saw that women might be few facilities for training and working as
better than men in this field, as well as bet- well as a lack of skilled teachers for basic
ter at dealing with children’s ailments. science courses. Australian universities ac-
Laws and regulations in many countries cept women, but medical degrees have typ-
were restrictive regarding who could obtain ically taken six years to attain and thus
medical degrees or certification. In many some females are discouraged early on by
countries the legal system and the church or their parents.
religious beliefs were intertwined, as in sev- The effects of two world wars—widows
enteenth-century England. Women were not needed to find a way to support their fami-
restricted from being licensed as surgeons, lies, and countries needed women physi-
for example, but from the few records that cians to fill in for male medical doctors that
exist, it would appear that women had to went to war or to replace those who were
prove quite superior to their male counter- killed—led some people to see the advan-
parts in order to be approved by the church. tages of preparing women for careers. Soci-
Records show documentation of extraordi- eties also began to see the benefit of a dual-
nary detail for the few women who man- income household, especially when
aged to gain a license. In seventeenth-cen- domestic help became more readily avail-
tury England, licensing “was a barrier which able and affordable in many countries.
prevented women from standing on an Despite progress, however, there are still
equal footing with their male counterparts” those who feel women physicians will never
(Evenden 1998, 212). have equality with men, particularly in the
In Eastern Europe, more women were United States.
22
Barringer, Emily Dunning
There is a “glass ceiling” on women 275, no. 7 (18 August 1966); Burstein, Paul,
physicians’ upward mobility. They are and Marie Bricher, “Problem Definition and
kept from top-level positions, I will Public Policy: Congressional Committees
argue, through the subtle process of Confront Work, Family, and Gender, 1945–
a kind of colleague boycott—not 1990,” Social Forces 76, no. 1 (September
keeping them out entirely, but not 1997): 135–168; Clarke, Edward H., Sex in Ed-
including them in ways that allow ucation; or A Fair Chance for the Girls, Boston:
them to replace the senior members J. R. Osgood (1873); Creese, Mary R. S.,
of the medical community. This Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British
process is the “Salieri phenomenon”— Women in Science, 1800–1900, Lanham, MD:
a combination of faint praise and Scarecrow Press (1998); Evenden, Doreen A.,
subtle denigration of their abilities “Gender Differences in the Licensing and
to lead which delegitimates women Practice of Female and Male Surgeons in
physicians’ bids to compete for Early Modern England,” Medical History 42
positions of great authority. The reason (1998); Gabor, Andrea, “Married, with
men are so reluctant to allow women Househusband,” Working Woman 20, no. 11
into the inner circles, I contend, is their (November 1995): 46–50ff.; Lorber, Judith,
fear that if too many women become “Why Women Physicians Will Never Be
leaders, the profession will “tip” and True Equals in the American Medical Profes-
become women’s work—and men will sion,” in Gender, Work, and Medicine: Women
lose prestige, income and authority. and the Medical Division of Labor, edited by
(Lorber 1993, 63) Elianne Riska and Katarina Wegar, London:
Sage (1993); Rossiter, Margaret W., Women
Others disagree and feel economics will Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies
dictate the need for more women physicians to 1940, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Uni-
because of the growth in the field of health versity Press (1982); Schiebinger, Londa, The
care. Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of
Research has revealed what obstacles are Modern Science, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
most troublesome for women in the medical University Press (1989); Walsh, Mary Roth,
field, including in academia. “The chairs we Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply: Sex-
interviewed painted a broad tableau of fac- ual Barriers in the Medical Profession,
tors constraining women’s advancement to 1835–1975, New Haven, CT: Yale University
leadership positions in academic medicine, Press (1977); Yedidia, Michael J., and Janet
and they identified three sources of barriers: Bickel, “Why Aren’t There More Women
historical developments (e.g., shortage of Leaders in Academic Medicine? The Views
women in the pipeline), broad social forces of Clinical Department Chairs,” Academic
(e.g., gender roles and socialization patterns Medicine 76:5 (May 2001): 453–465.
affecting women’s status), and the expres-
sion of these forces in the medical environ-
ment (e.g., sexism in recruitment and pro-
motion practices, a shortage of effective Barringer, Emily Dunning
mentors for women)” (Yedidia 2001). The 1876–1961
fact that the male-dominated American
Medical Association elected a woman, Emily Barringer was the first female ambu-
Nancy Dickey, as its president in 1997 sug- lance surgeon in New York City and the first
gests that more women can achieve leader- female physician to work as an intern at a
ship roles with administrative power. New York City hospital. She was born Sep-
tember 27, 1876, in Scarsdale, New York, to
See also: Wars and Epidemics; Women of Edwin James Dunning and Frances Gore
Color in Medicine Lang. At eight she found her calling when
References: Bowers, John Z., “Women in she helped her mother after the birth of her
Medicine,” New England Journal of Medicine sixth child. “I truly believe that it was at this
23
Barry, James
time that the great desire was born in me to Between these two irrevocable mark-
help the sick and suffering which later was to ers, the beginning and the end, I was
lead me into medicine” (Barringer 1950, 28). to see every phase of human activity
Emily’s family suffered financial reverses and human emotion, the full gamut of
when she was still a child, and her mother life. I was to see heroism, devotion,
felt her daughters needed an education so loyalty, hard work and honest labor,
that they could support themselves. Emily illness in every form, poverty, hunger,
thought about becoming a nurse, but after cold; pitiless cold in winter, unbear-
listening to a lecture by Mary Putnam Ja- able heat in summer, in the old tene-
cobi, she realized a medical profession was ments reeking with overcrowded hu-
possible. She graduated from Cornell Uni- manity; crime in every form, robbery,
versity in New York and proceeded to the murder, rape; insanity, alcoholism in
Medical College of the New York Infirmary all stages; I was to meet the budding
for Women and Children. She received her gangster, the prostitute and to visit
medical degree in 1904 and married a fellow dives where the underworld held out
medical student, Benjamin Stockwell Bar- and one reeled under the nauseous
ringer. opium-laden air. Industrial accidents
Before receiving her medical degree, she little understood in those days came
wanted to intern at a large hospital, but my way; men suffering “the bends” or
women physicians were not allowed in strange deaths from monoxide poison-
these facilities. She took hospital exams and ing, before preventive measures were
did well but was refused any appointment established. (Barringer 1950, 149)
until 1903, when she went to work at Gou-
verneur Hospital in New York City. She had Barringer did much to set an example not
worked to lobby the mayor, who was in sup- only for women who wanted to be medical
port of women holding physician positions practitioners but also for women who had
if they did well on standard examinations. to fight in order to use their skills and tal-
Several male physicians tried to force her ents in the service of others. She died on
to resign, but because of her good and effi- April 8, 1961, in New Milford, Connecticut.
cient work, she had support from the rest of
the hospital staff and eventually from the References: Barringer, Emily Dunning,
residents of New York City. Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of New York’s
She worked at other hospitals, specializ- First Woman Ambulance Surgeon, New York:
ing in gynecological surgery and later in W. W. Norton (1950); German, Lisa Broehl,
venereal diseases. She was also active in “Barringer, Emily Dunning,” American Na-
various organizations involved in provid- tional Biography, vol. 2, New York: Oxford
ing medical services during World War I, University Press (1999).
particularly those that worked to provide
ambulances in Europe. During World War II
she had a large hand in promoting women’s Barry, James
rights, particularly their right to commis- 1795–1865
sions in the military. Barringer lobbied both
the president and Congress for over a year James Barry’s story is incredible in that she
on the legislation that made it possible for masqueraded as a man all her life, her gen-
women to be commissioned into the mili- der revealed only at her death. She entered
tary and receive the same benefits as men. the British army disguised as a man in 1813
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt after being educated at the Edinburgh
signed into law the Sparkman Act, which School of Medicine. She shied away from
was supported by U.S. senator John Jackson her classmates for obvious reasons. As a
Sparkman of Alabama. woman, she would not have been allowed
Barringer answered thousands of ambu- to study at the university, let alone to prac-
lance calls and encountered birth and death: tice as a physician. During her forty-year ca-
24
Barton, Clara
25
Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina
ive of this effort. Her biggest job during this Cross because in other countries, presidents
time was marking the graves at the infa- served as leaders of the organization. Presi-
mous Anderson Prison in Georgia, officially dent Garfield instead nominated Clara Bar-
Camp Sumter. It was one of the largest pris- ton. She took office and served for the next
ons during the Civil War, and Union sol- twenty-three years, leading the organiza-
diers died daily due to lack of food and tion to relief efforts in many areas.
health care and overcrowding. Barton was praised during the early years
Dorence Atwater wrote to Clara Barton at of the American Red Cross, and she main-
the end of the war when he learned that she tained a small, efficient organization. Her
wanted to find missing soldiers and mark leadership was vital because she had gained
graves appropriately. He had been a pris- the respect of thousands of people who
oner at Andersonville whose job it was to knew of her humanitarian nature and work.
record the deaths of Union soldiers for Con- However, the organization grew far too
federate records. He secretly made his own large for a single woman to lead. After the
copy of the record, fearing that the original Spanish-American War many saw the need
might be lost. He took his copy with him for reorganization. Barton, now nearing
upon discharge and with the information he eighty years of age and feeling the proposal
obtained Clara Barton’s help in identifying a personal insult, disagreed.
thousands of graves and marking them President Roosevelt told her he could no
properly. longer be an officer of the Red Cross with
Most of Barton’s work during this period such unrest surrounding the idea of reor-
was in Annapolis and Washington, D.C., ganization, and a disheartened Barton re-
but she also traveled extensively, speaking signed on June 16, 1904. She refused the
to audiences about her work. She consid- move to make her honorary president for
ered writing a book about all she had seen life with an adequate salary. She retired to
during the war but decided instead to give Glen Echo, Maryland, outside of Washing-
lectures in order to earn a living. She at- ton, D.C., which was her home. She contin-
tended lectures given by other women in ued to be interested in some of the women’s
order to observe and hone her skills. Audi- issues of the time and continued correspon-
ences responded positively, and she found dence with friends and writing in her diary.
the income sufficient to travel and support She died on April 12, 1912, and was buried
herself. She lectured throughout the Mid- in Oxford, Massachusetts.
west and New England until her voice
failed from exhaustion and nervous pros- References: Barton, William E., Life of Clara
tration. She was advised to go to Europe for Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross,
rest and went to Switzerland in 1869. As Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1922); Bullough,
she recovered, she became very interested Vern L., Olga Maranjian Church, and Alice
in the International Red Cross and its treaty Stein, American Nursing: A Biographical Dic-
of humanitarian assistance to all who tionary, New York: Garland (1988); Snod-
needed it in times of war. Barton was as- grass, Mary Jane, Historical Encyclopedia of
tonished that the United States had not Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO
signed this treaty. (1999).
She worked in Europe with some of the
Red Cross volunteers during the Franco-
Prussian War. After returning to the United Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina
States, she worked for years to persuade 1711–1778
government officials that the United States
should join the International Red Cross. The An Italian anatomist, Bassi was an unusu-
American Red Cross finally became a reality ally talented woman from a family that af-
on May 20, 1881. forded her a university education, an edu-
Barton urged President James Garfield to cational opportunity rare for women of the
become president of the American Red time period.
26
Blackwell, Elizabeth
27
Blackwell, Elizabeth
28
Blackwell, Elizabeth
geon. She graduated in 1849 with outstand- lectures to girls, and eventually lectured on
ing grades and became the first female several subjects for a fee. She also met Ann
physician in the United States. Preston, who later founded the Women’s
For practical medical experience, Black- Hospital of Philadelphia (1861). They en-
well set her sights on Paris. She was able to couraged each other in their prospective en-
study at clinics in England and eventually in deavors. Many Quaker women came to
Paris at La Maternité. She was not accepted hear her, and even some men. They were
as a physician, however, but only as an aide. impressed at her knowledge and convinced
She observed the French physicians as they that her views on the importance of hygiene
delivered babies in all kinds of circum- were not to be taken lightly. This work even-
stances, and learned equally from her tually led to her being accepted in the med-
twelve-hour days in the wards and from the ical community. Quaker women and chil-
lectures on midwifery. It was at La Mater- dren also began to come to her office for
nité that she let her feelings be known about treatment. Her practice grew as she worked
using animals for experiments. Throughout both day and night.
her life, she fought vivisection at every turn, She continued to keep in touch with her
a stance that at this time was in the minority. family and to prepare public lectures. Some
On November 4, 1849, she contracted prominent New Yorkers eventually came to
ophthalmia, from a baby she had helped op- support her, such as Horace Greeley and
erate on that morning. After losing sight in many Quaker men of the day. Elizabeth’s
her left eye, she tried several cures. Eventu- sister Emily was at the same time enduring
ally, however, an infection set in and she the frustrations Elizabeth had experienced
had the left eye removed and a glass eye in- earlier. Medical schools were rejecting her
serted. Her right eye remained unaffected, because she was a woman and she very
and she resigned herself to giving up sur- much wanted Elizabeth’s support, which
gery and pursuing general medicine or re- she received through correspondence. They
search. She consulted with family members grew much closer when Emily visited New
concerned about her outlook and her future York in 1852.
and worked to be able to read and write It was not long before Rush College in
well again. Two of her sisters, Marianne and Chicago accepted Emily as a medical stu-
Ellen, wrote to Elizabeth at this time in sup- dent. She completed her studies while Eliz-
port of the women’s rights movement. Eliz- abeth continued to expand her medical
abeth, who had managed to garner some practice. Elizabeth tried again to work at a
support and encouragement in a man’s dispensary in New York but was told a lady
world, felt her sisters were in an antiman doctor would not do. In 1853, she opened
movement and didn’t support their views. her own dispensary in a poor section of
She saw no common thread between town in order to attend to poor women and
women’s rights and education. children.
During her two years in Europe, Black- It was here, in the slums and unsanitary
well had met Florence Nightingale, whose tenement buildings near Tompkins Square,
views on the importance of sanitation had that she saw the effects of unsanitary condi-
profoundly influenced her. In her later life tions. She began lecturing mothers about
she worked to educate people on proper hy- cleanliness and seeing that their children
giene for good health. spend more time outdoors to benefit from
Blackwell returned to the United States fresh air. When she later moved into a house,
ready to practice medicine. She and her sis- she was still receiving abusive, anonymous
ters had won a writing contest, and she letters for approaching the subject of hy-
used the $100 to set up an office, furnishing giene with anyone who would listen.
it herself. Society wasn’t ready for a female Emily visited over a few summers to get
physician, however, and Elizabeth suffered practical experience at Bellevue Hospital as
from loneliness and depression. well as help Elizabeth with her patients.
She resorted to giving physical education They worked well together and learned
29
Blackwell, Elizabeth
from each other, and Elizabeth sometimes On May 12, 1857, in honor of Florence
despaired as to her future when Emily was Nightingale’s birthday, the New York Infir-
away. In October 1854, she decided to adopt mary for Women and Children officially
a daughter. Katharine Barry, a seven-year- opened with Dr. Marie as the resident
old Irish child, became her daughter and physician, Dr. Emily as the surgeon, and Dr.
treasured lifelong companion. Over the Elizabeth as director. Within a month the
years, Katharine was Elizabeth’s accoun- beds were filled with patients from all
tant, secretary, and housekeeper as well. backgrounds and speaking many different
In that same year, Emily obtained her languages.
medical degree from Western Reserve Col- Troubles still lay ahead. Elizabeth contin-
lege. Elizabeth was still in New York and ued her lectures for the money they contin-
met Marie Zakrzewska, a Pole who had ued to bring in. The infirmary was saved
been working as a midwife in Germany. She from burning down when the wind hap-
had been told to see Elizabeth Blackwell if pened to change direction. A patient died of
she was interested in getting a medical de- puerperal fever, and the relatives formed a
gree. The timing was good, as Blackwell mob outside, threatening the physicians
was in need of an assistant and at the same and claiming the death was their fault. A
time could help Zakrzewska qualify for en- similar incident occurred when a patient
trance into Western Reserve College. died from a ruptured appendix. This time a
At this time, Blackwell already had her male physician who had been consulted on
sights set on opening her own hospital. the case quieted the mob. Over time, people
With Marie’s arrival, she felt she could began to trust these women doctors.
count on three women in her endeavor: her- One of Elizabeth’s noble causes was to
self; Emily, who was getting very good clin- give female physicians fresh out of medical
ical experience in Europe; and Marie when school a chance for some clinical practice,
she graduated from medical school. Her pri- an opportunity that was rare in the United
vate practice was still yielding a small in- States when she had graduated from med-
come. She had moved her dispensary to a ical school. The infirmary thus became the
better location, and she obtained a charter to great opportunity for many women physi-
operate a hospital. Setbacks postponed her cians who had graduated from the New En-
plans. In 1855 she had to close the dispen- gland Female Medical College in Boston
sary for a time in order to transform it into and the Women’s Medical College of Penn-
the hospital she wanted, and she had diffi- sylvania in Philadelphia, respectively. Eliz-
culty raising the needed funds. She contin- abeth, Emily, and Marie held clinics for
ued lecturing the public on sanitation and these new graduates, and later began train-
informing those who would listen of her ing nurses. Blackwell was very particular
plans. She continued to receive information about qualifications for the nurses’ training
on medical advances from Emily, informa- program.
tion that she incorporated into her public Although other members of their family
lectures. were firmly behind the women’s move-
The first to help in her campaign for a hos- ment, Elizabeth and Emily remained distant
pital were her fellow Quakers, who raised from the cause, refusing to become a haven
money through their sewing skills. The for the movement. They focused on estab-
money came very slowly at first, but when lishing sound medical practices to prove
Marie got out of medical school with her themselves to the public. As the infirmary
diploma, she traveled in support of the cause became well grounded and funded after a
and was also successful in raising money year of doubts, Blackwell looked to En-
from some influential New Yorkers. Eliza- gland, where she’d been asked to speak on
beth and Marie bought a house to turn into a women’s progress in the medical field in the
hospital. Emily went to England to further United States. She decided she could con-
her studies, and when she returned, the tribute to the cause of medical education for
three were ready to embark on their project. women in England, a contentious issue
30
Blackwell, Elizabeth
there. In 1859, she became the first woman to the front because of her rank of lieutenant
in Great Britain accredited as a physician. in the army. Walker was captured at one
Several prominent people, including Lady point but was exchanged for a man fairly
Byron, wanted Blackwell to stay in England quickly. Both Blackwell sisters were work-
and begin a teaching hospital there. Black- ing long hours at the infirmary as well as
well thought the idea was premature and being involved with the Women’s Central
wanted to go back to the United States and Relief Association, which met frequently at
continue her work as a medical-education Cooper Union.
reformer. The Union Conscription Act of 1863,
She visited France and some of the men- which made it possible for rich draftees to
tal institutions to which Dorothea Dix had buy their way out of the federal army for
drawn so much attention. She also visited $300 (leaving the burden of service to freed
Florence Nightingale, now ill but working slaves and immigrants), caused riots in
toward her plans for the future Nightin- New York. The Blackwells were shocked by
gale Training School for Nurses at St. white patients’ demands that black patients
Thomas’s Hospital. Blackwell became a be excluded from the infirmary. Their infir-
much-requested speaker on women’s med- mary, like orphanages and churches, served
ical care and medical education. She was as a place for blacks to hide from the torture
well respected also among poor mothers inflicted by some whites. The infirmary
who needed her guidance. somehow survived the threats of destruc-
On her return to New York, Blackwell tion during the four-day period of the Draft
found that Zakrzewska had left the infir- Riots, which also were fueled by Northern-
mary to take a position in Boston only to ers’ fears that blacks who had been freed
find it didn’t meet her expectations. She would take their jobs.
thus eventually founded the New England Elizabeth corresponded a little during
Hospital for Women and Children in 1862 this time with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,
and did very well in private practice. who had received her apothecary license in
The infirmary was still successful. Eliza- England. Blackwell had inspired Anderson
beth and Emily obtained new quarters for when she lectured in England, and Black-
the hospital and began making some head- well was gratified that progress was taking
way financially. Elizabeth was not as inter- place in that country.
ested in practicing medicine as in lecturing With the end of the Civil War, Blackwell
and educating the masses about hygiene. realized that women had earned some
She also was ready to plan for adding a recognition for their contributions in the
medical college for women to the hospital. medical field. Women still found it difficult,
The trustees of the infirmary were strongly however, to find schools and hospitals that
supportive of this effort. would accept them. She also felt that even
The plans for a medical college had to be long-established medical schools did not of-
postponed when the Civil War broke out. fer adequate academic and clinical training.
Elizabeth and Emily had both opposed slav- She devised an educational curriculum for
ery since their early days with their father her infirmary that was extremely regi-
and offered their infirmary in support of the mented with three years of medical school-
Union’s cause. They set about to prepare as ing as the minimum in addition to rigorous
many women as possible for the nursing clinical training. The trustees asked for a
field. They sent women who seemed suited college charter and the college officially
for training to their infirmary, Bellevue, or opened its doors in 1868.
New York Hospital. They would then go to Medical advances at the time included in-
Washington, where Dorothea Dix was the oculations for some diseases. In opposition
superintendent of nurses. to most of her colleagues, however, Black-
Elizabeth followed the progress of the well refused to support some kinds of inoc-
war with great interest. Mary E. Walker, a ulation. She was influenced in this view by
surgeon, impressed her by managing to get the fact that a baby she had vaccinated had
31
Blackwell, Elizabeth
died. As she noted, “Although I have al- led a rather nomadic life. During this time,
ways continued to vaccinate when desired, though, she felt she could reform through
I am strongly opposed to every form of in- writing. Her book Counsel to Parents on the
oculation of attenuated virus, as an unfortu- Moral Education of Their Children in Relation
nate though well-meaning fallacy of med- to Sex at first did not find a publisher, but
ical prejudice” (Blackwell 1895, 240). she persisted. The book was eventually
The infirmary began to be held in high re- published and went through several edi-
gard as graduates obtained positions at tions. Blackwell also was appointed profes-
prestigious colleges. The women’s move- sor of gynecology at the London School of
ment was also beginning to open new doors Medicine for Women in 1875. She continued
for women. At the same time, the struggle to teach off and on there until 1907.
was continuing in England, and it was here In 1878 she and her daughter traveled to
that Elizabeth felt she could contribute to France, and on return to England, they
the cause. Upon arriving in England in 1869, found a suitable house on the English Chan-
she became very involved in social and nel at Hastings. Her health improved, and
moral reforms. She became very disturbed she continued to campaign for public hy-
about the disparity between the wealthy giene and moral reform. Numerous family
and the poor, which drove her to continue members, friends, and physicians, as well as
education in public hygiene and the preven- many male and female medical school stu-
tion of disease. She was well ahead of her dents in England and graduates of her infir-
time in seeing the worth of prevention as mary in New York, were guests in her new
opposed to cure, her battle cry for the rest of home.
her life. Two of Blackwell’s sisters, Marianne and
While she continued her lectures, she Anna, came to live near her in England.
formed the National Health Society in Eng- They were both suffering from failing
land, which began promoting public health health. At this time, Elizabeth set out to free
and hygiene issues. Blackwell also took an the local government of corruption, an ef-
interest in three other women who were in fort that on occasion stirred up both Tories
her field: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Liberals. She also tried to have the
Sophia Jex-Blake, and Mary Putnam, who brothels closed because of unsanitary condi-
had taken her medical degree and was cur- tions.
rently working at the infirmary in New During the 1880s and 1890s, she was un-
York. Blackwell encouraged them all, corre- wavering in fighting for her causes, and she
sponding all her life with women who wrote extensively from her lectures as well
needed her support. as kept up her correspondence. In the 1890s,
Elizabeth’s mother died in 1870, and al- some of her friends died. Then in 1900, her
though most of her remaining family was sister Anna died, followed in 1901 by
still in the United States, Elizabeth felt she Samuel and Ellen.
was beginning to put down roots in En- She did visit the United States again and
gland. She heard from Emily that the infir- saw that Cornell had absorbed her college
mary was doing very well and growing. She in 1899; the infirmary was still growing and
became an advocate of Christian Socialism thriving. She was very pleased at the
because she believed the practice of medi- progress women had made in the medical
cine could cure many social ills. At this field. As Dr. Cushier wrote of both Black-
point, she considered health issues political wells late in life, “What we should never
in terms of benefitting the whole human forget is that the dignity, the culture, and the
race. She also believed that physical ail- high moral standards which formed their
ments could stem from mental distress. character, finally prevailed in overcoming
She herself had health problems for sev- the existing prejudice, both within and out-
eral years, particularly in the 1870s. She side the profession. By their standards, the
struggled with this and finding the best cli- status of women in medicine was deter-
mate in which to live was difficult, so she mined” (Ross 1949, 291).
32
Blackwell, Emily
Blackwell returned to England knowing up by their father to study the same subjects
she would probably never see her friends or together. He expected the same high stan-
family in the United States again. In 1907 dards from both the boys and the girls.
she fell down some stairs and became an in- Emily, like Elizabeth, felt the way her father
valid shortly thereafter. Her daughter was did.
with her most of the time in her final days. The Blackwell family left for the United
She died on May 31, 1910, in Hastings. States in 1832 when Emily was only five
years old. Samuel suffered financial losses
See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Black- in New York, and in 1844, the family moved
well, Emily; Jex-Blake, Sophia; Nightingale, to Cincinnati, Ohio. There, the family asso-
Florence; Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth ciated with the Quakers, but Samuel was
References: Blackwell, Elizabeth, Pioneer still very open about most social events.
Work in Opening the Medical Profession to While Hannah worried about preparing her
Women: Autobiographical Sketches, London: daughters for marriage, Emily, again like
Longmans, Green (1895); Ross, Ishbel, Elizabeth, thought about a career.
Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the First Emily was shy and timid but was very
Woman Doctor, New York: Harper (1949); much influenced by her older sister and
Snodgrass, Mary, Historical Encyclopedia of wanted to follow in her footsteps. She ap-
Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO plied to several medical schools and was
(1999). turned down by eleven before Rush Med-
ical College in Chicago accepted her. She
was unable to complete her degree there be-
Blackwell, Emily cause the state medical board did not agree
1826–1910 with Rush’s decision to admit a woman to
the school. Emily finished her studies at
Emily Blackwell obtained her M.D. from Western Reserve College in Cleveland; this
Western Reserve College in 1854 and school had just begun allowing women into
founded the New York Infirmary for its medical program.
Women and Children with her sister, Eliza- She traveled to Europe to train with Sir
beth Blackwell. Often overshadowed by her James Young Simpson, who saw no reason
older sister, Emily nevertheless was an ex- that women should not practice medicine.
cellent surgeon, physician, and educator of From him, she gained invaluable experience
medical students. She enjoyed practicing in gynecology and obstetrics. He was also
medicine much more than Elizabeth; the impressed with Emily’s talent as a surgeon.
two worked well together. She then attended clinics elsewhere in Eu-
Emily was born February 3, 1826, in rope to gain more experience.
Counterslip near Bristol, England, to When she returned to New York in 1856,
Samuel Blackwell and Hannah Lane. Her she was ready to help Elizabeth and Dr.
father had an important influence on her. Marie Zakrzewska with the New York Infir-
He supported women’s rights, was against mary for Women and Children, where she
slavery, and encouraged all his children to worked as a surgeon. The three collaborated
be active in society. He was also religious, well, and the beds filled quickly with pa-
studying the Bible and participating in daily tients.
prayers. After initial financial and other chal-
Being a Dissenter meant that Samuel lenges, the infirmary thrived. Many female
Blackwell’s children were not allowed to at- physicians just out of medical school came
tend the Church of England schools, which to gain clinical experience. Elizabeth, Marie,
were considered the best in the country. and Emily arranged clinics for the new stu-
Aware of the high illiteracy rate and want- dents and later started training nurses.
ing all his children to have a good educa- Emily, like her sister, did not want the in-
tion, he decided to tutor them himself. firmary to become a center for the women’s
Emily and her eight siblings were brought rights movement. Their most important ob-
33
Blanchfield, Florence Aby
34
Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain
35
Bourgeois, Louise
36
Brown, Dorothy Lavinia
took the life of the Duchesse de Montpen- References: Lucas, Marion Brunson, A His-
sier. Following this event, her practice de- tory of Blacks in Kentucky, vol. 1, Frankfort:
clined and she spent much of the rest of her Kentucky Historical Society (1992); Wade-
life writing her book Observations. She died Gayles, Gloria, “Britton, Mary E.,” Black
in 1636. Women in America: An Historical Encyclope-
dia, vol. 1, Brooklyn, NY: Carlson (1993).
References: Hatcher, John, “Mme Louise
Bourgeois—Royal Midwife and Remark-
able Character,” Midwives Chronicle and Brown, Dorothy Lavinia
Nursing Notes (January 1971); Hurd-Mead, 1919–
Kate Campbell, A History of Women in Medi-
cine from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of Dorothy Brown is the first black female in
the Nineteenth Century, Haddam, CT: Had- the American South to become a surgeon.
dam Press (1938); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Her work in general surgery and education
Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of has forged a path for future generations of
Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An- black female physicians and surgeons.
cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New Born in Philadelphia on January 7, 1919,
York: Routledge (2000). she was taken by her mother to an orphan-
age in Troy, New York. She stayed there for
the next twelve years. During this time, her
Britton, Mary E. mother tried several times to take her back,
1858–1925 but Dorothy ran away each time to return to
the Troy orphanage. After her tonsils were
Mary Britton was the first black female removed when she was five, she decided to
physician in Kentucky, serving both blacks become a doctor. She attended school in Troy
and whites in the Lexington area. She at- and, when she was fifteen, went to live with
tended Berea College and taught for a while foster parents Samuel and Lola Redmon.
in Lexington. She was better known for her She graduated at the top of her high
writing in newspapers throughout the east- school class and went on to earn her A.B.
ern United States. degree in 1941 from Bennett College in
Britton was born to Henry and Laura Brit- Greensboro, North Carolina. Her time there
ton in 1858. Her father was half-Spanish and was difficult because even though she had a
half-Indian; her mother was born of a white scholarship from the Women’s Division of
slave owner and a slave mistress. She was the Methodist Church, college administra-
one of the first free blacks to graduate from tors didn’t feel she was a suitable candidate
college and pursue a career after the Ameri- for their school. They discouraged her from
can Civil War of 1861–1865. Her older sister, taking science courses and from going to
Julia, was a gifted teacher and musician medical school, believing teaching would
who became the first black teacher in Berea. suit her better. After graduation she worked
Britton taught school for a while before at the Rochester Army Ordinance Depart-
deciding on a medical career. She trained at ment during World War II and then entered
Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which medical school at Meharry Medical College
had been established as a health-reform in- in Nashville, Tennessee.
stitute by the Seventh Day Adventists. She She obtained her M.D. degree in 1948 and
also studied at the American Missionary then served a one-year internship at Harlem
Medical College in Chicago, graduating in Hospital. In order to become a surgeon, she
1903. She became a proponent of alternative went back to Nashville to complete a five-
medicine, vegetarianism, hydrotherapy, year residency at Meharry and Hubbard
massage, metaphysics, and phrenology. She Hospitals. She became an assistant profes-
was an effective speaker on women’s rights sor of surgery in 1955 and in 1959 became
and a prominent and respected black the first black female surgeon to become a
woman leader of the times. She died in 1925. fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
37
Brown, Edith Mary
38
Brundtband, Gro Harlem
39
Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine
She was born in Oslo, Norway, April 20, References: Borchert, Thomas, “Norway’s
1939. Her father, Gudmund Harlem, was a Former Premier Puts Son’s Suicide at Center
physician, political activist, and major influ- of Memoirs,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur (24
ence in her life. She married Arne Olav and November 1998); Kaiser, Jocelyn, “WHO
had four children. She earned her medical Gets New Head,” Science 279, no. 5351 (30
degree in 1963 from the University of Oslo January 1998); WHO home page, http://
and in 1965 added a master of public health www.who.int/.
degree from Harvard University.
Brundtband was a physician for ten years
in the Norway Public Health System. She Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine
served as a medical officer at the Norwegian Late nineteenth century
Directorate of Health and later with Oslo’s
Board of Health. Her work included cancer Justine Budzinski-Tylicka became one of the
prevention and childhood diseases. She be- first female physicians in Poland. She re-
came the director of health services for ceived her medical training at the Univer-
Oslo’s schoolchildren while raising a family sity of Paris and returned to Poland to work
of her own. in her country’s clinics and hospitals. She
At age forty-one, Brundtband became advocated birth control and was against le-
prime minister of Norway, a position she galized prostitution. She was a strong sup-
held for over ten years. She is the first fe- porter of women’s rights.
male to hold the post and the youngest in
Norway’s history. In her memoirs, Dramatic References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
Years, she criticizes the Norwegian health Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
service for being too slow to import drugs (1957).
that could help alleviate psychological ill-
nesses like that of her manic-depressive son,
Joergen, who committed suicide in 1992.
40
C
Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor daughters: Grace, Elisabeth, and Eleanor.
1887–1968 Calverley died on December 22, 1968, in
Hartford, Connecticut.
Eleanor Calverley was the first woman
physician to work in Kuwait. A medical References: Calverley, Eleanor T., My Arabian
missionary, she gained the trust of Arab Days and Nights, New York: Crowell (1958);
women who were forbidden to see male National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol.
physicians. 57, Clifton, NJ: James T. White (1977).
Calverley was born in Woodstock, New
Jersey, on March 24, 1887; her parents were
William Lewis and Jane Long Hillman Tay- Canady, Alexa Irene
lor. She was educated in the public schools 1950–
of New Haven, Connecticut, and later at-
tended the Women’s Medical College of Alexa Canady is the first female African
Pennsylvania, obtaining her medical degree American in the United States to become a
in 1908. neurosurgeon. She has held various teach-
She married Edwin E. Calverley, a mis- ing positions over the years and is currently
sionary and preacher, on September 6, 1909, the director of neurosurgery at Children’s
and together they trained for work in Ara- Hospital of Michigan.
bia. They traveled to Kuwait in 1911, and Born in Lansing, Michigan, on November
she opened a small dispensary connected to 7, 1950, Canady was the second oldest in a
her home so that Kuwaiti women, among family of four and the only girl. Her father,
others, could seek medical care. “We saw Clinton Canady, was a dentist, and her
both wealth and poverty among the Arab mother, Elizabeth Hortense Golden, worked
and Persian populations of Kuwait. Some in various educational occupations and was
Persian families were rich; but there were the first black elected to the Lansing Board
others, recently immigrated from Persia, of Education. She was a Fisk University
who had no homes except the sand beside a graduate and fostered a love for learning in
boat drawn up on the shore. Their only pro- Alexa and her three brothers.
tection was a curtain of sacking, fastened Alexa did well in school and graduated
above them to the side of the boat and from high school with honors. She then
pegged down into the sand. Freed African went on to the University of Michigan to
slaves, deprived of their former masters’ major in mathematics. She soon discovered
support, were also often destitute. Of such she did not have a commitment to the sub-
we could not require any fee for medical ject despite good grades. She participated in
service” (Calverley 1958, 74). a minority health-careers program at Michi-
She and her husband spent many years in gan and worked with Art Bloom, a pediatri-
Kuwait. In 1919 a women’s hospital opened cian and geneticist, and decided to pursue a
there under her leadership. She had three career in medicine.
41
Chevandier Law of 1892
She graduated with a B.S. in 1971 and en- home. The French Republic, however, was
tered medical school at the University of concerned about depopulation and the
Michigan with the initial intention of be- health of its citizens. The government deter-
coming an internist. She earned her M.D. in mined that better health care from birth was
1975 and proceeded to the Yale New Haven more advantageous than stimulating an in-
Hospital for an internship in 1975–1976. She crease in births and set out to define in an
was later admitted to the Department of amended law which aspects of health care
Neurosurgery at the University of Min- women could legally practice in the home.
nesota and became the first black female
resident there. References: Lacy, Cherilyn, “Science or
In 1981 she continued her resident train- Savoir-Faire? Domestic Hygiene and Medi-
ing under Luis Schut at the University of cine in Girls’ Public Education during the
Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital Early Third French Republic, 1882–1914,”
of Philadelphia. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the West-
She returned to Michigan in 1982 to take a ern Society for French History 24 (1997): 25–37.
position with the Henry Ford Hospital in
Detroit as both a teacher and a neurosur-
geon. In 1987 she became the director of Chinn, May Edward
neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of 1896–1980
Michigan and has received much credit for
making the hospital’s neurosurgery depart- May Chinn was one of the first black female
ment one of the best. She married George physicians in New York City. Her work in
Davis in 1988. Canady credits affirmative early cancer detection helped in the devel-
action and other programs emanating from opment of the Pap smear. She was the first
the civil rights era in helping her to achieve black female to graduate from Bellevue
her goals. She mentors young people of Hospital Medical College and the first black
color in following the profession of their female physician to intern at Harlem Hospi-
choice. tal. After her internship, she was denied
privileges at all hospitals until 1940. She
References: Lanker, Brian, I Dream a World: persisted on her own and by the time of her
Portraits of Black Women Who Changed the death was a well-respected physician.
World, New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,
Chang (1989); Notable Twentieth-Century Sci- on April 15, 1896, Chinn was the only child
entists, Detroit: Gale Research (1995); Rich, of William Lafayette Chinn and Lulu Ann
Mari, “Canady, Alexa,” Current Biography 61 Evans. Her father had escaped from slavery
no. 8 (August 2000): 11–15. on a Virginia plantation when he was eleven
years old, and her mother was born on an
Indian reservation near Norfolk. She grew
Chevandier Law of 1892 up in New York City, where her mother sent
her to boarding school.
Passed in France, the Chevandier Law of After developing osteomyelitis, Chinn
1892 was intended to keep unlicensed had to leave school and lived with her
physicians from practicing medicine. It gave mother on the estate of a wealthy white
exception to mothers of families as long as family, where her mother worked. While be-
they practiced medicine in the home. Public ing treated for the disease, she studied and
schools were also allowed to teach women developed an interest in music through at-
basic hygiene and first aid techniques. As a tending concerts with the white children of
result of the law, conflicts arose over “do- the family. She later gave piano lessons to
mestic” and “professional” medicine. Some youngsters.
male physicians of the day objected that the Chinn attended Morris High School but
law would encourage women to practice dropped out in order to help her family by
medicine without a license outside of the taking a factory job. Later, with her
42
Claypole, Edith Jane
mother’s encouragement, she took a high tween tuberculosis and infections that re-
school equivalency test. She did well and sembled it. Her work in histology and
entered Columbia University Teachers’ Col- hematology aided future researchers in
lege in 1917. After a year there, she changed their explorations.
her major from music to science. She gradu- Claypole was born along with a twin sis-
ated in 1921 and entered Bellevue Hospital ter, Agnes, on January 1, 1870, in Bristol,
Medical College, where she graduated in England. Their mother died a short time af-
1926. She interned at Harlem Hospital. ter the births. When her father remarried, he
After being denied work in hospitals, she took his new wife and daughters to Akron,
opened her own practice near the Edge- Ohio, where he had a teaching job. He had a
combe Sanitarium. In exchange for living love of science, and he and his second wife
and office space, she answered the all-night taught the girls at home.
emergency calls for the group of black Edith majored in biology and graduated
physicians who owned her space and the from Buchtel College in Akron in 1892. She
sanitarium. Because she saw so many pa- went on to Cornell to study for an advanced
tients in the advanced stages of cancer, she degree. She taught physiology and histol-
became interested in cancer research. She ogy at Wellesley College in Massachusetts
also continued her studies, receiving a mas- upon graduation and later became inter-
ter’s degree in public health from Columbia ested in pathology and medicine. While in
in 1933. During this time she gained per- medical school at the University of Califor-
mission to do biopsies at Memorial Hospital nia (UC) at Los Angeles, she worked for a
under George Papanicolaou, who later de- group of physicians as a pathologist. As a
veloped the Pap smear. Eventually, black result, by the time she received her M.D. she
physicians who found out about her access was knowledgeable about vaccines and bac-
to Memorial Hospital began to send biopsy terial cultures.
specimens directly to her. Without an offi- She continued her pathology work after
cial affiliation with Memorial Hospital, she graduation, volunteering at the University
had the work done in secret. of California, Berkeley, because she could
In 1944 she joined the staff of Strang not find an academic position for pay in
Clinic, a cancer-detection center affiliated 1904. The university offered her a research
with Memorial Hospital and New York In- associate position in 1912, and she was able
firmary Hospital. She stayed there twenty- to use the laboratory facilities there for her
nine years. She became a legend in Harlem research.
as a woman who overcame many racial and She began to study tuberculosis and the
gender barriers in order to provide health bacteria associated with it. The bacteria also
care to the poor. caused other infections, and Claypole de-
veloped a test that was helpful in determin-
References: Clark, Darlene, Elsa Barkley ing the differences in infections that afflicted
Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Black humans.
Women in America: An Historical Encyclope- When World War I broke out, she and
dia, Brooklyn, NY: Carlson (1993); Hayden, others began working on a vaccine for ty-
Robert C., American National Biography, New phoid fever for the British and French
York: Oxford University Press (1999); “May troops in Europe. Although she was vacci-
Edward Chinn,” http://www.sdsc.edu/ nated against typhoid, over the course of a
ScienceWomen/chinn.html. few years the exposures to it were so great
that she died from it in 1915 at the early age
of forty-five.
Claypole, Edith Jane
1870–1915 References: Bailey, Martha J., American
Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,
Edith Claypole did early research in infec- Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994);
tious diseases in order to distinguish be- Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S.
43
Cleveland, Emeline Horton
Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Cleveland had a son in 1865. In 1872 she
Biographical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green- succeeded Ann Preston as dean of WMCP.
wood Press (1996). She resigned two years later due to poor
health. She suffered from tuberculosis and
died in Philadelphia on December 8, 1878.
Cleveland, Emeline Horton At the time she was working for the De-
1829–1878 partment of the Insane at Philadelphia
Hospital.
A respected physician and educator, Eme-
line Cleveland was one of the first female See also: Medical College of Pennsylvania;
surgeons to remove ovarian tumors. She Preston, Ann
was the second female dean of the Women’s References: DeFiore, Jayne Crumpler,
Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) “Cleveland, Emeline Horton,” American Na-
and created new educational opportunities tional Biography, vol. 5, New York: Oxford
for women while strengthening the curricu- University Press (1999); Peitzman, Steven J.,
lum at her college. A New and Untried Course: Women’s Medical
Born in Ashford, Connecticut, on Septem- College and Medical College of Pennsylvania,
ber 22, 1829, Cleveland grew up in Madison 1850–1998, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
County, New York. Her parents were University Press (2000).
Chauncey Horton and Amanda Chaffee
Horton. Her father set up a school on their
farm, and she received her early education
from tutors. Her father died early, and she Cobb, Jewel Plummer
taught in order to earn money sufficient for 1924–
a college education.
In 1850 she enrolled at Oberlin College in Jewel Cobb has contributed to the field of
Ohio and graduated in 1853. Interested in cell biology in her research on how drugs af-
becoming a missionary and a physician, she fect cancer and on the skin pigment melanin
went to the Female Medical College of and the cause of melanoma, an increasing
Pennsylvania (renamed the Women’s Med- skin cancer. Cobb has also supported nu-
ical College of Pennsylvania in 1867), grad- merous programs throughout her career to
uating in 1855. She had married the Rev- encourage young students, especially mi-
erend Giles Butler Cleveland in 1854; they norities, to enter the science field.
had both intended a life of missionary work, Cobb was born on January 17, 1924, the
but his poor health changed their course. only child of Frank Plummer, a physician
She started a small medical practice near and graduate of Rush College, and Car-
her home in New York and the next year riebel Plummer, who taught in the public
was asked to teach at WMCP. Before long, schools. Cobb came into contact with other
she became the chair of anatomy and phys- professionals through her parents, whom
iology. In 1860 she went to Paris for spe- she admired. Like her father, she enjoyed
cialty training at the School of Obstetrics at science, and she did well in school, often
La Maternité. Because WMCP needed a bet- facing racism.
ter setting for its students to gain clinical ex- While at the University of Michigan, she
perience, she also visited various hospitals encountered more racism in the dormitories
to learn more about hospital administration. and local businesses and transferred to Tal-
Once Cleveland returned, she became the ladega College in Alabama, where she grad-
chief resident of Women’s Hospital, which uated in 1944. She went on to New York
collaborated with the Women’s Medical University on a fellowship that lasted six
College of Pennsylvania to provide clinical years. There in 1947, she earned a master’s
training for medical students. Cleveland degree in cell physiology and in 1950, a
also served the college as a professor of ob- Ph.D. She obtained a fellowship from the
stetrics and gynecology. National Cancer Institute and began her cell
44
Comnena, Anna
research at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Re- tioner with Elizabeth Blackwell at the New
search Foundation. York Infirmary for Women and Children.
She held several university positions fol- She had a great interest in helping poor
lowing her time at the research foundation, women and children, so Blackwell assigned
first at the University of Illinois Medical her to the slum areas of New York City. Cole
School. In 1954 she married Roy Raul Cobb worked in harsh conditions, teaching
and returned to the Harlem Hospital Cancer women and children proper hygiene and
Research Foundation. She had a son, Roy basic medical care, and teaching mothers
Johnathan Cobb, in 1957. She then worked how to better care for their infants.
at New York University, Hunter College, After several years she ventured to Co-
and Sarah Lawrence College. During this lumbia, South Carolina, and opened a pri-
time she continued in her research on vate practice, later moving to Washington,
melanoma and in 1960 published a five-year D.C., to work as the superintendent for the
cytological study. Government House for Children and Old
She then went to Connecticut College to Women. Later she moved back to her birth-
become dean and professor of zoology. In place of Philadelphia and opened a practice
1976 she became dean and professor of biol- while coordinating a medical and legal di-
ogy at Douglass College of Rutgers Univer- rectory for the poor with Charlotte Abby,
sity. From 1981 until 1990 she served as another physician in Philadelphia. She died
president of California State University at on August 14, 1922.
Fullerton. In all positions she held, she as-
sisted with program development for un- See Also: Crumpler, Rebecca Lee
derrepresented ethnic groups. References: Krapp, Kristine M., ed., Notable
Black American Scientists, Detroit: Gale Re-
References: Notable Black American Scien- search (1999); Sterling, Dorothy, ed., We Are
tists, Detroit: Gale Research (1998); Shearer, Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth
Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Century, New York: W. W. Norton (1984).
Women in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic-
tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
(1996). Comnena, Anna
1083–1148
45
Comstock Act of 1873
to the throne, she plotted against him. She immoral nature, or any drug or medi-
failed and had to retire to a convent. This is cine, or any article whatever, for the
where she spent the rest of her days and prevention of conception, or for caus-
wrote the Alexiad. ing unlawful abortion, or shall adver-
tise the same for sale, or shall write or
References: Buckler, Georgina, Anna Com- print, or cause to be written or printed,
nena: A Study, London: Oxford University any card, circular, book pamphlet, ad-
Press (1929); Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell, vertisement, or notice of any kind,
History of Women in Medicine from the Earliest stating when, where, how, or of
Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Cen- whom, or by what means, any of the
tury, Haddam, CT: Haddam Press (1938); articles in this section hereinbefore
Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The mentioned, can be purchased or ob-
Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: tained, or shall manufacture, draw, or
Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid- print, or in any wise make any of such
20th Century, New York: Routledge (2000). articles. (U.S. Statutes 1873, 598–599)
46
Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz
47
Correia, Elisa
search institute in Buffalo, New York. Gerty long as the work was based on sound sci-
was hired as an assistant pathologist. ence. Their lab was also unusual in that they
Gerty Cori was troubled throughout her did not discriminate when hiring against
professional life by the fact that she was not women, Jews, or other minorities.
recognized for her work with her husband. On October 24, 1947, the Coris learned of
Husband-and-wife teams were becoming their Nobel Prize, won for their earlier work
more common in the United States, but the on synthesizing glycogen in a test tube.
husband had the secure, tenured position, “Physiologists had been told for years that
whereas the wife held a lower-level posi- large molecules could only be made within
tion. A female researcher in this situation living cells. Yet the Coris had executed the
was secure in her position only as long as first bioengineering of a large biological mol-
she stayed married. ecule in a test tube” (McGrayne 1998, 106).
After several years in Buffalo, Carl ac- The Coris shared the Nobel Prize with
cepted a position in St. Louis at the Wash- their friend Bernardo Alberto Houssay of
ington University School of Medicine. The Argentina.
Coris moved there in 1931, with Gerty Cori Before the couple traveled to Stockholm
hired as a research associate and Carl as a to receive the award, Gerty found she was
professor. They had become naturalized suffering from agnogenic myeloid dyspla-
American citizens in 1928. sia, a severe anemia wherein the body does
In 1936, the Coris discovered the com- not produce red blood cells and fibrous tis-
pound glucose-l-phosphate, also known as sue slowly replaces the bone marrow. For
the Cori ester. This compound occurs as one the rest of her life she relied on blood trans-
of the three steps in the breakdown of fusions to live.
glycogen into sugar. They also found that The Coris shared their prize money with
enzymes played a role in the sugar break- coworkers. They each gave part of the Nobel
down, and before long they discovered lecture, sharing the recognition as they had
phosphorylase, an enzyme that breaks done their research. Over the next ten years
down glycogen into the Cori ester. Cori suffered from her illness but continued
When World War II broke out, most of the to do research when she could. She became
men in research had to turn to defense proj- interested in glycogen-storage diseases in
ects, and women scientists were in demand children and identified four that were
in the universities. Thus in 1944, Gerty Cori caused by a missing or defective enzyme.
attained the rank of associate professor at As time went on she became weaker, and
Washington University. She continued the in 1957 she published her last paper. She
work on enzymes. When the war was wind- died at home on October 26, 1957.
ing down and in response to offers the Coris
had received from Harvard and the Rocke- References: McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, No-
feller Institute, Washington University of- bel Prize Women in Science, New York: Carol
fered Carl a larger biochemistry department (1998); Nobel Foundation, Official Web Site
to chair with Gerty as a professor. Many sci- of the Nobel Foundation, 2000, http://
entists were pursuing enzyme research at www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1947/
the time, and by 1947 their department had cori-gt-bio.html.
become the world’s foremost center for en-
zyme study, drawing researchers from
around the globe. Correia, Elisa
Women who came to work with Cori 1866–?
found her both exacting and supportive, es-
pecially the latter with women who were Elisa Correia was the first female physician
wives and mothers like her. She had had a in Portugal. She graduated in 1889 from the
son, Tom Carl, in 1936. University of Coimbra in Portugal.
Both she and her husband cared little
about who was credited for discoveries as References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
48
Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline
Craighill, Margaret D.
1898–1977
49
Crumpler, Rebecca Lee
after her mother died in 1918 she applied to She wrote a book in 1883 on the care of
the University of Michigan in order to pur- women and children.
sue her research interests. She gained an in-
structor position in 1920 and rose through References: Crumpler, Rebecca, A Book of
the ranks to become the first female profes- Medical Discourses, Boston: Cashman, Keat-
sor in the university’s medical school in ing (1883); Jolly, Allison, “Crumpler, Re-
1936. While there, she kept to a rigorous becca Lee,” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Facts
schedule of teaching and research. She on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in Amer-
stayed until 1958. ica, vol. 11, New York: Facts on File (1997);
With the publication in 1936 of the two- Sammons, Vivian Ovelton, Blacks in Science
volume Comparative Anatomy of the Nervous and Medicine, New York: Hemisphere (1990).
System of Vertebrates, Including Man, she be-
came known as an authority on brain mor-
phology. She had collaborated on the work Curie, Marie Sklodowska
with C. U. Ariens Kappers and G. Carl Hu- 1867–1934
ber before he died in 1934. The book re-
ceived international recognition. Marie Curie, probably the world’s best-
Although Crosby never married, in 1940 known woman scientist, was a pioneer in
she adopted a daughter, Kathleen, who was the field of radiation and chemotherapy. She
from Scotland. Crosby received numerous was the first woman awarded a Nobel Prize,
awards and continued her research well in 1903, for her research on radioactivity.
into her later years. She died on July 28, Sharing the prize were her husband, Pierre
1983, at her daughter’s home in Michigan. Curie, and Henri Becquerel, who had dis-
covered radioactivity in uranium. She was
References: Bailey, Martha J., American also awarded a Nobel Prize in 1911 for the
Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, previous discovery of polonium and ra-
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994); dium and for the isolation of pure radium.
Haines, Duane E., “Crosby, Elizabeth Caro- She went beyond the study of the element
line,” American National Biography, vol. 5, radium to discover a few of its medical uses.
New York: Oxford University Press (1999); It is still widely used for cancer treatment.
Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, on
Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Bio- November 7, 1867, and was the youngest of
graphical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green- five children. Her parents were Wladyslaw
wood Press (1996). and Bronislava Boguska Sklodowska, both
intellectuals. She did exceptionally well in
her schoolwork but suffered from depres-
Crumpler, Rebecca Lee sion during much of her early life. At a very
1833–? young age, she and her siblings were sub-
jected to Russian oppression: Officials de-
Rebecca Crumpler was the first black nied students access to the literature of
woman to become a physician in the United some countries and demanded that stu-
States. She practiced in Boston after gradu- dents recite their Catholic prayers in Rus-
ating from the New England Female Med- sian and be familiar with certain aspects of
ical College and later moved to Richmond, Russian history.
Virginia, to treat newly freed slaves follow- When she was nine, she watched as her
ing the American Civil War. oldest sister, Sophia, died from typhus.
Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1833, she When she was eleven, her mother died from
was raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania who tuberculosis. Curie turned to her father and
worked as a doctor. She worked as a nurse his books for comfort and encouragement,
in Massachusetts and then entered the New and after completing school in 1883, she
England Female Medical College to become spent time in the country with her uncle
a doctor. She graduated in 1864. Sklodowski. When she returned to Warsaw,
50
Curie, Marie Sklodowska
51
Curie, Marie Sklodowska
mediately ended the relationship, Curie re- dium Institute. Also, at a White House
alizing she could not have any kind of rela- ceremony, President Harding presented
tionship with a married man. Curie with the key to a metal box contain-
Also during this time, she received word ing radium.
of her second Nobel Prize, this time in During the 1920s, Curie had numerous
chemistry for the isolation of pure radium. symptoms of radiation exposure. She had
With this award, she became the first to re- cataracts and numbness in her fingers from
ceive two Nobel Prizes. handling radium and suffered fatigue.
After World War I broke out, Curie spent Marie Curie had trained Irene in radium re-
much of her time during the following four search and had worked side by side with
years organizing an X-ray service to assist her during World War I. Irene and her hus-
in treating wounded soldiers on the front band, Frederic Joliot, discovered artificial
lines and in hospitals. By the time the war radioactivity, work for which Irene received
was over, 1 million soldiers had been ex- a Nobel Prize in 1935. Frederic would much
amined. She also began bottling the radon later realize that it was dangerous to handle
gas from radium into small tubes and sent Marie and Pierre’s papers, which were still
these to doctors around the world for contaminated with radioactivity decades af-
the treatment of cancerous tumors. By ter they died.
this time, she was experiencing frequent Curie tried to burn much of her personal
exhaustion. papers before she died in order to gain more
Although Curie was aware of the benefits privacy. She kept only the love letters from
of radiation for people with cancerous tu- Pierre and a diary. She also tried to organize
mors, it is clear that she was not aware of its and prepare for a transition at the Radium
harmful effects. She was an avid outdoors- Institute, wanting an aide and then Irene to
woman who felt that if people were strong take over.
and got enough fresh air, they would be She was never recognized in France for
fine. She continued in this belief even when her work during World War I because
lab assistants later died from anemia and many still considered her a foreigner. She
leukemia due to overexposure. It wasn’t was loyal to her native Poland, teaching
until the 1920s that the public became her daughters Polish at an early age and
aware of the damaging effects of exposure helping Poland establish its own radium
to radiation. institute.
After the war, Curie was determined to Curie’s health was in continual decline af-
build a research institute in France. Her Ra- ter suffering a broken wrist in 1932 that
dium Institute at the University of Paris never healed properly. In May 1934, she was
opened after the war but had little in the misdiagnosed with tuberculosis. At this
way of resources because of the depressed point even Curie saw that radiation could
postwar economy. She came to change her be harmful. Eve cared for her almost con-
mind about patenting scientific discoveries, stantly until Curie died from leukemia on
realizing the income could finance further July 4, 1934. She was buried with Pierre in a
research. small cemetery in Sceaux. Many years later,
In 1920, she met Missy Meloney, a jour- on April 20, 1995, both their remains were
nalist from the United States with whom moved to the Pantheon, France’s memorial
she would form a lifelong friendship. Me- to the nation’s great men. Marie Curie is the
loney was impressed by Curie’s work, and first woman to be buried there based on her
when she learned that Curie’s Radium own merits.
Institute had little to work with, including Today some still question whether Curie
very little radium, she vowed to help raise deserves so much credit for what her hus-
funds in the United States. Shortly there- band may have discovered. It is obvious
after, when Curie traveled to the United from her writings and what she said on
States with her two daughters, Meloney record that both she and Pierre were very
welcomed her with $100,000 for the Ra- careful to take credit together for the work
52
Curie, Marie Sklodowska
they shared and give credit to each other as of World Biography, Detroit: Gale Research
appropriate. (1998); McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel
Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles,
References: Curie, Eve, Madame Curie: A Bi- and Momentous Discoveries, Secaucus, NJ:
ography, New York: Doubleday (1938); Dic- Carol (1998); Pflaum, Rosalynd, Grand Ob-
tionary of Scientific Biography, New York: session: Madame Curie and Her World, New
Charles Scribner’s Sons (1971); Encyclopedia York: Doubleday (1989).
53
D
Dalle Donne, Maria Daly, Marie Maynard
1778–1842 1921–
Exceptionally talented and intelligent, Marie Daly was the first African American
Maria Dalle Donne was dedicated to eradi- to earn a Ph.D. degree in chemistry. Her re-
cating barbaric methods of medical treat- search focused on the physiological levels of
ment for women. She educated numerous creatine, hypertension, protein synthesis,
midwives at the University of Bologna; this and atherosclerosis.
work was critical because there were few Daly was born in New York City on April
doctors in that day to attend to the rural 16, 1921, to Ivan C. Daly and Helen Page
population, and thus gynecological and ob- Daly. She had younger brothers who were
stetric patients depended upon midwives twins. Her education started in the public
for all necessary care. Dalle Donne did not schools of Queens, and she then attended
turn away women who sought education Hunter College High School in Manhattan.
even if they could not afford it. Her uncle, She did very well in school and had much
recognizing her extraordinary talent, took support from her family, teachers, and
her in and educated her. Her tutors were friends.
eventually so impressed that they encour- She went on to Queens College and ob-
aged, and arranged, a demonstration of her tained her B.S. in chemistry in 1942. She
skills so that she could obtain a medical de- graduated magna cum laude and was ambi-
gree and earn her own living. She im- tious for a research career. After obtaining a
pressed the University of Bologna officials lab assistant position at Queens College, she
and was admitted to the university, obtain- began the master’s program at New York
ing her degree in philosophy and medicine University. She received her master’s a year
in 1799. later and remained at Queens College,
She became the director of midwives at teaching in the lab and tutoring.
the university and was highly regarded for She later entered Columbia University to
her teaching abilities. work on her Ph.D. in chemistry, which she
obtained in 1947. She then went to Howard
See also: University of Bologna University and taught in the physical sci-
References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har- ences, afterward moving on to the Rocke-
vey, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women in feller Institute for seven years. During this
Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to time she was learning a great deal and
the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge meeting well-established researchers such
(2000). as Leonor Michaelis and Francis Peyton
Rous.
In 1955 she returned to Columbia Univer-
sity and in 1960, she went to Albert Einstein
55
Daniel, Annie Sturges
College of Medicine. She published many students at the Women’s Medical College
articles on her research involving the syn- about the circumstances of the poor.
thesis of protein, the relationship between Eventually health officials came to her for
hypertension and cholesterol, and the ef- advice, and in 1884 she was appointed to
fects of cigarette smoking. She became an serve with the New York State Tenement
associate professor in 1971 and held that po- House Commission. She investigated child
sition until she retired in 1986. She married labor in homes and sweatshops and also ad-
Vincent Clark in 1961. vocated prison reform.
Daniel never married and died on August
References: Grinstein, Louise S., Rose K. 10, 1944, in New York City.
Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich, Women in
Chemistry and Physics: A Biobibliographic References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-
Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of
(1993). Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-
cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New
York: Routledge (2000); Perry, Marilyn Eliz-
Daniel, Annie Sturges abeth, “Daniel, Annie Sturges,” American
1858–1944 National Biography, vol. 6, New York: Oxford
University Press (1999).
A physician and public health crusader who
worked in numerous settlement houses,
Annie Daniel set early standards in proper Darrow, Ruth Renter
hygiene and sanitation as well as empha- 1895–1956
sized adequate nutrition and space for fam-
ilies in substandard living conditions. Her Little is known about Ruth Darrow except
practical handling of destitute individuals that she published various research articles
and patients was a model for students re- on erythroblastosis foetalis, a hemolytic dis-
quired to visit patients in run-down tene- ease of newborns (HDN), and concluded
ment buildings, crowded shelters, and un- that an unknown fetal antigen caused the
sanitary homes. disease. She herself was “a mother of sev-
Born on September 21, 1858, in Buffalo, eral Rh-HDN-afflicted newborns” and “was
New York, she was the daughter of John M. first to suggest a relationship between ma-
Daniel and Marinda Sturges Daniel. Her ternal sensitization to a fetal blood antigen
parents died when she was still a child, and and subsequent fetal pathology” (Lloyd
relatives in Monticello, New York, raised 1987, 299). She worked in Chicago for a time
her. She had an early interest in biology and with the Women and Children’s Hospital.
entered the Women’s Medical College of the Her research led the way for the discovery
New York Infirmary, where she obtained of the Rh factor and its importance for preg-
her M.D. in 1879. Elizabeth Blackwell nant women and fetuses.
placed Daniel in the Out-Practice Depart-
ment, which gave her leadership responsi- References: Darrow, Ruth Renter, “Icterus
bility for persons living in the tenements of Gravis (Erythroblastosis) Neonatorum,”
New York City. Archives of Pathology 25 (1938): 378–417;
She would find ensuring better health Kass-Simon, G., and Patricia Farnes, Women
and circumstances for the poor to be her of Science: Righting the Record, Bloomington:
life’s work. Many who lived in tenement Indiana University Press (1990); Lloyd,
buildings during her time were immigrants Thomas, “Rh-Factor Incompatibility: A
living in extended families. They earned Primer for Prevention,” Journal of Nurse-
meager wages and did not always have the Midwifery 32, no. 5 (September–October
education needed for basic health care and a 1987): 297–307.
nutritious diet.
By 1889 she was teaching many medical
56
Delano, Jane Arminda
57
Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph
58
Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza
called on her to learn nursing and work at sionaries by a Scottish suffragist, Agnes
the hospital. McLaren. McLaren was a physician and
In 1889, Sister Joseph became head nurse needed more medical missionaries in India.
at the newly created St. Mary’s Hospital. A Dengal pursued her premedical studies at
year later she began to work for Dr. Will Cork University, Ireland, and in 1919 gradu-
Mayo as a surgical assistant and in 1892 was ated from Queens College Medical School.
the superintendent of the hospital. She was In India she worked at St. Catherine’s
an exceptional administrator who had to Hospital, treating women and children of
deal with financial planning, personnel all religious backgrounds. She traveled to
problems, and the ongoing cooperation the United States in 1924 in order to raise
with the Mayos’ medical practice. St. Mary’s funds to form the Catholic Medical Mission
went through a period of tremendous Sisters. The sisters trained nurses, mid-
growth and change as staff responded to an wives, and others for foreign missions. They
increasing number of medical discoveries were the first to provide surgeons and ob-
that changed the hospital’s procedures and stetricians for mission work within the Ro-
treatments. man Catholic congregations.
Sister Joseph, seeing a great need for Dengal laid out the foundations of mission
nurses, started the St. Mary’s Hospital work in her Mission for Samaritans in 1945.
School for Nurses in 1906. She was a stern She believed missions were a practical way
disciplinarian who emphasized the impor- to follow the example of Jesus Christ and the
tance of academic education as well as prac- Good Samaritan and to deliver the justice the
tical experience and tried to raise the status white race owed to others who were less for-
of nursing as a profession. She died of bron- tunate. She died in Rome in 1980.
chopneumonia on March 29, 1939, at St.
Mary’s Hospital. References: Dries, Angelyn, “Dengel,
Anna,” Biographical Dictionary of Christian
References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har- Missions, New York: Macmillan (1998);
vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The
Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An- Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science:
cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-
York: Routledge (2000); Steller, Robert E., 20th Century, New York: Routledge (2000).
“Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph,” Notable
American Women 1607–1950, Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press (1971). Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza
1866–1950
Dengal, Anna Maria Eloiza Diaz Inzunza was the first woman in
1892–1980 Chile to obtain a medical degree. Graduat-
ing from a high school for boys that she had
Anna Dengal became a well-known medical special permission to attend, Diaz went on
missionary and founded the Catholic Med- to the Instituto Nacional in Santiago and
ical Mission Sisters in 1925. She is said to graduated in 1881 at the age of fifteen with
have had some influence on Pius XI’s deci- a bachelor of arts. She then attended the
sion to lift the ban on women in religious medical school at the University of Chile
work entering the medical field. In 1936, af- and spent five years studying before earn-
ter he had lifted the ban, Dengal’s group be- ing a medical degree in 1887. She spent all
came a religious congregation. Dengal was her career serving women and children. She
born in Steeg, Austria, the oldest of nine died on November 1, 1950.
children. Her mother died when she was
eight, and she went to boarding school in References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
France. She was advised to go into the med- Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
ical field and of the need for medical mis- (1957); Vargas, Tegualda Ponce de, “Women
59
Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry
60
Dickens, Helen Octavia
61
Dickey, Nancy Wilson
subject of teen pregnancy, its prevention She has tackled tough ethical issues, par-
and effects, Dickens had a great influence ticularly the end-of-life issue, while work-
on prevention programs. She has also done ing within the AMA and as its president.
extensive research on cancer and sexually Under her leadership the AMA ethics com-
transmitted diseases. She also counsels stu- mittee resolved that “honoring the request
dents, particularly women, who are inter- of terminal patients or their surrogates to
ested in medicine or other science disci- discontinue artificial nutrition or hydration
plines. She has received numerous awards was ethical” (Turner 1997, 1).
over the years, including an honorary doc- She also feels that although physicians
torate from the Medical College of Pennsyl- now have the capability to keep people
vania. alive longer, that is sometimes not the ethi-
cal choice. She is opposed to physician-
References: Contemporary Black Biography, assisted suicide but feels that “we do things
vol. 14, Detroit: Gale Research (1997). because we can. We need to think more
about whether we should” (Mangan 1997,
A10).
Dickey, Nancy Wilson Her husband is a football and basketball
1950– coach in Bryan, Texas. She has three chil-
dren and is also active in her community.
Nancy Dickey was the first female president She was the founding program director for
of the American Medical Association the Brazos Valley Family Practice Program
(AMA). Her yearlong term began in June in Bryan and treats patients there on a regu-
1998, and during that time she helped create lar basis. She is also a professor at the Texas
the National Patient Safety Foundation, dis- A&M University College of Medicine, and
cussed issues concerning terminal illness serves on staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in
and the rights of the patient, and challenged Bryan, Texas, and the College Station Med-
the profession to be more forthright about ical Center, College Station, Texas. She is
mistakes. currently president of the Health Science
Dickey was one of seven children. She Center and vice chancellor for health affairs
was born in South Dakota on September 10, for the Texas A&M University system.
1950, and was raised on a farm. She and her
siblings gathered eggs, slopped hogs, and References: Mangan, Katherine S., “First
helped with the other farm chores until she Female President: Texas A&M Professor
was ten and the family moved south. They Prepares to Lead AMA,” Chronicle of Higher
ended up in Katy, Texas, where Dickey first Education 44 (10 October 1997): A10; Turner,
became interested in medicine. Her parents Allan, “Healthy, Irrepressible Perspective:
were very encouraging, but some teachers AMA’s First Female President Breaks
and others warned against such high ambi- Through Perceived ‘Old Boys’ Network,”
tions. They urged her to have either a fam- Houston Chronicle (29 June 1997): 1.
ily or a medical career. She was discouraged
until she met her future husband, who sup-
ported her in pursuing both goals. She stud- Dix, Dorothea Lynde
ied psychology at Stephen F. Austin State 1802–1887
University in Nacogdoches and worked as a
nursing aide in the summers. She obtained Dorothea Dix was an early advocate for the
her M.D. from the medical school at the rights of the mentally ill and responsible for
University of Texas in Houston in 1976. She bringing state and national attention to the
chose family practice instead of a limited problems of the day in caring for and treat-
specialty because she felt she would like the ing those with mental illnesses. Without a
diversity. She was a resident in family prac- formal education, she symbolizes the value
tice from 1976 to 1979 at Memorial Hospital of common sense with her view that mental
System in Houston. illness is a medical problem, not a moral
62
Dix, Dorothea Lynde
63
Dmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna
References: Marshall, Helen E., Dorothea face of the rural poverty which was closing
Dix, Forgotten Samaritan, Chapel Hill: Uni- in on me from all sides” (Dmitrieva 1994,
versity of North Carolina Press (1937); No- 158). Dmitrieva died in Sochi on February
table American Women 1607–1950, Cam- 18, 1947.
bridge, MA: Belknap Press (1971);
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, The Historical Ency- References: Buck, Claire, ed., Bloomsbury
clopedia of Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC- Guide to Women’s Literature, London:
CLIO (1999). Bloomsbury (1992); Davies, Mildred,
“Valentina Dmitrieva,” Russian Women
Writers, vol. 2, New York: Garland (1999);
Dmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna Dmitrieva, Valentina, “After the Great
1859–1947 Hunger,” in Catriona Kelly, ed., An Anthol-
ogy of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777–1992,
Valentina Dmitrieva was one of the early Oxford: Oxford University Press (1994); En-
Russian women physicians. She is better gel, Barbara Alpern, Mothers and Daughters:
known as a revolutionary and writer, but Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Cen-
her brief medical career led her to working tury Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
with the less fortunate during famine and sity Press (1983).
epidemics. Her fiction and memoirs give
one of the few early pictures of the desper-
ate situation in Russia toward the end of the Dock, Lavinia Lloyd
nineteenth century as medical providers 1858–1956
faced insurmountable odds in trying to help
the helpless. Lavinia Dock was an early nursing leader
She was born on April 28, 1859, in and educator who worked with Isabel
Voronino, a village in Saratov Province. Her Hampton Robb at Johns Hopkins and was
father was a serf, and her mother taught her inspired by the work of Lillian D. Wald,
to read, which she did avidly. She was able which enhanced her vision of what the
to attend high school in Tambov and did nursing profession should be. She was in-
well. The family struggled after emancipa- strumental in the early years of her career in
tion and lived a transient life. promoting a professional identity for nurses
She pursued medical training in St. Pe- and in establishing high standards in the
tersburg, and she also went to Moscow to nursing profession. Born on February 26,
study obstetrics. She worked as a physician 1858, to Gilliard and Lavinia Loyd Bom-
most of 1892–1894, when epidemics and baugh Dock, she was raised in Harrisburg,
starvation were widespread in Russia. A Pennsylvania, and enrolled in the Training
revolutionary, she spent years in exile in School for Nurses in New York at Bellevue
Tver and Voronezh. She wrote an autobiog- Hospital. She graduated in 1886 and a few
raphy in 1930, Tak Bylo: Put Moei Shizni (The years later assisted Clara Barton following
Way It Was), and several of her memoirs de- the devastating Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
pict the seemingly hopeless situation she flood of 1889. She made a lasting contribu-
faced as a physician. tion to nursing with her publication the fol-
In one village, she wrote, “I could see the lowing year of the Textbook for Materia Med-
whole panoply of destruction wrought by ica for Nurses, a guide for nurses on the use
chronic hunger: the ulcers, rashes, bleeding of drugs. It served as a textbook for many
gums, paralysed muscles, and putrefying years and went through several editions.
bones. . . . The crowd straggled after me, Isabel Hampton Robb appointed Dock
staring at me with a mixture of hope and the assistant superintendent of nurses at
desperation. And I realized my total impo- Johns Hopkins Hospital. She became very
tence: all the medicine I could prescribe, the involved in the profession, realizing nurses
visits I could make, seemed pointless and needed an organized voice. In 1893 she or-
ridiculous, reduced to childish games in the ganized the American Society of Superin-
64
Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson
tendents of Training Schools and a few Legal Aspects of the Venereal Diseases, New
years later joined the community of women York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1910); Sklar,
living in the Settlement House on Henry Kathryn Kish, “Dock, Lavinia Lloyd,” Amer-
Street in New York City. Lillian Wald, who ican National Biography, vol. 6, New York:
had started the house, was a tremendous in- Oxford University Press (1999).
fluence on Dock.
Her work there for the next twenty years
formed a foundation for nurses having a Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson
huge role in public health care. She was 1829–1909
very vocal about problems that others did
not want to think about or discuss; she was One of the early women physicians in the
one of the first nurses to talk about the prob- United States, Dolley provided leadership
lem of prostitution and the need for treating for women wanting a career in medicine.
venereal disease. When hospitals wouldn’t allow women to
practice, she assisted and was elected as the
Elizabeth Blackwell early declared, in first president of the Provident Dispensary
a letter to her sister, her determination Association. The dispensary provided help
not to be intimidated or discouraged for the needy women and children of
in the difficult task of attacking the so- Rochester until 1894.
cial evil by methods of education, and Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania,
her books and addresses on this sub- on March 11, 1829, Dolley was the third of
ject are classics in their dignity and no- five children. Her parents were Charles
bility of position. . . . From that time on Adamson and Mary Corson Adamson, of
women physicians as an entire body Quaker descent. She was educated at the
have stood united for a single stan- Friends’ School in Philadelphia and later
dard of morals and for the education became interested in medicine. She was de-
of the public. In their ranks there can nied admission to many schools until Cen-
be found no division or opposing tral Medical College accepted her. She
opinions on this subject. They are ac- graduated in 1851.
tive in the warfare against vice, in Following an internship at Blockley Hos-
every country where medicine has pital, she married Dr. Lester Clinton Dol-
opened its door to women, and in our ley, an anatomy professor. They had two
own country they have been publicly children, Loilyn in 1854 and Charles Sum-
called upon by their colleagues in the ner in 1856. Loilyn died in 1858 of typhoid
medical profession to carry the teach- pneumonia.
ings of hygiene to the women of the Dolley remained in Rochester for life,
land” (Dock 1910, 80–81). continuing to be active in her medical prac-
tice, which she devoted to women and chil-
Hygiene and Morality (1910) speaks dren, and continuing her education by go-
strongly against prostitution and addresses ing to Paris, Prague, and Vienna to learn
other public health concerns. She later from their physicians. She became very in-
moved away from nursing and became volved in organizing professional women’s
more involved in the women’s suffragist associations. Her husband’s career at Cen-
movement and equality for women. tral Medical College didn’t last because the
Dock died in Chambersburg, Pennsylva- college closed, but he also had a private
nia, on April 17, 1956. practice.
She had an unusually good reputation for
See also: Barton, Clara; Robb, Isabel Hamp- a woman physician of the time due to her
ton; Wald, Lillian D. training after her education in college. Even
References: Dock, Lavinia L. Hygiene and male colleagues had respect for her talents.
Morality: A Manual for Nurses and Others, Dolley died in Rochester, New York, on De-
Giving an Outline of the Medical, Social, and cember 27, 1909.
65
du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite
References: Miller, Genevieve, “Dolley, but his greater priority was dealing with de-
Sarah Read Adamson,” in Notable American population. France was losing many soldiers
Women 1607–1950, Cambridge, MA: Belk- in its battles of the Seven Years War, and
nap Press (1971); More, Ellen Singer, Restor- newborns were dying. It was at this time, in
ing the Balance: Women Physicians and the Pro- 1759, that he commissioned du Coudray
fession of Medicine, 1850–1995, Cambridge, with training midwives across the country.
MA: Harvard University Press (1999). Du Coudray realized that she needed
training tools and that same year wrote an
obstetrical text, Abrégé de l’art des accouche-
ments (Summary of the Art of Delivery),
du Coudray, Angelique which has many illustrations. The book was
Marguerite helpful, but after her trip to Auvergne, where
1714/5–1794 she heard numerous stories of malpractice by
midwives, she felt she needed more effective
Angelique du Coudray was a midwife in training materials. Illiteracy was very high in
eighteenth-century France. Because many the rural areas of France, and the midwives
newborns died from the brutal practices of needed hands-on experience as well as the il-
women not properly trained or licensed to lustrations from her text. She then invented a
practice midwifery, King Louis XV ap- mechanized anatomical model of a pregnant
pointed her to go on an urgent mission woman along with a child. The anatomical
across all of France to train women as well model aided a great deal, as students could
as men to deliver babies. He invested her practice turning models of babies into the
with broad authority. correct position before birth. Hundreds of
Through all her correspondence, which is these models were made and sent to others
plentiful, du Coudray does not reveal much to use in training.
about her personal life. She may have been Du Coudray never got lost in the mechan-
orphaned or abandoned; one can only spec- ics of training, always reminding her stu-
ulate. She trained with the able midwife dents that they would be dealing with hu-
Anne Bairsin, passed her examinations, and man beings and precious new lives. She
went to Paris to earn her living. Records gave very practical advice as well. In regard
show she was a registered midwife in Paris to twins, she told her students that if a mid-
in 1740 at the age of twenty-five. On record wife saw a left foot and a right foot protrud-
also is a petition from 1745 that she and ing, “before pulling them out she must check
forty other midwives signed, asking the fac- that they both belong to one baby. If instead
ulty of medicine at the University of Paris to she is holding one foot of each twin, it would
give them lessons. Since 1733 the midwives be futile and fatal to pull. She will need to
had been attending sessions conducted by push them back in and search around until
the school of surgery, but the surgeons had she is confident that she has found two feet
stopped these lessons, and the midwives of the same child” (Gelbart 1998, 70).
were left with no one to give them ongoing Many babies died who could have been
training and instruction. The faculty of saved had someone given them the proper
medicine, who had a higher status than the attention: “A weak, motionless baby mis-
surgeons did and who were their old rivals, taken for dead will be wrapped up and put
immediately obliged the midwives. away in a corner to spare the mother such a
The midwives complained that many sad sight. Some are buried alive, and with-
women were practicing without licenses and out baptism” (Gelbart 1998, 137). Du
doing harm. These women, who didn’t have Coudray went on to explain to her students
the knowledge to deliver babies when com- how she had brought four such infants back
plications existed, were competing with the to life, one having had his toe eaten by a
midwives for business and damaging the dog. She constantly told midwives in train-
profession. Louis XV was also concerned ing to pay attention to the baby.
about women practicing without a license, Du Coudray trained 10,000 midwives in
66
Dunn, Thelma Brumfield
about forty different cities. She earned a rep- While she and her husband were in India,
utation that preceded her wherever she the colonial government was very support-
went. Not all people were happy with her; ive of the effort, and support also grew in
she had to deal with jealous women, sur- England. When she left India in 1888, how-
geons who saw her as unwanted competi- ever, no one was as enthusiastic in main-
tion, and the politics of the day. However, taining the same level of assistance that she
she was able to deal with these problems had achieved.
with equanimity and work within the sys-
tem. Her letters are very professional. She References: Lal, Maneesha, “The Politics of
seems to have derived the motivation for Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The
her work from her patriotism. Countess of Dufferin’s Fund, 1885–1888,”
Du Coudray did not even protest in later Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68, no. 1
years when Louis XVI became king in 1774 (Spring 1994): 29–66.
and wanted her to train men as veterinarians,
because in many rural situations when a
woman giving birth was having trouble, peo-
ple called on the nearest shepherd to help. Dunn, Thelma Brumfield
Du Coudray was found dead by authori- 1900–
ties on April 17, 1794, during the Reign of Ter-
ror. She had wisely trained her niece, another Thelma Dunn became a leading authority
able midwife, to take her place, but soon after on the tumors in mice and directed the Can-
her niece died in 1825, no one seemed to take cer Induction and Pathogenesis Section of
the mission as seriously as they had. the Pathology Laboratory at the National
Cancer Institute.
References: Gelbart, Nina Rattner, The Born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, on
King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of February 6, 1900, she attended Cornell Uni-
Madame du Coudray, Berkeley: University of versity and graduated with a bachelor’s de-
California Press (1998); Snodgrass, Mary gree in 1922. She proceeded to the Univer-
Ellen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing, sity of Virginia and earned her medical
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999). degree in 1926. She interned at Bellevue
Hospital in New York and later worked in
pathology at the University of Virginia and
Dufferin Fund George Washington University, eventually
taking a position at the National Cancer In-
The Dufferin Fund was established in 1885 stitute researching cancer.
to fund medical training for nurses, mid- She wrote a book on cancer in 1975 on the
wives, physicians, and hospital assistants as importance of research. Her knowledge of
well as provide for small hospitals and the mouse tumors greatly aided in the research
care of women and children in India. Queen she did at the National Cancer Institute. She
Victoria was convinced there was a great is a realist about the disease and its conse-
need for medical women in India, and Lady quences but not pessimistic—“a cure may
Dufferin, wife of the viceroy to India, initi- come unexpectedly as insulin did for dia-
ated the fund. It was the first organized ef- betes, as liver did for pernicious anemia, or
fort to help the women and children of India as the antibiotics did for bacterial diseases.
with a strong argument for its support be- In the meantime we can continue to fight a
ing that women of the Hindu and Muslim limited war, a war of containment where
faiths would not see male physicians. cancer deaths are reduced and life pro-
When Lady Dufferin surveyed the condi- longed. We have not yet applied all we
tions in India, she saw firsthand the needs know about preventing cancer” (Dunn
that existed. She worked very hard at pro- 1975, 191). She married in 1929 and had
moting the fund’s success, and it helped nu- three children. She currently lives in Char-
merous women and children over the years. lottesville, Virginia.
67
Durocher, Marie Josefina Mathilde
References: American Men and Women of Sci- D.C., she was the daughter of Joseph E. Dyer
ence, 14th ed., New York: Bowker (1979); and Florence Robertson Dyer, who had four
Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, The Unseen Fight children. She graduated from Western High
against Cancer: Experimental Cancer Re- School in 1913. She went on to Goucher Col-
search—Its Importance to Human Cancer, lege in Baltimore to study biology and phys-
Charlottesville, VA: Batt Bates (1975); Kass- iology and graduated in 1917.
Simon, Gabriele, Women of Science: Righting She worked for the Civil Service Commis-
the Record, Bloomington: Indiana University sion and the Red Cross during World War I.
Press (1990). Afterward, she wanted to advance her edu-
cation in order to teach. She took courses at
Mount Holyoke, then went back to Wash-
Durocher, Marie Josefina ington, D.C., to take a position at the Hy-
gienic Laboratory, which was part of the
Mathilde Public Health Service. She worked there for
1809–1893 seven years, researching the effects of
chemotherapeutic drugs on animals. She
One of the first woman doctors in Latin also studied tumor growth rates.
America, Marie Durocher became a famous In order to gain more education, she went
Brazilian obstetrician and was awarded the to George Washington University to do grad-
first medical degree of the newly reorganized uate work. She earned a master’s degree and
Medical School at Rio de Janeiro in 1834. stayed on to teach biochemistry while work-
Durocher was born in Paris but moved to ing on a doctorate degree, which she received
Brazil with her family at the age of eight. in 1935. She continued to teach and had a
She married early and had two children. very good reputation with the students.
Her husband died young and thus she had She went to the National Cancer Institute
to seek a profession. Durocher was active in 1942 and stayed for twenty-three years.
for sixty years, usually dressing in men’s She was invaluable in creating the index of
clothes because she felt they were more tumor chemotherapy and published numer-
practical than dresses for her work. ous articles on the topic. She also did re-
search on amino acids.
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doc-
Dyer was active in the Washington Chem-
tors of the World, New York: Macmillan (1957);
ical Society and in 1962 was selected as a
Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The Bi-
delegate to the International Cancer Con-
ographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pio-
gress in Moscow due to her international
neering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th
reputation. She earned numerous awards
Century, New York: Routledge (2000).
and honors over the years, including the
Garvan Medal in 1962 for her work in bio-
chemical research.
Dyer, Helen Marie Dyer never married or had children. She
1895–1998 retired in 1965 but continued to do research
for several years. She died September 20,
Helen Dyer’s development of the index of 1998, at her home in Washington, D.C., at
tumor chemotherapy in 1949 was requisite the age of 103.
for the National Cancer Institute to develop a
chemotherapy program. The index is a com- References: “Helen Dyer, 103, Cancer Re-
pilation of data she had gathered on earlier searcher,” Washington Times (22 September
chemical treatments of tumors and their evo- 22, 1998): C6; Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-
lution. She was a gifted biochemist who con- vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of
tributed to the understanding of cancer and Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-
its treatment. She was also a proponent of cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New
more women going into science disciplines. York: Routledge (2000).
Born on May 26, 1895, in Washington,
68
E
Edinburgh School of Medicine Arkansas. She then worked as a nurse’s aide
1887–1898 in the Veterans’ Administration in Milwau-
kee before joining the U.S. Army in 1953.
Founded in Edinburgh by Sophia Jex-Blake, She trained as a physical therapist. Once out
it was an early medical school for women in of the army, she went to medical school and
Europe. Jex-Blake had very high standards received her M.D. degree from the Univer-
and was considered by many to be too strict. sity of Arkansas Medical School in 1960.
The school closed in 1898 because of com- Elders interned at the University of Min-
petition from other medical schools, partic- nesota Hospital and did a residency in pedi-
ularly the Medical College for Women, atrics at the University of Arkansas Medical
which had lower tuition and access to clini- Center. While in Arkansas she also earned
cal facilities at the Edinburgh Royal Infir- an advanced degree in biochemistry. She
mary beginning in 1892. was an assistant professor in pediatrics
there after receiving a National Institutes of
See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa Health Career Development Award. In her
References: Todd, Margaret G., The Life of research, she focused on endocrinology and
Sophia Jex-Blake, London: Macmillan (1918). pediatrics and by 1976 was a full professor.
Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas ap-
pointed her director of the Arkansas De-
partment of Health in 1987. They had met at
Elders, Minnie Joycelyn the funeral for one of her brothers, who had
1933– been murdered. While in that office, she in-
creased immunization rates, made it more
Joycelyn Elders became the first African possible for poor women to get mammo-
American to hold the position of surgeon grams, and increased early preventive-med-
general in the United States. She was out- icine screenings for children.
spoken in her commitment to health reform, Elders could see what early pregnancy
health education, and particularly sex edu- and sexually transmitted diseases were do-
cation in schools. ing to young people and the health of the
Born in Schaal, Arkansas, on August 13, country, and she worked hard on educating
1933, Elders was the oldest of eight children the young. She was a strong advocate of sex
of Haller and Curtis Jones, who were loving education and contraception, opposed by
parents. They were sharecroppers with no many conservative politicians and religious
running water or electricity, and Elders, leaders.
along with her brothers and sisters, worked President Clinton nominated her in 1993
in the cotton fields. She was very good in for the surgeon general position. She faced a
school, earning a scholarship to attend col- battle during her confirmation hearings
lege. She received a B.A. in biology from with many opponents in Congress feeling
Philander Smith College in Little Rock, that she was too liberal. She was eventually
69
Elion, Gertrude Belle
confirmed and took office. She is a proponent drug approved by the FDA for AIDS pa-
of plain talk about sex, condoms, and mas- tients, and made organ transplants possible
turbation, which she sees as part of human with the development of a drug to inhibit
sexuality. Young people seemed to embrace organ rejection.
her frankness, but some of their parents, and Born on January 23, 1918, in New York
some government officials, did not. She City, Elion was the daughter of two immi-
served as surgeon general for only fifteen grants. She had one younger brother. Her fa-
months because of controversy over some of ther, Robert, had come from Lithuania and
her remarks. She has no regrets and still feels descended from a long line of rabbis. He as-
“committed to the issues I have always been pired to be a dentist and in 1914 graduated
about: comprehensive health education, pre- from the New York University School of
vention of teenage pregnancy, early-child- Dentistry. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, had
hood education, school-based clinics to make come from Poland. Elion was educated early
health care available for all children, a pre- in the public schools and proved an excel-
ventive approach to health care for every- lent student, graduating from high school at
one” (Elders and Chanoff 1996, 336). the age of twelve. She wanted to attend col-
She married Oliver Elders in 1960 and lege but was unsure of what to major in. Her
had two sons, Eric and Kevin. After serv- father had lost a lot of money in the stock
ing as surgeon general, Elders returned to market crash of 1929, but she was able to at-
the University of Arkansas as a pediatric tend Hunter College for free because of her
endocrinologist. grades. She felt that the professors at Hunter,
an all-female college, didn’t expect students
References: Elders, M. Joycelyn, and David to set out on a career, but Elion planned to
Chanoff, Joycelyn Elders, M.D.: From Share- do so from the beginning.
cropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the She majored in science and chemistry,
United States of America, New York: Morrow wanting, in emulation of her beloved
(1996); Notable Black American Scientists, De- grandfather, to help others. He had died of
troit: Gale Research (1998). cancer when she was fifteen.
She graduated from Hunter with an A.B.
degree in 1937. Like many others during the
Elion, Gertrude Belle Great Depression, she struggled to find
1918–1999 work. For three months, she taught bio-
chemistry at the New York Hospital School
Gertrude Elion received the Nobel Prize in of Nursing. Then she found a low-paid po-
physiology or medicine in 1988 “for sition as a laboratory assistant for a chemist.
demonstrating the differences in nucleic She stayed with the chemist for a year and a
acid metabolism between normal cells and half and saved her money. With her savings
disease-causing cancer cells, protozoa, bac- and some help from her parents, she was
teria, and viruses” (McGrayne 1998, 302). able to enter graduate school at New York
She shared the award with George Hitch- University in 1939.
ings and Sir James Black. It was the first She received an M.S. in chemistry in 1941.
time in thirty-one years that an award was World War II was just beginning, and there
given for drug research, and Elion was one was a shortage of chemists. Wanting to do
of the few to receive a Nobel Prize without research, she could find only laboratory
having a doctorate. jobs, which bored her. Eventually she took a
Elion developed many new drugs for can- job as an assistant to George Hitchings at
cer treatment. Before her research, most Burroughs Wellcome, a pharmaceutical
children with leukemia were not expected company. “I never felt constrained to re-
to survive; because of her contributions, a main strictly in chemistry, but was able to
larger percentage of them now survive broaden my horizons into biochemistry,
(Elion 1988, 449). She also laid the founda- pharmacology, immunology, and eventu-
tion for azidothymidine (AZT), the first ally virology” (Elion 1988).
70
Emerson, Gladys Anderson
Elion also became interested in getting a ment convinced scientists that enzymes
doctorate, but because she loved her job and could be specific to viruses. Acyclovir was
could not keep it and pursue further educa- marketed as Zovirax in 1991.
tion, she chose to stay at Burroughs Well- In 1970, Elion moved with the company
come. Hitchings was very supportive and to North Carolina. She retired in 1983 and
encouraged her work on purines and the served as a consultant to Burroughs Well-
enzymes involved, letting her make com- come. Within one year her division had de-
pounds and then experiment to find out veloped AZT, the first drug approved by the
how they worked. She began to publish her FDA to treat AIDS patients.
findings. In 1950, Elion synthesized two In October 1988, a reporter called to tell
cancer-treatment drugs. A purine com- her she’d won the Nobel Prize. She was sur-
pound called diaminopurine could interfere prised until she heard that the other two
with leukemia cells, but the side effects winners were Hitchings and Sir James W.
were very strong, and eventually patients Black. She was thrilled but stressed that the
relapsed. Elion continued her studies. Later biggest reward in her career was knowing
she developed a new compound called mer- she had helped develop tools to cure dis-
captopurine (6-MP), which was also effec- eases.
tive; but again, patients with leukemia re- She continued to work, teaching Duke
lapsed after a time. She was committed to University students research methods, con-
making 6-MP better. sulting at Burroughs Wellcome, and serving
Another drug she synthesized was on national and international committees.
thioguanine, a close relative of 6-MP. When Elion died February 21, 1999, in Chapel
physicians began treating leukemia patients Hill, North Carolina.
with thioguanine or 6-MP combined with
other drugs, they were successful. Still Elion References: Elion, Gertrude B., “The Purine
continued to try to make the effects of 6-MP Path to Chemotherapy,” “Elion, Gertrude
last longer. She also became interested in B.,” Official Web Site of the Nobel Foun-
immune-system suppressants, and research dation, http://www.nobel.se/medicine/
led her to the development of Imuran, a laureates1988/elion-autobio.html;
more sophisticated version of 6-MP. It McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize
wasn’t long before it proved useful in organ Women in Science, New York: Carol (1998).
transplants, which had usually failed prior
to Imuran because recipients’ bodies re-
jected the new organ. By 1961 it had become Emerson, Gladys Anderson
possible to successfully transplant organs. 1903–1984
Hitchings retired in 1967, and Elion could
admit that they’d had their differences and Gladys Emerson isolated vitamin E for the
that he never gave her proper credit for her first time in 1936 after her husband, Oliver
work. She was glad to be on her own to Emerson, discovered it. She contributed
choose her projects without reporting to much to the understanding of the impor-
him. tance of vitamins and minerals in daily nu-
Antivirals were of interest because scien- trition and aided the government in estab-
tists felt that any drug developed to kill a lishing dietary guidelines. She also
virus would also harm the DNA of a healthy contributed a great deal of research on vita-
cell. Elion returned to the aminopurine, min B deficiencies.
which had been observed to have antiviral Born July 1, 1903, in Caldwell, Kansas,
properties back in 1948 but was also too she and her parents, Otis and Louise Ander-
toxic. She developed a related compound son, moved to Fort Worth, Texas. She at-
that was successful against herpes. tended public schools there and eventually
Later, in the mid-1970s, her team tested graduated from high school in El Reno, Ok-
acyclovir, which was successful against lahoma. She went on to higher education at
viruses but not at all toxic. This develop- the Oklahoma College for Women, graduat-
71
Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana
Gladys Anderson Emerson (UCLA School of Public Health/U.S. National Library of Medicine)
ing with A.B. and B.S. degrees in 1925. She She and her husband divorced in 1940,
attended Stanford and received an M.A. in and she never remarried or had children.
1926, followed by a Ph.D. in nutrition and One of the highest honors she received was
biochemistry from the University of Califor- the Garvan Medal, in 1952. It is given in the
nia, Berkeley, in 1932. field of chemistry to a woman who has
She and Oliver traveled to work in Ger- made significant accomplishments.
many for a brief time before beginning work Emerson died of cancer on January 18,
at the University of California, Berkeley. She 1984, at her home in Santa Monica, Califor-
worked as a research associate there for the nia. She was buried on January 24, 1984,
Institute of Experimental Biology from 1933 next to her parents in El Reno, Oklahoma.
to 1942. She then went to the Merck Institute
in New Jersey to head its department of nu- References: Folkers, Karl, “Gladys Ander-
trition. During her stay there she did a great son Emerson (1903–1984): A Biographical
deal of work on the vitamins E and B. She Sketch,” Journal of Nutrition 115, no. 7 (July
did experiments on both rats and monkeys 1985): 837–841; Notable Twentieth-Century
to determine the effects of various vitamin Scientists Supplement, Detroit: Gale Research
deficiencies. (1998).
She next took a position as head of the
Department of Nutrition and Home Eco-
nomics at the University of California in Los Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana
Angeles. She was an enthusiastic teacher 1715–1762
and lecturer on nutrition. By this time she
was known as an expert in the field and had Germany’s first woman doctor, Dorothea
frequent requests for lectures around the Erxleben, was fortunate enough to practice
country. publicly as a physician by being bold
72
Evans, Alice Catherine
enough to petition King Frederick II for con- ited the United States and practiced medi-
sent to attend the University of Halle with cine in Oregon and Massachusetts.
her brother. She was born in Quedlinburg in
1715 to Christian Polycarpus Leporin and References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Woman
Anna Sophia Meinecken. She felt early on Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
that she benefited from reading and aspired (1957); Olkkonen, Tuomo, “Suomen Ensim-
to learn all she could. By the time her mainen Naistohtori,” Opusculum 5, no. 3
brother entered the University of Halle, she (1985): 122–128; Riska, Elainne, “Women’s
had prepared herself for further study and Careers in Medicine: Developments in the
was interested in medicine. She had learned United States and Finland,” Scandinavian
a great deal from her father, a physician Studies 61 (Spring–Summer 1989): 185–198.
who supported her goal.
With King Frederick II’s approval, she and
her brother went to the University together. Evans, Alice Catherine
Many opposed her attendance, feeling that 1881–1975
females were far too fragile to ever be well
educated, much less become physicians. Alice Evans’s pioneering work in milk bac-
When Austria and Germany went to war teria led to the acceptance of pasteurization.
and her brother was called into military She was the first woman to serve as a bacte-
service, she left school because she was not riologist for the U.S. Department of Agricul-
comfortable attending classes without him. ture (USDA).
She married Johann Erxleben, a deacon, and Born in Neath, Pennsylvania, on January
assumed responsibility for his five children, 29, 1881, she was the daughter of Anne B.
adding four of her own. While raising her Evans and William Howell Evans and had
family, she did practice medicine even one brother, Morgan. Both her parents were
though she did not have a university degree. teachers, and her father was also a farmer.
In 1753 she was accused of not treating She became a teacher as well and, after four
patients correctly after one of her patients years, enrolled in a program for rural teach-
died. She addressed the charges and was al-
lowed to defend her dissertation and take
the exams to prove her knowledge. She did
an excellent job on the exams, receiving her
degree on June 12, 1754. She continued her
medical practice until her death in 1762.
Eskelin, Karolina
1867–1938
73
Evans, Alice Catherine
ers at Cornell that her brother had told her listened until two other researchers, Dr.
about. Charles M. Carpenter of Cornell University
There Evans became interested in science and Dr. Karl F. Meyer of the University of
and completed a degree in bacteriology in California, confirmed her findings. Carpen-
1909. She went on to the University of Wis- ter found that the same germ that led to un-
consin for a master’s degree. Upon gradua- dulant fever in humans caused Bang’s dis-
tion, she worked for the government, inves- ease (brucellosis) in animals. Meyer
tigating the microbes in cow’s milk. After suggested a new genus be named Brucella to
obtaining a position with the USDA in its incorporate both organisms. By the 1930s,
dairy division, Evans discovered, in 1917, the dairy industry was pasteurizing all milk
that bacillus abortus, which causes Bang’s in the United States.
disease in cows and was thought to be a During her own research, Evans con-
harmless germ to humans, was very similar tracted brucellosis in 1922 and suffered with
to the bacteria known as Micrococus meliten- it for twenty years. Nonetheless, she contin-
sis, which was from raw goat’s milk and ued her bacteria research, which included
made people sick with what was called un- looking for the cause of meningitis and
dulant fever. Undulant fever had been a streptococcus infections. In 1928 she became
problem since the nineteenth century. Evans the first woman to become president of the
concluded that the disease that became Society of American Bacteriologists. She re-
known as brucellosis could be contracted by tired in 1945 but stayed active in microbiol-
humans from drinking both cow’s and ogy research until her death from a stroke on
goat’s milk. September 5, 1975, in Alexandria, Virginia.
Later scientific investigations led to the
realization that many people who had bru- References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-
cellosis were at times misdiagnosed as hav- vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of
ing influenza or tuberculosis. Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-
Evans published her findings but was ig- cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New
nored because she held no doctorate degree. York: Routledge (2000); Stevens, Marianne
She moved on to work for the U.S. Public Fedunkiw, American National Biography, vol.
Health Service but continued to argue about 7, New York: Oxford University Press
the importance of pasteurizing milk. No one (1999).
74
F
Fabiola, Saint Farquhar, Marilyn Gist
d. ca. 399 1928–
Saint Fabiola founded a public hospital in A cell biologist, Marilyn Farquhar has con-
Rome that was the first such hospital in tributed a significant amount of research on
western Europe. She was also responsible renal disease and more recently on the char-
for establishing a hospice in Porto, Italy, acteristics of G proteins.
with the help of St. Pammachius. A Chris- Born on July 11, 1928, in Tulare, Califor-
tian noblewoman, Fabiola dedicated her life nia, to Brooks Dewitt Gist and Alta Green
to helping the poor and needy after con- Gist, Farquhar had one older sister. She was
verting to Christianity and following the educated in the public schools and then at-
teachings of St. Jerome. She studied the tended the University of California at
scriptures, as she knew Latin, Hebrew, and Berkeley. She majored in zoology as a
Greek. premed student. She graduated in 1949 and
Fabiola came from a wealthy family de- was one of only three women admitted to
scended from Julius Maximus. She married medical school at the University of Califor-
very young and then separated from the nia in San Francisco.
church because she married a second time After two years, she became interested in
before her first, abusive, husband died. the study of diseases. She changed her
Upon the death of her second husband and course of study and received a Ph.D. in
her public penitence, she sold her posses- pathology in 1955 at the University of Cali-
sions and worked for the good of the poor. fornia, Berkeley. She went with her hus-
At the hospital she founded, she attended to band, John Farquhar, to the University of
the patients herself regardless of their dis- Minnesota and studied kidney disease. Cell
ease or condition. biology was a new field, and electron mi-
She followed Jerome to Bethlehem in 395 croscopy made it possible for scientists to
and stayed with her relative, Oceanus. She see much more detail.
returned to Rome following the Huns’ Farquhar returned to the University of
threat to invade Palestine in 396. She con- California at San Francisco in 1962 and
templated a long journey due to her rest- eventually became a full professor of
lessness but died before she could com- pathology. Her first marriage ended in di-
mence. All of Rome admired her greatly. vorce, and in 1970 she married George
December 27 is her feast day. Palade, a future Nobel Prize winner.
Farquhar has published hundreds of arti-
References: Carter, E. D., “Fabiola, St.” New cles and papers on cell biology, renal disease,
Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: McGraw- kidney problems, and G proteins. In 1988
Hill (1967); “Fabiola, Saint,” Encyclopedia she was elected to the National Academy of
Britannica, vol. 4, Chicago: Encyclopedia Sciences. Currently she serves as professor
Britannica (1997).
75
Felicie, Jacoba
of pathology and is the chair of cellular and With so many undesirable effects of
molecular medicine at the University of Cal- excision and infibulation it might
ifornia, San Diego. She has two sons, Bruce appear most extraordinary that such
and Douglas, by her first marriage. practices survive. But the practices
themselves have been kept so secret
References: Notable Twentieth-Century Scien- and there are indeed many who have
tists, Detroit: Gale Research (1995); Shearer, not suffered the after-effects described,
Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable themselves, and are therefore quite
Women in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic- unaware of the medical hazards.
tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press Moreover many rural dwellers still do
(1996). not associate certain medical
conditions with the excision operation.
The lack of communication sometimes
Felicie, Jacoba between the educated urban
1280–? population and unschooled rural
Jacoba Felicie was a very learned healer in people encourages the continued belief
the thirteenth century in Paris. She was pos- in traditional mythological rationaliza-
sibly as skilled as male physicians of the tions for the customs, and ideological
time were. arguments remain unchallenged.
Most women then could not obtain li- (Sanderson 1981, 44)
censes to practice medicine and were not
admitted to universities, with the exception See also: Ramsey, Mimi; el Saadawi, Nawal
of Italian universities, and thus they had References: Sanderson, Lilian Passmore,
limited training. Skilled physicians some- Against the Mutilation of Women: The Struggle
times taught women. Felicie, an empiric, to End Unnecessary Suffering, London: Ithaca
was prosecuted several times for practicing Press (1981); Toubia, Nahid, and Susan Izett,
medicine without a license. Female Genital Mutilation: An Overview,
Geneva: World Health Organization (1998).
References: Hughes, Muriel Joy, Women
Healers in Medieval Life and Literature, New
York, King’s Crown Press (1943); Ogilvie, Fenselau, Catherine Clarke
Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The Biograph- 1939–
ical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering
Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Cen- Catherine Fenselau contributed to the de-
tury, New York: Routledge (2000). velopment of mass spectrometry and its use
in analyzing chemical compounds to deter-
mine molecular mass, structure, and com-
Female Genital Mutilation position. Researchers use the method exten-
sively today to determine the benefits of
Many cultures use female genital mutilation many drugs in treating diseases.
(FGM) to circumcise young girls. Many of Born in York, Nebraska, on April 15, 1939,
these girls die from the procedure or de- Fenselau became interested in science in
velop physical and emotional problems. high school. She was encouraged to go to
Over the past two centuries, women who college at Bryn Mawr and graduated with an
were subjected to this procedure have A.B. in chemistry in 1961. She chose Stanford
sought the help of female physicians and for graduate study and received her Ph.D. in
medical missionaries. Many have also tried 1965. By this time she was married to Allan
to escape those societies that practice this H. Fenselau. At Stanford she began working
procedure, which is often bound up in cul- in the new field of mass spectrometry.
tural and religious beliefs. FGM is now Her first teaching job was at Johns Hop-
against the law in many countries due to kins School of Medicine, where she rose
better awareness of the damage it can do. from instructor to professor. She worked
76
Ferguson, Angela Dorothea
there from 1967 to 1987. In 1985 she won the catch up with some of the other students
Garvan Medal from the American Chemical and graduated in 1941.
Society for her outstanding contributions to She decided to seek a career in science
chemistry. and was accepted at Howard University.
She left Johns Hopkins for a position at the Her parents could afford her first year there,
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, since she lived at home. After that she ob-
as professor and chair of the Department of tained scholarships for tuition and fees and
Chemistry. Her interests in mass spectrome- covered other expenses by working in the
try led to studies of laetrile, an anticancer laboratories at Freedmen’s Hospital, the
drug. The World Health Organization also teaching hospital at Howard University and
asked her to study the metabolism of clo- the predecessor of Howard University Hos-
fazamine, a drug used to treat leprosy. pital. She graduated from Howard in 1945.
In 1992 Fenselau received a Merit Award Her interests changed to biology and
for her work from the National Institutes of medicine with a desire to help children, and
Health. Currently she is a professor in the she pursued pediatrics training in medical
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry school at Howard University. She gradu-
at the University of Maryland, College Park. ated with her medical degree in 1949 and in-
She has two sons. terned in all departments of Freedmen’s
Hospital. After passing her final examina-
References: Roscher, Nina Matheny, “Cath- tions, she went into private practice. During
erine Clarke Fenselau,” in Benjamin F. this time, she realized that research focused
Shearer and Barbara S. Shearer, eds., Notable primarily on children of European descent,
Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical and she did not have sufficient information
Dictionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press to treat her black patients.
(1997). Howard University School of Medicine
hired her to begin to rectify this lack, and
during her research, she discovered that
Ferguson, Angela Dorothea many black children suffered from sickle
1925– cell anemia. It was a very hard disease to di-
agnose, as its symptoms vary by age and are
Angela Ferguson did pioneering research common to other ailments. She studied
in the diagnosis and treatment of sickle cell hundreds of cases in order to determine the
anemia. She also made it clear that more re- most obvious signs and shared her findings
search was needed on African American with colleagues. One of her greatest contri-
children so that black pediatricians like butions was promoting the use of a blood
herself would know what norms to expect test at birth to determine if African Ameri-
in their clients and what advice to give can babies had the disease. She also devel-
mothers. oped helpful treatments for sickle cell ane-
She was born in Washington, D.C., on Feb- mia, among them increasing fluid intake to
ruary 15, 1925, to a poor family. Her father help the flow of blood.
taught at a segregated high school and also In 1965 her work changed dramatically
served in the U.S. Army Reserves, but he did when she became involved in building a
not earn enough during the depression to new teaching hospital at Howard Univer-
support a family of eight. Angela worked in sity. From the beginning of the project, she
the school cafeteria in exchange for meals, advised government officials and others on
and many times at home dinner consisted of what was needed in a teaching hospital. The
only potatoes or cocoa and water. new Freedmen’s Hospital opened ten years
Never intending to go to college, Angela later, and Ferguson held the position of as-
attended Cardoza High School. It was here sociate vice-president for health affairs for
that she discovered her love of and gift for over twenty years, until she retired in 1990.
science, particularly chemistry and mathe- She is married to Dr. Charles M. Cabaniss
matics. She took summer-school courses to and has two daughters.
77
Flexner Report
References: Flexner, Abraham, Medical Edu- Girls with bound feet could not attend
cation in the United States and Canada: A Re- school or engage in any physical activity;
port to the Carnegie Foundation for the Ad- many suffered infections, broken bones, in-
vancement of Teaching, New York: Carnegie tense pain, and sometimes death. “My
Foundation for the Advancement of Teach- grandmother had wanted me to have bound
ing (1910); King, L. S., “Medicine in the feet. She told me that big feet were not beau-
USA: Historical Vignettes, XX. The Flexner tiful. I thought that was fine, so I had my feet
Report of 1910.” JAMA 251, no. 8 (February bound, but it was very painful. When you
24, 1984): 1079–1086. bind your feet, you have to wear at least two
pairs of cloth shoes, plus several layers of
cloth strips binding your feet tightly inside
78
Franklin, Martha Minerva
the shoes” (Young 1995–1996, 535). The Chi- in 1863, where she continued to be involved
nese outlawed the custom in 1902. in the temperance movement. She died of
pleuropneumonia on January 26, 1879.
References: Hong, Fan, Footbinding, Femi-
nism, and Freedom: The Liberation of Women’s References: Ford, Bonnie, “Lydia Folger
Bodies in Modern China, London: F. Cass Fowler,” in Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Lives
(1997); Pruitt, Ida, A Daughter of Han, New from History, American Women Series, vol. 2,
Haven, CT: Yale University Press (1945); Pasadena, CA: Salem Press (1995).
Wang, Ping, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in
China, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press (2000); Young, Helen Praeger, “From Franklin, Martha Minerva
Soldier to Doctor: A Chinese Woman’s Story 1870–1968
of the Long March,” Science and Society 59,
no. 4 (Winter 1995–1996): 531–547. Martha Franklin was a leader and organizer
of black nurses in the United States at the
end of the nineteenth century and begin-
Fowler, Lydia Folger ning of the twentieth century. She founded
1822–1879 the National Association of Colored Gradu-
ate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908 with support
Lydia Fowler became the second female from other black nurses, notably Mary Eliza
physician in the United States in 1850 and Mahoney and Adah Belle Samuels Thoms.
was the first woman to become a professor She also had support from the National
at a U.S. medical school. She lectured fre- Medical Association (NMA), the major
quently and argued for the need of women black physicians’ association of the time.
in the medical profession. Born in New Milford, Connecticut, to
Fowler was born May 5, 1822, in Nan- Henry J. Franklin and Mary E. Gauson on
tucket, Massachusetts, to Gideon and Eu- October 29, 1870, Franklin had a sister, Flo-
nice Macy Folger. She had a good basic ed- rence, and a brother, William. Her father
ucation, including math and science, and had been a soldier in the Civil War. She at-
left school in 1838 to teach in Norton at the tended public school in Meriden, Connecti-
Wheaton Seminary. She married Lorenzo cut, where there were few blacks. She chose
Niles Fowler in 1844 and had a daughter, a nursing career and went to Philadelphia,
Jessie Allen, in 1856. where she became the sole black graduate of
Lorenzo Fowler was a phrenologist who the December 1897 class of the Women’s
lectured extensively on this new science. Ly- Hospital Training School for Nurses.
dia accompanied him and eventually began Like most black nurses, Franklin experi-
speaking on physiology and hygiene. She enced discrimination. The American Nurses
decided to enroll at Central Medical College Association did not allow blacks to join, and
in New York, which was one of the first she felt that having no voice was a major ob-
medical schools to accept women on a regu- stacle to progress. She conducted a survey
lar basis. She learned a great deal about of 1,500 black nurses and urged a meeting.
anatomy and became a lecturer at the col- In 1908 a meeting finally took place, and
lege. Later on she was promoted to professor the NACGN was officially founded with
in order to teach in the area of midwifery Franklin as president. There were fifty-two
and the diseases of women and children. nurses at the first meeting in New York City.
Her post was short-lived because the school By 1940 there were over 12,000 members.
merged with a competitor in New York. Franklin worked very hard within the as-
Fowler left to begin private practice. She also sociation and with other groups who were
taught and gave periodic lectures to women. supportive. She became a registered nurse
Eventually the women’s rights movement in New York after completing a postgradu-
and the temperance drive took more of her ate course at Lincoln Hospital. She worked
time. She and her husband moved to London as a nurse in the public schools and contin-
79
Franklin, Rosalind Elsie
ued to obtain more education as needed. Once the war ended she turned her atten-
Franklin died on September 26, 1968. In tion to X-ray crystallography and diffrac-
1976 she was posthumously inducted into tion in order to find out more about how
the Nursing Hall of Fame. molecules form. In 1947 she went to France
and began work at the Laboratoire Centrale
See also: Mahoney, Mary Eliza des Services Chimiques de l’Etat. There dur-
References: Davis, Althea T., Early Black ing the next three years, she furthered her
American Leaders in Nursing: Architects for In- work on carbon fibers. She then returned to
tegration and Equality, Boston: Jones and England and in 1950, Sir John Randall at
Bartlett (1999); Davis, Althea T., “Franklin, King’s College asked her to join Maurice
Martha Minerva,” American National Biogra- Wilkins and Raymond Gosling, who were
phy, vol. 8, New York: Oxford University already working at King’s on DNA; Randall
Press (1999). wanted someone to study the photos
Gosling had already taken.
Franklin preferred to work indepen-
dently and from the beginning did not get
Franklin, Rosalind Elsie along with Wilkins. There were further
1920–1958 problems regarding the roles each would
play, and the partnership did not last.
Rosalind Franklin contributed an enormous Franklin and Gosling did work well to-
amount of information toward the under- gether and published five papers.
standing of DNA’s structure. Her work was Franklin found King’s College very for-
vital to the discovery of nucleic acids and mal. The segregation of men and women
their molecular structure. there was a hindrance to cooperative re-
Born in London on July 25, 1920, to Ellis search efforts. She led a social life outside of
and Muriel Waley Franklin, she grew up the college, keeping busy also with social re-
with three brothers until a sister came along forms. She continued to work on DNA and
when she was eight. She received a good ed- its structure, making a lot of headway and
ucation at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, where she producing some of the best existing photos
became very interested in science. Her par- of DNA. Working with coal had helped her
ents were devoted to public service and were to work with structures that were not totally
philanthropists. Her father helped numerous crystalline. She was able to show that the
Jews escape from Nazi Germany. Many in DNA molecule could exist in either a more
her family were socialists, as was she. Rela- crystalline A form or a B form.
tives were oftentimes involved in women’s Wilkins eventually showed James D. Wat-
causes, and their work had an impact on her. son one of Franklin’s photos without her
Her father did not encourage her interest knowledge or permission. The photo gave
in science because he wanted her to go into Watson a piece to the puzzle that he and
social work. After he refused to pay for her Francis Crick had been looking for, and they
education at Cambridge, an angry Aunt Al- were able to publish an article on the struc-
ice and her mother agreed to finance her ture of DNA. They would win the Nobel
schooling. Later her father relented and was Prize in medicine in 1962 along with
supportive. She attended Newnham Col- Wilkins, four years after Franklin’s death to
lege at Cambridge University in London ovarian cancer.
and received a degree in chemistry in 1941. Franklin went on to Birkbeck College in
She stayed at Cambridge and studied gas- 1953 and studied virus structures. Her work
phase chromatography while on a research there helped lay the foundation for bio-
scholarship. She earned her Ph.D. in 1945 molecular science. She died on March 20,
while studying the structure of coal and car- 1958, after having been diagnosed with can-
bons to help in the war effort. She con- cer in 1956. Franklin continued to work de-
tributed a great deal to the industry by help- spite being gravely ill.
ing to find high-strength fibers in carbon. Franklin was very dedicated to her work
80
Freud, Anna
Freud, Anna
1895–1982
lent public speaker, appealing to audiences
of diverse backgrounds. She also was a clear
Anna Freud was a pioneer in psychoanaly-
writer who published a number of papers
sis. She carried on after her father and es-
and books during her lifetime.
tablished her own theories in child therapy.
Psychoanalysts are still developing many
Born in Vienna, Austria, on December 3,
of her ideas, and she is widely read. “She
1895, the last of six children, she was the
has gone forward where he left off, giving
daughter of the founder of psychoanalysis,
her life to children from unhappy homes, to
Sigmund Freud, and his wife, Martha
children in the midst of the terrors of war, to
Bernays. She was educated as a teacher, but
normal children in their puzzling, inspiring
her father had a profound impact on the di-
variety” (Coles 1992, 198). Freud died Octo-
rection her work would take.
ber 9, 1982, in London.
She worked closely with her father in Vi-
enna until the Nazi invasion, at which time References: Coles, Robert, Anna Freud: The
she and her family escaped to England. She Dream of Psychoanalysis, Reading, MA: Ad-
continued her work there and with Dorothy dison-Wesley (1992); Jahoda, Marie, “Freud,
T. Burlingham established a nursery and Anna,” Dictionary of National Biography:
later a clinic in Hampstead in order for chil- 1981–1985, London: Oxford University
dren to receive medical and educational Press (1990); Limentani, Adam, Between
services following World War II. Freud and Klein: The Psychoanalytic Quest for
Freud’s work focused on child therapy Knowledge and Truth, London: Free Associa-
and human defense mechanisms. She built tion Books (1989); Sheehy, Noel, Antony J.
on her father’s work but also contributed Chapman, and Wendy A. Conroy, Biographi-
much to our understanding of children and cal Dictionary of Psychology, London: Rout-
how their environments affect them. She ledge (1997).
had tremendous energy and was an excel-
81
Friend, Charlotte
82
Fulton, Mary Hannah
They initially settled in Canton, and fol- . . . Chinese medicine and Chinese supersti-
lowing a brief stay in Kwangsi, which tions had full and unrestricted sway’”
proved to be too violent, returned to Can- (Benedict 1996, 135).
ton. Fulton was very successful in setting up Despite these overwhelming problems,
dispensaries and worked at the Canton Fulton persevered in establishing the med-
Medical Missionary Hospital. When there ical school, and also a school for nurses. She
was a fallout between two of the male lead- retired to Pasadena, California, after poor
ers of the hospital, one physician left and health forced her to leave China. She wrote
took all his male students with him. The fe- of her missionary work and died on January
male medical students were left with no 7, 1927.
teachers or support. Fulton took it upon
herself to set up a women’s and children’s See also: Guangzhou, China
medical hospital and later the Hackett Med- References: Balmer, Randall, and John R.
ical College for Women. Fitzmier, The Presbyterians, Westport, CT:
Throughout the late nineteenth century Greenwood Press (1993); Benedict, Carol,
she treated bubonic plague, endured the Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-century China,
opium wars, and treated women slaves in Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
China. “I often returned from attending (1996); Cadbury, William Warder, and Mary
those ill at home, sick at heart. In every Hoxie Jones, At the Point of a Lancet: One
house I found either bound feet, those af- Hundred Years of the Canton Hospital, 1835–
flicted with tuberculosis or those addicted 1935, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh (1935); Ful-
to the use of opium; sometimes all three” ton, Mary H., “Inasmuch”: Extracts from Let-
(Fulton 1915, 106). The bubonic plague was ters, Journals, Papers, etc., West Medford,
devastating to the Canton population: MA: Central Committee on the United
“John Kerr, the director of the Canton Mis- Study of Foreign Missions (1915); Tucker,
sionary Hospital, lamented that in ‘the great Sara W., “Opportunities for Women: The
city of Canton, . . . there was no Sanitary Development of Professional Women’s
Board, the government adopted no sanitary Medicine at Canton, China, 1879–1901,”
or preventive measures, there was no isola- Women’s Studies International Forum 13, no. 4
tion of cases, no removal of filth or rubbish, (1990): 357–368.
no water supply, no system of drainage, and
83
84
G
Geneva Medical College and William Smith: The History of Two Col-
1835–1872 leges, Geneva, NY: Hobart and William
Smith Colleges (1972).
Geneva Medical College was the first insti-
tution of higher education in the United
States to confer a medical degree upon a Giliani, Alessandra
woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first fe- 1307–1326
male physician in the United States.
Geneva College wanted a medical school Alessandra Giliana was the first female pro-
in order to bring in more money. This move sector. She studied with and was an assis-
was very problematic, as the College of tant to Mondino dei Luzzi, considered a
Physicians and Surgeons in New York (later great anatomy teacher of the time, at the
part of Columbia University) was against it. University of Bologna in Italy.
College officials and others persisted until She was skilled at dissecting cadavers and
the college’s doors opened in 1835. used a colored dye that dried quickly to
At the time Elizabeth Blackwell attended, show the smallest of blood vessels to stu-
the college had a two-year program. The dents. This demonstration was an indispen-
school had a faculty of physicians who also sable learning aid for medical students of the
engaged in private practice when the col- time. She died very young on March 26, 1326.
lege was not in session. The school did quite
well until the 1850s and 1860s brought References: Hughes, Muriel Joy, Women Heal-
much new competition from other medical ers in Medieval Life and Literature, New York:
schools; some of these, unlike Geneva Col- King’s Crown Press (1943); Shearer, Benjamin
lege, were near hospitals. F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in
In 1872, Geneva Medical College con- the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary,
ferred its last medical degree. Most of the Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1996).
medical school faculty then moved to Syra-
cuse University, which had better facilities.
Geneva Medical College had been a small
part of Geneva College, which was started Goodrich, Annie Warburton
in 1796 as Geneva Academy, gaining a char- 1866–1954
ter to become a college for men in 1825 with
the help of John Henry Hobart. It was Annie Goodrich implemented new stan-
known as Geneva College until 1852, when dards for nurses that became nationally ac-
it became Hobart College, named after its cepted and directly improved patient care
founder. It is known as Hobart and William in the United States. In Washington, D.C., in
Smith Colleges today. 1918, Goodrich also established the first U.S.
Army School of Nursing and served as the
References: Smith, Warren Hunting, Hobart first dean.
85
Goodrich, Annie Warburton
86
Guangzhou, China
References: Carey, Charles W., Jr., pulsory standard of floor space per bed, our
“Goodrich, Annie Warburton,” American spacious theatre suites, our general stan-
National Biography, vol. 9, New York: Oxford dard of surgery, and very proud of our uni-
University Press (1999); Koch, Harriett Rose fied nursing stand” (Gordon 1958, 55–56).
Berger, Militant Angel, New York: Macmil- She had four children, three sons and a
lan (1951); Werminghaus, Esther A., Annie daughter. She felt being a mother was ex-
W. Goodrich: Her Journey to Yale, New York: tremely fulfilling. She was strong-minded
Macmillan (1950). and determined and did not hesitate to get
involved in political matters. She strongly
opposed government control of medicine,
Gordon, Doris Clifton Jolly feeling doctors could make better decisions
1890–1956 in health matters. She remained active with
public health concerns all her life. Doris
Doris Gordon was the second woman to be- Gordon died on July 9, 1956, at the Marire
come a physician in New Zealand and the Hospital.
first woman in Australasia to be recognized
by a fellowship (granted in 1925) to the References: Bryer, Linda, “Gordon, Doris
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Clifton,” Dictionary of New Zealand Biogra-
Born in Melbourne on July 10, 1890, she phy, vol. 4, 1921–1940, Wellington: Bridget
was the daughter of Lucy Clifton Crouch Williams Books and the Department of In-
and Alfred Jolly. They emigrated in 1894 to ternal Affairs (1998); Gordon, Doris Jolly,
New Zealand and lived first in Wellington, Doctor Down Under, London: Faber and
then later, in 1905, in Tapanui, Otago. Faber (1958).
Doris did not attend school until she be-
came interested in becoming a medical mis-
sionary. She graduated from the Tapanui Guangzhou, China
District High School and went on to the
University of Otago Medical School, gradu- Guangzhou, China, became the center for
ating in 1916. She became a house surgeon Protestant missionary work in the nine-
at Dunedin Hospital that same year. teenth century, welcoming female medical
She married William Patteson Pollock missionaries and also serving as an educa-
Gordon, a physician, in 1917. Following tional center for women physicians in
World War I she and her husband set up China, first through the Canton Medical
practice in Stratford on the North Island. Missionary Hospital and then through the
She spent much of her career dealing with Hackett Medical College for Women.
childbirth matters, particularly pain med- Guangzhou is in the province of Guang-
ications for women going through child- dong, but Westerners had also come to
birth, and other obstetric and gynecologic know the city as Guangdong—Canton—by
concerns of the times. She helped establish a late in the sixteenth century. The first
chair in obstetrics at Otago Medical School women’s medical college in China was
and founded the New Zealand Obstetrical founded there by Mary Hannah Fulton in
Society. High standards were very impor- 1902 and thrived until the late 1920s, when
tant to her. political changes forced its closure.
“We are young enough not to be encour-
aged by antiquity. Comparatively speaking See also: Fulton, Mary Hannah
we have no shortage of money. Certainly References: Cohen, Saul B., The Columbia
skyscraper hospital buildings are not popu- Gazetteer of the World, New York: Columbia
lar because of our earthquake menace, and University Press (1998); Rubinstein, Murray
amazing population spurts in northern ar- A., The Origins of the Anglo-American Mis-
eas leave many hospitals in the predicament sionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840, Lan-
of the small boy who habitually outgrows ham, MD: Scarecrow Press (1996).
his pants. But we can be proud of our com-
87
H
Hamilton, Alice When she returned home, she and her sister
1869–1970 Edith determined to prepare for a career, as
the family’s finances were dwindling.
Alice Hamilton was a physician who pro- Alice chose medicine, the only other
gressively advocated occupational health choices for women at the time being teach-
among workers in the industrial trades; she ing and nursing, neither of which appealed
also served as the first female faculty mem- to her. She also felt she could do the most
ber at Harvard Medical School in 1919. As a good as a physician. She was not well edu-
pioneer in occupational medicine, she be- cated in the sciences, however, so she got
came the foremost authority in the new field some tutoring in physics and chemistry and
during her lifetime. Without her persever- then attended a small medical school in Fort
ance, occupational health hazards would Wayne for a year to study anatomy.
have gone undetected in many industries in Once her father was convinced she was
the United States. serious about a medical career, she enrolled
Born in New York City on February 27, at the Medical School at the University of
1869, to Montgomery Hamilton and Ger- Michigan in Ann Arbor. There she loved the
trude Pond, she grew up in Fort Wayne, In- atmosphere and the depth of courses of-
diana, in a fourth-generation home. She and fered. She also did not have to fight the sex-
her siblings, Edith, Margaret, and Norah, ism that existed in so many other schools.
were all very close in age, and their parents “The school was coeducational and had
taught them at home. A brother, Arthur, been for about twenty years, so we women
whom everyone called Quint, was born were taken for granted and there was none
when she was seventeen. of the sex antagonism which I saw later in
Hamilton felt her home education was Eastern schools. A man student would step
not very sound. Her lessons had included aside and let the woman pass through the
reading, languages, history, and literature door first, the women had the chairs if there
but very little math or science. Also, her were not enough to go round, but when it
mother had instilled in her a deep social came to microscopes or laboratory appara-
consciousness. Gertrude Pond Hamilton felt tus it was first come, first served” (Hamilton
very strongly about the shortcomings of so- 1943, 40).
ciety that allowed cruelty to prisoners, Graduating in 1893 from medical school
blacks, child laborers, and the poor. She ad- at the University of Michigan, Hamilton
mired those who did something about a wanted to pursue bacteriology and pathol-
problem as opposed to only talking about it. ogy, but she was urged to take on some hos-
As was the family tradition, when Alice pital work for the added experience. She
was seventeen she attended a school in held two internships, two months in the
Farmington, Connecticut, for two years. The Hospital for Women and Children in Min-
school was inadequate in some ways, but neapolis and nine months in Boston at the
there Alice began lifelong friendships. New England Hospital for Women and
89
Hamilton, Alice
90
Han Suyin
in workers making explosives for the war “Hamilton, Alice,” American National Biogra-
effort. phy vol. 9, New York: Oxford University
Hamilton was a pacifist during the war, Press (1999); Hamilton, Alice, Exploring the
but she did not make her views public be- Dangerous Trades: The Autobiography of Alice
cause she felt she was doing important Hamilton, M.D., Boston: Little, Brown (1943);
work and did not want to jeopardize her Sicherman, Barbara, Alice Hamilton: A Life in
job. She was on good terms with most of the Letters, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
government officials she worked with. sity Press (1984).
After the war ended, her reputation as an
authority in the field of public health gained
her an appointment to the Harvard Medical Han Suyin
School in 1919, a time when the school still 1917–
did not admit women as students. She
stayed there and taught until retiring in An early physician in Asia, Han Suyin is
1935, never attaining a position higher than best known for writing fiction, particularly
assistant professor. A Many Splendored Thing, which was made
She served on many state, national, and into a movie in 1955. Her writings include
international committees working for pub- autobiographical stories, historical and po-
lic health and social reform. She supported litical accounts of revolutionary China, and
and spoke for women in industry and for romances.
the protection of their health in legislation Born in Sinyang, China, as Elizabeth
and regulations. Her major contribution Chou on September 12, 1917, she served as
was the work Industrial Toxicology in 1934 a physician after receiving an education at
and its subsequent revised edition in 1949, the University of London and the Univer-
which was the first work of its kind to en- sity of Brussels. She worked at the Queen
lighten professionals on dangerous indus- Mary Hospital in Hong Kong from 1948 to
trial practices. 1952 and then went to the Johore Bahru
In her autobiography, which she wrote
during World War II, she notes that the
progress between the two wars was very ev-
ident. Even though the same kinds of dan-
gerous materials were used for making
weapons, more safety regulations were in
place, and engineers and doctors knew
much more about protecting workers. Even
employers found that a high turnover of
workers in these industries was not a prof-
itable answer to the problems. “Industrial
medicine had at last become respectable”
(Hamilton 1943, 198).
Hamilton suffered from increasingly poor
health during her nineties; deafness and a
series of strokes hampered her. She died on
September 22, 1970, in Hadlyme, Connecti-
cut, at the age of 101. It seemed appropriate
that the Occupational Safety and Health Act
was passed a few months later. President
Nixon signed it on December 29, 1970. The
act serves to ensure safety and health in the
workplace.
Han Suyin (World Health Organization/U.S.
References: Corn, Jacqueline Karnell, National Library of Medicine)
91
Hautval, Adelaide
Hospital in Malaya. She maintained a pri- them immediately because of its infectious
vate practice for about ten years. nature. Hautval hid some of the women on
Her later years have been substantially top of the bunks in her block.
filled with political and literary endeavors; She was later sent to Birkenau and gave
in her early life she showed perseverance in medical aid as best she could under the cir-
pursuing a medical education when few cumstances. She then worked at Ravens-
women sought such a profession. She was bruck until liberation. She testified in 1964
one of the first Chinese women physicians in a libel trial in England involving the ac-
in Asia. tions of Wladyslaw Dering, a physician who
had participated in the medical experiments
References: International Who’s Who of at Auschwitz. “Justice Frederick Horace
Women, London: Europa (1997). Lawton, in his summation to the jury called
Hautval ‘perhaps one of the most impres-
sive and courageous women who have ever
Hautval, Adelaide given evidence in the courts of this coun-
1906–1988 try’” (Gutman 1990, 650).
Hautval died in 1988. A book of her writ-
Adelaide Hautval was a French physician ing about her experiences and the inhuman-
and psychiatrist who aided women in the ity of the Nazi medical experiments was
German concentration camps during World published in 1991.
War II. She later testified about the medical
experiments on Jewish women in the camps References: Epstein, Eric Joseph, and Philip
of Auschwitz. She was recognized in 1965 Rosen, Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography,
by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Geography, and Terminology, Westport, CT:
Among the Nations, an honor bestowed on Greenwood Press (1997); Gutman, Israel,
the courageous men and women who The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York:
risked their lives to help the Jews under per- Macmillan (1990); Hautval, Adelaide, Méde-
secution in Nazi Germany. cine et Crimes Contre l’Humanité, Le Mejan,
Born in France to a Protestant family, Arles: Actes Sud (1991); Rozett, Robert, and
Hautval studied medicine in Strasbourg Shmuel Spector, Encyclopedia of the Holo-
and then worked in many psychiatric clinics caust, New York: Facts on File (2000).
there and in Switzerland. She encountered
resistance from the Nazis upon trying to
cross occupied France in 1942 in order to at- Hazen, Elizabeth Lee
tend her mother’s funeral. She was arrested 1885–1975
and imprisoned and witnessed the inhu-
mane treatment of the Jewish prisoners by Along with Rachel Fuller Brown, Elizabeth
the Gestapo. She protested continually and Hazen was responsible for discovering the
was eventually sent to Auschwitz to work first antifungal antibiotic that could be used
as a doctor treating sick Jewish women. safely on humans. Most scientists consid-
During her time there she was asked to ered this biomedical discovery to be the
practice gynecology and agreed until she most important since Sir Alexander Fleming
discovered that inhumane medical experi- discovered penicillin in 1928. She and
ments were being performed on Jewish Brown subsequently donated all their royal-
women. They were sterilized by means of X ties from the patent to scientific research.
rays or ovariectomies, sterilization being Hazen was born in Rich, Mississippi, on
part of the grand plan for all Jewish women August 24, 1885. Her parents were William
after the awaited Nazi victory. Hautval re- Edgar Hazen and Maggie Harper Hazen.
fused to participate and instead gave med- Both died when she was a child, and an
ical aid as best she could to women who had aunt and uncle adopted her. She attended
typhus. Had the Nazis known any of the college at Mississippi Industrial Institute
women had typhus, they would have killed and College. After receiving her B.S., she
92
He Manqiu
taught school in order to earn money for Her father was supportive of her early edu-
graduate study at Columbia University. cation at a missionary school in Chengdu,
Hazen earned her master’s degree in and she “wanted to participate in the revo-
1917 and worked at the West Virginia Hos- lution and help liberate women for a long
pital’s bacteriological laboratory while pur- time. A lot of students in Chengdu were or-
suing her Ph.D. at Columbia. She earned it ganized to cut off pigtails and unbind feet,
in 1927 and went to work for the New York to propagate the spirit of the May 4th move-
State Department of Health. Her work in ment against feudal ideas. Although I was
analyzing bacteria and possible vaccines young, I accepted the idea of women being
led to her interest in finding an antifungal liberated” (Young 1996, 536).
antibiotic. She eventually worked with He Manqiu joined the Red Army when
Rachel Fuller Brown, and they developed she discovered women could become sol-
Nystatin. Hazen and Brown patented their diers. It was during a stay at a short-staffed
discovery in 1950, and E.R. Squibb and hospital that she developed a desire to learn
Sons developed a method for mass produc- about medicine. She became a nurse and af-
tion. Nystatin became available to the pub- ter that had an opportunity to take an exam
lic in 1954. and become a medical student in the Chi-
Nystatin proved to have many uses. It is a nese army. During the long march, she and
treatment for Dutch elm disease, fights the other students learned medicine under
molds in foods, and saved priceless art- primitive conditions as they had no paper
works that had developed fungus after a and pencils (only sticks for writing in the
flood in Italy. dirt), and had to memorize everything the
Hazen and Brown were both interested in teachers taught. For cadavers they had to
furthering women’s education in science. use what they found.
Their donation of all income from the Ny-
statin patent benefited numerous students On our way back we just happened to
and researchers. Hazen became a professor find an intact, fresh corpse in a cave.
at Albany Medical College in 1958. She died We felt sure that this person had had
on June 24, 1975, in Seattle, Washington. no family to prepare him for death
and that no one would try to find the
See also: Brown, Rachel Fuller body because this corpse had had no
References: Baldwin, Richard S., The Fungus funeral or burial. We had seen several
Fighters: Two Women Scientists and Their Dis- funerals in this Tibetan area. The fam-
covery, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press ily always claimed the dead body and
(1981); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, disposed of it in one of several ways.
eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in One funeral practice was to flay the
Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to skin and expose the body to the vul-
the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge tures. Another was cremation, and the
(2000); Vare, Ethlie Ann, and Greg Ptacek, third was to put the body in a river or
Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb: stream. Sometimes when a person
Forgotten Women and Their Unforgettable died, the body was tied to a tree and
Ideas, New York: Morrow (1988). stones were piled up around until it
was completely covered. That’s why it
wasn’t easy to find a cadaver in such a
He Manqiu place. Of course, we couldn’t use our
1920?– own soldiers or prisoners of war. Usu-
ally when our soldiers died we
He Manqiu became one of the first Chinese claimed the bodies and then buried
female doctors by training during the Long them, because the Communist Party
March in harsh and primitive conditions. was humane. If we hadn’t found that
Born to a liberal father, she had one person’s body in the cave, we would
brother and was close to her grandmother. have had to wait for the body of a
93
Healy, Bernadine
criminal who had been sentenced to ical professionals who don’t see manage-
death. (Young 1996, 545) ment duties as detracting from research and
patient care. Her leadership has influenced
He Manqiu continued to work as a physi- thousands of physicians, politicians, and pa-
cian for many years in the Chinese military tients. “As a doctor and researcher, I have
and retired to Beijing. dedicated my life to alleviating human suf-
fering,” Healy says. She was pressured to re-
References: Young, Helen Praeger, “From sign her position at the Red Cross following
Soldier to Doctor: A Chinese Woman’s Story controversial remarks after the terrorist at-
of the Long March,” Science & Society 59, no. tacks on September 11, 2001 (she had asked
4 (Winter 1996): 531–547. U.S. Muslims to support Israel’s inclusion in
the International Red Cross). She is married
to Dr. Floyd Hoop and has two daughters.
Healy, Bernadine
1944– References: Encyclopedia of World Biography,
vol. 7, Detroit: Gale (1998); Stapleton,
Bernadine Healy has the distinction of be- Stephanie, “Former NIH Chief to Lead Red
ing the first woman appointed to head the Cross,” American Medical News (2 August
National Institutes of Health (NIH), in 1999): 241; www.redcross.org/healyart.html.
1991–1993 under George Bush. She was also
the first woman to hold the position of dean
of the College of Medicine and Public Heikel, Rosina
Health at Ohio State University before as- 1842–1929
suming her duties as president of the Amer-
ican Red Cross, the first physician to hold Rosina Heikel was the first female physician
that title. She was also CEO of the organiza- in Finland, receiving her medical degree
tion until her resignation in 2001. from the University of Helsinki in 1878. Her
Healy was born on August 2, 1944, in parents were Carl Johan Heikel and Kristina
New York City. She is the second of four Elisabet Dobbin. She did well in school and,
daughters of Michael J. and Violet McGrath like her brothers before her, wanted to study
Healy. Her parents operated a perfume medicine.
business at home while she was growing up When she was ready for university study,
in Queens. She graduated from Hunter Col- no medical schools in Finland were open to
lege High School and went on to Vassar, her. She went to Stockholm and took a phys-
where she majored in chemistry, graduating iotherapy course, studied midwifery back in
in 1965. She received her M.D. from Har- Helsinki, and then went back to Stockholm to
vard Medical School in 1970 along with 9 learn more about physiology and anatomy.
other women in a class of 120. She was eventually allowed to study medi-
She did her internal medicine and cardi- cine by special permission of the emperor.
ology postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins After completing her degree, she was re-
University School of Medicine and Hospi- stricted to practicing medicine on women
tal, where she later served as full professor and children. She worked as a pediatrician
and directed the coronary care unit. and gynecologist in Helsinki most of her
Healy has done extensive research as well life. Outside of her medical career she was
as worked with patients of all ages and very involved in the women’s rights move-
backgrounds. Her excellent management ment in Finland (Naisasialiitto Unioni) and
skills have proved an asset wherever she has was a proponent of women’s education.
worked within the medical community.
While she served the Research Institute of References: Forsius, Arno, “Emma Rosina
the Cleveland Clinic Foundation as director, Heikel (1842–1929)—Suomen ja Pohjois-
funding rose from $8 million to $36 million maiden ensimmainen naislaakari,” http://
in only five years. She is one of the few med- www.saunalahti.fi/arnoldus/heikel.html;
94
Hemenway, Ruth V.
Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of the each patient came children and babies,
World, New York: Macmillan (1957); sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law, and a
“Rosina Heikel: First Woman Doctor in few neighbors. Many men were pres-
Finland, 1842–1929,” Women of Learning, ent and they all shoved themselves
h t t p : / / w w w. h e l s i n k i . f i / a k k a - i n f o / into the front row so that they could
tiedenaiset/english/heikel.html; Seppanen, hear all the histories and symptoms.
Anni, “Medical Women in Finland,” Journal No privacy was possible. A sick per-
of the American Medical Women’s Association son at each end of the table shouted
5, no. 7 (1950): 291. her symptoms to one of us doctors.
She had to yell louder than all the
screaming babies and shrieking rela-
Hemenway, Ruth V. tives as well as shouting men who at-
1894–1974 tempted to help her out in her narra-
tion. One baby’s ears were packed
A pioneering medical missionary in China with dirt. When I asked why, the
prior to World War II, Ruth Hemenway young mother told me that her baby
grew to embrace practical medical science was only two years old, and she was
to meet the needs of the Chinese in the early afraid he was too young to bathe.
decades of the twentieth century and to in- (Hemenway 1977, 44–45)
troduce some measure of health care in ru-
ral areas. She placed health care above her Hemenway was in China from 1924 until
Christian missionary goals in order to better 1941 during very turbulent political times.
serve the people she saw in need. Although the villages she worked in were
Born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in generally far removed from the revolution,
1894, she grew up on her father’s farm and sometimes it came very close. She contin-
had an early desire to become a physician. ued to focus on proper health care service to
She graduated from Northampton High the people who needed it most. During this
School in 1910 and then taught school in or- period she occasionally spent brief periods
der to save money for medical school. in the United States and elsewhere. On one
She continued to work odd jobs while at- sojourn in the United States to recover from
tending Tufts Medical School. China was in an illness, she realized she had developed
great need of physicians, and Hemenway an appreciation of China’s “long history of
was motivated by her religious convictions philosophy and high ethical teachings, her
to serve others; she also wanted to learn love of beauty in nature, in literature, in mu-
about other cultures and religions. Having sic and all arts. I thought of China’s young
grown away from traditional religions, she people with their great artistic ability, their
nevertheless realized that she would require high intelligence, their reverence for learn-
support from an organized religious group ing, their respect for the aged, and their pas-
in order to serve as a missionary. She ac- sionate patriotism. I remembered Chinese
cepted support from the Methodist Wo- ways of courtesy and gentleness; their fine
men’s Board of Foreign Missions in 1924 sensitivity and intuition were characteristics
and was destined for Mintsing, Fukien. in even the illiterate mountain people. Even
She arrived, began working in primitive the poorest people possessed a wonderful
conditions, and realized a great need for graciousness and dignity. Confucius and
sanitary practices, health clinics, and basic sons had given their people a great deal”
education. Early on she conducted a clinic (Hemenway 1977, 92).
in a village church: Hemenway died in 1974.
Hordes of people of all ages and both References: Hemenway, Ruth V., Ruth V.
sexes began to push up to the table. Hemenway, M.D.: A Memoir of Revolutionary
We made them walk single file past China, 1924–1941, Amherst: University of
the opposite side of the table. But with Massachusetts Press (1977).
95
Hildegard of Bingen
References: Flanagan, Sabina, Hildegard of References: Hoby, Lady Margaret, The Pri-
Bingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life, London: vate Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary of
Routledge (1998); Pagel, Walter, “Hildegard Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599–1605, ed. Joanna
of Bingen,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Moody, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton
vol. 6, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons (1998); Slack, Paul, “Hoby, Margaret, Lady,”
(1970–1980); Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar- Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Per-
bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sci- sons, Oxford: Oxford University Press
ences: A Biographical Dictionary, Westport, (1993).
CT: Greenwood Press (1996); Snodgrass,
Mary Ellen, Historical Dictionary of Nursing,
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999). Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary
Crowfoot
1910–1994
Hoby, Lady Margaret
1571–1633 Dorothy Hodgkin received the Nobel Prize
in chemistry in 1964 for her use of crystal-
Throughout her life, Lady Margaret Hoby lography as an exceptional analytical tool in
played the role of a physician in taking care shedding new light on the structure of mol-
of neighbors and family. Her diary is the ecules. She identified the structure of over
earliest that shows the deep influence of 100 molecules, including vitamins D and
96
Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot
B-12, insulin, and penicillin. She was the X-rays had revealed the structure of a mole-
second woman after Florence Nightingale cule that synthetic and organic chemists
to be a recipient of Britain’s Order of Merit could not decipher” (McGrayne 1998, 237).
and also received the Royal Medal, the This success encouraged Hodgkin to study
Royal Society’s highest honor, in 1965. She as many crystals as she could. Before long,
was the first woman to receive this honor. other scientists learned of her work and be-
She was born in Cairo, Egypt, then a gan sending samples for her examination.
British colony, on May 12, 1910. Her father, In 1937, she married Thomas L. Hodgkin;
John Crowfoot, worked for the British gov- they would have three children, Luke, Eliza-
ernment in the education department, and beth, and Toby. Thomas was involved in pol-
her mother, Grace Mary Hood Crowfoot, itics and was a member of the Communist
enjoyed weaving in the ancient methods Party; Dorothy was interested in the world
and botanical studies. After the outbreak of peace movement. Having lost four of her
World War I, the family was dispersed. brothers in World War I, Dorothy would be
When Dorothy was four, the Crowfoots sent involved in controversies throughout her life
her and her three younger sisters to En- because she campaigned for peace during
gland for safety; there, they stayed with a the post–World War II and Cold War years.
nursemaid and had their grandmother She had obtained her Ph.D. in 1937 from
nearby. They saw their mother only once Oxford and soon thereafter became inter-
during the four years of the war, but ested in cracking the code for insulin and
Dorothy felt the separation made her more penicillin. With the outbreak of World War
independent. II, she focused on penicillin. At that time
After the war, her mother taught the girls many chemists thought this work could not
at home for a time. Dorothy attended the Sir succeed because penicillin was far too com-
John Leman School from 1921 to 1927. She plex. Dorothy was determined to find its
was interested early on in chemistry and chemical structure using X-ray crystallogra-
biochemistry, and also in crystals. phy. “Due to the increasing number of casu-
She graduated from Somerville College at alties in World War II, soldiers were in dire
Oxford University in 1931. She then took an need of the medicinal properties of peni-
opportunity to work with John D. Bernal at cillin, as the number of bacterial infections
Cambridge University. He was working on contracted during the war was increasing at
sterol crystals and had a well-financed labo- a rapid rate. The world, however, was at a
ratory. She continued her exploration of standstill in terms of mass-producing peni-
X-ray crystallography on protein crystals. cillin because its chemical structure was still
In 1934 she was diagnosed with severe unknown” (Van der Does 1999, 170).
rheumatoid arthritis. Hodgkin complained By 1944, Hodgkin had determined the
little during her life about the pain she en- structure of penicillin. She was promoted
dured from this crippling disease, and it did from fellow to university lecturer at Oxford
not slow her work or determination. in 1946 and received international recogni-
She accepted a job at Somerville College tion. She aided in founding the Interna-
even though she would miss Bernal and his tional Union of Crystallography, a political
well-equipped lab. At Somerville she had to worry to some Western governments be-
work in antiquated laboratories, and there cause the union welcomed members from
was a shortage of equipment. She also did not any country and did not exclude those who
enjoy the isolated life of a woman scientist at belonged to the Communist Party. This in-
Oxford. Many clubs excluded women, which clusiveness suited Hodgkin’s goal of unity
she felt was a huge problem. She did work off in the world of science.
and on at Cambridge when she could while Her next success was with B-12, a much
teaching chemistry at Somerville. larger molecule than penicillin and key in
While at Somerville, she and her research curing anemia. John White worked with her
student, C. H. Carlisle, determined the struc- on this mystery. She was finally promoted
ture of cholesterol iodide. “For the first time, to full professor at Oxford in 1958 and had a
97
Honzakova, Anna
new laboratory. In 1964 she received the No- Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy
bel Prize in chemistry. She kept on the trail 1892–1984
of insulin, which had interested her thirty
years before, and determined its structure in
1969. “She had the imagination to insist that Icie Hoobler made important contributions
the problem she chose could be solved, even to the field of nutrition, particularly the nu-
though she had to wait for many years for trition of nursing mothers and their infants,
the answer. In fact Dorothy pioneered many by studying nutrient values of vitamins and
of the methods of macromolecular structure analyzing milk. She also discovered that
determination that we now take for cottonseed products varied in toxicity. This
granted” (Glusker 1994, 2469). Hodgkins finding later resulted in better manufactur-
died on July 29, 1994. ing methods that “greatly reduced or re-
moved the toxicity and made the cotton
References: Glusker, Jenny P., “Dorothy seed products safer to use in animal foods”
Crowfoot Hodgkin,” Protein Science 3, no. 12 (Hoobler 1982, 56).
(December 1994): 2465–2469; McGrayne, Born in Gallatin, Missouri, on July 23,
Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Sci- 1892, Hoobler had two brothers and a sister.
ence, Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Nobel Lec- Their parents, Perry Macy and Ollevia Elva-
tures: Chemistry 1963–1970, River Edge, NJ: ree Critten Macy, managed a farm. Hoobler
World Scientific (1999); Van der Does, received her early education in a one-room
Louise Q., and Rita J. Simon, Renaissance schoolhouse and later attended Central Col-
Women in Science, Lanham, MD: University lege for Women, as did her sister.
Press of America (1999). In the beginning she wanted to please her
father, who wanted a musician in the family.
She spent three years of intense practice on
Honzakova, Anna the piano only to discover music was not for
1875–1940 her. She did enjoy her classes with Lily G.
Egbert, an enthusiastic female biology
Anna Honzakova was the first Czech teacher, and thought about a career in sci-
woman to graduate from a Czechoslovakian ence. She received an A.B. degree in English
university and become a physician. After in 1914.
graduating from Minerva high school in She wanted to attend the University of
Austria, she attended medical school at the Chicago, but her parents were concerned
University of Czechoslovakia in Prague. that she was too young and inexperienced
She obtained her physician credentials in for a big-city university. Instead she at-
1902. She went on to serve as a school physi- tended Randolph-Macon College for
cian at a girls’ grammar school and later Women for a year to prepare. She was fur-
specialized in gynecology and midwifery. ther encouraged in her endeavor to study
She authored a book on protecting children science and went to the University of
against tuberculosis and also wrote a book Chicago in 1915 to earn enough credits to
about Anna Bayerova. obtain a B.S. After receiving that degree, she
She was born in Kopidlno on November taught chemistry at the University of Col-
16, 1875. She served as the first president of orado and at the same time earned her M.S.
the Women’s Medical Association of degree.
Czechoslovakia. She died on October 13, She entered Yale University Graduate
1940. School in 1918 and received her Ph.D. in
1920 in physiological chemistry. It was at
See also: Bayerova, Anna Yale that she did her study on cottonseeds
References: Ceskoslovensky Biograficky Slov- and their toxicity. She was at the same time
nik, Prague: Academia (1992); Lovejoy, Es- aware of new developments in the sciences.
ther P., Women Doctors of the World, New “What intrigued me most was the fact that
York: Macmillan (1957). chemistry and physics were becoming in-
98
Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina Danielsen
creasingly relevant in the study of biology Woman Scientist, Smithtown, NY: Exposition
and physiology. Body and mind processes Press (1982); Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-
were being recognized as physiological in bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Physi-
nature and the basis of mental activity. The cal Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary, West-
interlinking of the human body and mind port, CT: Greenwood Press (1997).
chemically and physiologically had a pro-
found effect on my desire to ultimately be
involved in these areas of study and re-
search” (Hoobler 1982, 69).
Horney, Karen Theodora
Her first position was as an assistant Clementina Danielsen
chemist at Western Pennsylvania Hospital. 1885–1952
She had to work many hours in the labora-
tory and faced much discrimination, such as Karen Horney was a physician and world-
not being allowed to eat in the doctors’ din- renowned psychoanalyst who challenged
ing room and not having a women’s rest- Freud’s theories. She received a great deal of
room nearby. The lack of a convenient rest- respect within the psychiatric community in
room led to a serious bout of nephritis, a the early twentieth century and is still re-
kidney infection; it was only after a year’s spected today.
leave that she was well enough to return to Born September 16, 1885, in Blankense,
work. After complaining to no avail, she Germany, Horney was the daughter of
submitted her resignation. However, once Clotilde Marie Van Ronzelen Danielsen and
the president of the board of trustees found Berndt Henrik Wackels Danielsen. She re-
out what was happening, facilities were im- ceived her medical education at the Univer-
proved after she left. sity of Freiburg and received her medical
She moved on to become director of the degree in 1915 from the University of Berlin.
Nutrition Research Laboratories at the Mer- She specialized in psychiatry and was
rill-Palmer School and Children’s Hospital deeply involved in psychoanalysis, which
in Detroit. There, she demonstrated good or- Karl Abraham had brought to Berlin.
ganizational skills and became an expert on She had married Oskar Horney, a doc-
nutrition. She studied metabolism, the toral student, in Freiburg. She became un-
chemical characteristics of growth in chil- happy and asked Abraham, a follower of
dren and how nutrition affects growth, hu- Freud, to psychoanalyze her. She began lec-
man milk composition, and the chemistry of turing and teaching on the techniques of
red blood cells. On June 11, 1938, she mar- psychoanalysis. In the 1920s her marriage
ried Dr. Raymond Hoobler, who encouraged ended in separation and later divorce. She
her to pursue her professional goals. He had three daughters.
died after only five years. Hoobler contin- She differed very much with Freud’s view
ued her work and eventually retired in Gal- of “penis envy” and also was the first to ar-
latin, Missouri. She died on January 6, 1984. gue that “womb envy” existed. She believed
Hoobler wrote her autobiography in part cultural factors had a greater influence on
“because of my hope that young women women’s subordination to men. She wrote
students of like desires and intellectual in- persuasively and challenged some of
terest as my own, may find some optimistic Freud’s other views as well, such as his
guidance and encouragement to enter the view that biological development is a pri-
science arena where their participation and mary force in personality development. She
full life commitment are needed and their gained many followers over the years.
unique talents and skills may be given full Fascism was rising in Germany, and in
expression, in a worthy, womanly, and satis- 1932 she moved to Chicago to work at the
fying manner” (Hoobler 1982, 3). Institute for Psychoanalysis. She stayed two
years before leaving for New York City. Her
References: Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy, lectures there at the New School for Social
Boundless Horizons: Portrait of a Pioneer Research at the New York Psychoanalytic
99
Hubbard, Ruth
100
Hugonay, Countess Vilma
She earned her Ph.D. in 1950. She enjoyed As a feminist and scientist, Hubbard has
research more than teaching, a preference written for both scholarly and popular pub-
that presented problems for many women. lications. She writes clearly about her con-
Either universities hiring research scientists cerns within the scientific community.
were not hiring women or institutions that Aware of the advances in medical science
were hiring women had small or inade- over the years, she is also aware of and out-
quate research facilities. Hubbard, however, spoken about the dangers of proceeding
had the good fortune of working at George without a conscientious effort to maintain
Wald’s laboratory at Harvard and eventu- proper policies and procedures for the good
ally worked her way up, combining teach- of humanity.
ing and research. Her early interests lay in Hubbard is professor emerita at Harvard.
photochemistry and vision, retinal pig- She married Frank Hubbard in 1942, but
ments, and photoisomerization. She later they later divorced. She married George
became concerned about the emphasis on Wald in 1958, and they had two children,
genetics as the sole basis for explaining peo- Elijah and Deborah Hannah.
ple’s characteristics. She is also very con-
cerned about ethical standards in genetic re- References: Hubbard, Ruth, The Politics of
search. Women’s Biology, New Brunswick, NJ: Rut-
gers University Press (1990); Hubbard,
Beyond asking what genetic research Ruth, and Elijah Wald, Exploding the Gene
should be done and how it should be Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced
applied, we need to question the cur- and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Em-
rent emphasis on genes as determining ployers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and
our development, health, and behav- Law Enforcers, Boston: Beacon Press (1997);
ior. Focusing on genes leads almost in- Kropf, Allen, and Ruth Hubbard, “The Pho-
evitably to an assignment of values: toisomerization of Retinal,” Photochemistry
these genes are good, those genes are and Photobiology 12, no. 4 (October 1970):
bad. We may start with relatively 249–260.
clear-cut cases like Tay-Sachs disease,
which is invariably fatal in early child-
hood, but we almost immediately get
into gray areas where people leading Hugonay, Countess Vilma
quite ordinary lives can suddenly find 1847–1922
themselves stigmatized as defective.
Scientists and physicians should not Countess Vilma Hugonay was the first fe-
be given the right to assign such la- male physician to graduate at a medical
bels, but the problem is greater than school in Hungary. She was motivated to re-
that. The labels themselves are inher- ceive medical training after her first child
ently wrong, no matter who is doing died. She received her M.D. in 1879 at the
the labeling. There is no way to say University of Zurich but for many years
which lives are or are not valuable. I was allowed to practice only midwifery. In
am glad Woody Guthrie was born, 1897, she was finally allowed by the Hun-
though he developed Huntington Dis- garian Ministry of Culture to practice as a
ease. I am glad for all the blind poets physician.
and musicians, from Homer to Stevie
Wonder. Who knows, maybe Helen References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
Keller would have led a completely Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
undistinguished life instead of becom- (1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,
ing a famous writer and political ac- eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in
tivist had her immune system not Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to
failed her as a child. (Hubbard and the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge
Wald 1997, 161) (2000).
101
Hyde, Ida Henrietta
Hyde, Ida Henrietta glands, then came back to the United States
1857–1945 to work at Harvard Medical School. She
studied the heart’s blood flow and also
Ida Hyde broke down the barriers in Ger- taught at some preparatory schools. In 1898
many to advanced education for women she moved to the University of Kansas, be-
and was the first women to work in the coming professor of physiology in the med-
medical school at the University of Heidel- ical school.
berg. She did research on a variety of phys- Hyde was active in community health and
iological aspects of health and wrote two lectured on numerous public health con-
textbooks as well as numerous papers on cerns while at Kansas. She also began a pro-
physiology, all of which were well received. gram to examine children with communica-
She was born in Davenport, Iowa, on Sep- ble diseases. Her research included many
tember 8, 1857, to Babette Loewenthal and aspects of physiology. “She studied the ef-
Meyer H. Hyde. Her father left the family, fects of the environment and nutrition on the
and her mother, her brother, and she moved nervous system, the reactions of various an-
to Chicago, where Hyde attended public imals to drugs, alcohol, and stress, and the
schools. She eventually taught in the public effects of caffeine on humans. She also de-
schools and introduced science courses. In veloped a microelectrode that enabled her to
1891 she received an A.B. degree from Cor- stimulate and study a single cell” (Shor 1999,
nell with a major in the biological sciences. 613). From 1922 to 1923 she went to the Uni-
She continued her studies that year at versity of Heidelberg and did research on ra-
Bryn Mawr College, but after a professor at dium and its biological effects.
the University of Strassburg heard about Hyde worked hard to ensure equal edu-
her research project on jellyfish, he invited cational opportunities for women in the sci-
her to Germany on a fellowship in 1893. At ences. She was the first woman to become a
that time there were no German universities member of the American Physiological Soci-
that allowed women students, but she was ety (1902). She died in California on August
allowed use of the laboratory. When she 22, 1945.
could not gain entrance at Strassburg, she
persisted with the University of Heidelberg, References: Shor, Elizabeth Noble, “Hyde,
which accepted her as a Ph.D. candidate. Ida Henrietta,” American National Biography,
She graduated with honors in 1896. vol. 11, New York: Oxford University Press
Hyde worked at the Naples Zoological (1999).
Station, doing research on octopus salivary
102
I
Inglis, Elsie Maude and with whom she had corresponded al-
1864–1917 most daily was a severe blow to her. In 1899
the University of Edinburgh admitted
Elsie Inglis was a pioneer and leader of women to the medical examinations; Inglis
women physicians in Scotland, founded the passed and became an official physician
Elsie Inglis Hospital for Women and Chil- with a medical degree. From then on her
dren, and for the cause of World War I practice grew, and she responded to the
founded the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. needs she saw in the community. She
She proposed, and had accepted by some of opened a clinic, called a hospice, that was
the Allies, women medical units in the field staffed by women and included a maternity
to treat wounded soldiers. ward. As the hospice grew, it was clear that
Born in Naini Tal, India, at a Himalayan her idea of locating it on High Street, near
hill station where her father worked in the her patients’ homes, had been a good one.
civil service, she had seven siblings and was Eventually, “she had a small ward of five
encouraged at an early age to gain a good beds for malnutrition cases, a baby clinic, a
education. Her father was very supportive milk depot, health centres, and the knowl-
of her decision to go into medicine. edge that the Hospice has the distinction of
She first attended the Edinburgh School being the only maternity centre run by
of Medicine for Women, which had been women in Scotland. This affords women stu-
founded and was run by Sophia Jex-Blake. dents opportunities denied to them in other
She later went to Glasgow to attend the maternity hospitals” (Balfour 1919, 133).
Medical College for Women because she Inglis never denied treatment to those
was interested in surgery and the college who could not afford it. According to one of
had better facilities for those interested in her patients, “‘That woman has done more
clinical practice. She passed her Triple Qual- for the folk living between Morrison Street
ification in 1892 and went to work in the and the High Street than all the ministers in
Hospital for Women in London as a house Edinburgh and Scotland itself ever did for
surgeon. any one. She would never give in to diffi-
During these early years she worked with culties. She gave her house, her property,
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and other pio- her practice, her money to help others’”
neers in England. She went to Dublin and (Balfour 1919, 136).
took a three-month course in midwifery in Over the next decade, Inglis continued
the Rotunda. There were more mixed her work as a physician in London and
classes there (both men and women), and Dublin. She also continued to work for
she felt the teaching was exceptional. She women’s suffrage and to promote equality
later opened a practice in Edinburgh with in education for women, involvements she
Dr. Jessie MacGregor. had taken up while still in medical school.
Inglis’s father died in 1894. The loss of the Her organizational skills were well honed
man who had always supported her career when World War I broke out. She decided to
103
Inglis, Elsie Maude
form a unit of women to help with caring stayed with her units until the Bolshevik
for the wounded in the field. Suddenly the Revolution was inevitable and they had to
Edinburgh Suffrage offices became the Scot- pull out. She returned to England and died
tish Women’s Hospitals. Inglis had an enor- the day after she arrived, on November 25,
mous circle of friends in the medical com- 1917.
munity as well as the suffrage movement,
and all were willing to help her. See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Edin-
Britain did not accept the women’s med- burgh School of Medicine; Jex-Blake, Sophia
ical units, but the French and others were Louisa; Scottish Women’s Hospitals
glad to have them. The Scottish Women’s References: Balfour, Lady Frances, Dr. Elsie
Hospitals went to France, Belgium, Corsica, Inglis, New York: George H. Doran (1919);
Serbia, and Russia. Inglis and her unit did Leneman, Leah, In the Service of Life: The
much work in Serbia even after being taken Story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s
prisoner. She and her colleagues worked Hospitals, Edinburgh: Mercat Press (1994);
under horrendous conditions with inade- Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The
quate facilities and medical supplies. She re- Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science:
turned to England briefly after being re- Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the
leased, only to take a medical team to Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge
Russia, where help was badly needed. She (2000).
104
J
Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam
1842–1906
105
Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam
Following her internship at the New En- fessional world were due at least in part to
gland Hospital for Women and Children, Ja- her willingness to accept men as equals. Cer-
cobi was convinced that she still did not tainly Jacobi did not share Blackwell’s am-
have enough knowledge to practice medi- bivalence toward romantic attachments to
cine, a concern of most women physicians men, and her private correspondence never
of the time. The schools that were started reveals the suspicion of marriage character-
just for women did not have access to the istic of many accomplished women of her
kinds of medical laboratories or teaching generation” (Morantz-Sanchez 1985, 194).
hospitals that would have allowed them to She married a well-known pediatrician
better train their students. pioneer, Abraham Jacobi, in 1873. They had
Jacobi sought admission to the Univer- three children, only one who survived to
sity of Paris and was denied numerous adulthood. She also maintained a close rela-
times. She studied on her own, was taught tionship with many of her siblings.
by observing physicians working in hospi- Much of her medical writing focused on
tals, and eventually obtained admission pathology and neurology. She did not set
to the university. She graduated with hon- limits for herself as to what she would write
ors in 1871. During this time she lived on about. “If Ann Preston and Hannah Long-
her writing and on what her family could shore ventured into territories of language
send her. closed to women, Mary Putnam Jacobi laid
Following her final examinations, she still claim to vast tracts of forbidden ground:
felt challenged. “I was prepared for a much menstruation, hysteria, nervous disease, the
more difficult examination, and internally I interior of the uterus. Other nineteenth-cen-
don’t consider the passing this one even tury women physicians were active scien-
well (that other youth was accepted in spite tists or prolific popular writers; few com-
of the most innumerable and awful blun- bined both genres, and none as productively
ders, so you see the mere fact of passing as Mary Putnam Jacobi” (Wells 2000, 147).
does not count for much), to be any great Before her death from a brain tumor, she
shakes; still as it is almost the first school in published the article “Description of Early
the world, and as the examination is really Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Com-
much more minute and extensive than at pressing the Cerebellum. From Which the
home, I suppose it counts for something” Writer Died. Written by Herself,” which was
(Putnam 1925, 183). reprinted in Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D.: A
She began working at the Women’s Med- Pathfinder in Medicine (1925). She circulated
ical College of the New York Infirmary, the report to her physician friends. She died
which had been founded by Elizabeth on June 10, 1906.
Blackwell. She taught pharmacology and
therapeutics. She strived to strengthen the See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; Medical Col-
curriculum and in 1874 became head of pe- lege of Pennsylvania; Preston, Ann
diatric outpatients at Mount Sinai Hospital. References: Gartner, C. B., “Fussell’s Folly:
She served as a professor of children’s dis- Academic Standards and the Case of Mary
eases at New York Postgraduate Medical Putnam Jacobi,” Academic Medicine 71, no. 5
School in 1882. (May 1996): 470–477; Gartner, Carol B., “Ja-
Her views on some aspects of medicine cobi, Mary Corinna Putnam,” American Na-
and medical education differed in some re- tional Biography, vol. 11, New York: Oxford
spects from Elizabeth Blackwell’s. She felt University Press (1999); Morantz-Sanchez,
women should not specialize in women’s Regina Markell, Sympathy and Science:
and children’s diseases but instead should Women Physicians in American Medicine,
be well rounded. She also did not oppose New York: Oxford University Press (1985);
experimentation on animals (Blackwell was Putnam, Ruth, Life and Letters of Mary Put-
an antivivisectionist). nam Jacobi, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
She viewed a male physician as an equal. (1925); Wells, Susan, Out of the Dead House:
“Perhaps Jacobi’s successes in the male pro- Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians and the
106
Jacobs, Aletta Henriette
107
Jalas, Rakel
cerns, as did Jacobs. He died of liver and medical skills in space experiments. She has
stomach cancer on July 5, 1905. Following contributed to medicine, engineering, and
his death, Jacobs turned her attention to space science.
women’s suffrage work until World War I. Born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Al-
During the war she was a committed paci- abama, she grew up in Chicago with a
fist, believing that women’s presence as brother and a sister. She is the daughter of
nurses during the war seemed to condone Charles Jemison, a carpenter, and Dorothy
violence if they did not actively protest Jemison, a schoolteacher. She had an early
against it. “It was our duty to protest interest in space flight and was not deterred
against the mindless destruction of art trea- by the fact that at the time, no blacks or
sures, the breaking up of families, the bar- women were part of the space program.
baric sacrificing of young lives” (Jacobs She attended Morgan Park High School
1996, 167). in Chicago, where she was interested in as-
She traveled to North America and vis- tronomy as well as space flight and in dance
ited many public health institutions and and art. Upon graduation she entered Stan-
women’s rights groups, even gaining an au- ford University with an interest in biomed-
dience with President Woodrow Wilson. ical engineering and graduated in 1977 with
Once the war was over she worked hard for a degree in chemical engineering.
various peace initiatives and women’s After graduation she applied to NASA’s
rights. astronaut-training program and to the med-
Jacobs died on August 10, 1929. ical school at Cornell, graduating in 1981.
She worked for the Peace Corps and helped
See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett administer the medical programs in Sierra
References: Jacobs, Aletta, Memories: My Leone and Liberia, where she learned to
Life as an International Leader in Health, Suf- work with people of various backgrounds.
frage, and Peace, New York: Feminist Press When she returned to the United States, she
(1996); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harney, worked for a health maintenance organiza-
eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women in Sci- tion as a physician before finally being ac-
ence, New York: Routledge (2000). cepted into the space program in 1987. She
worked for NASA for the typical five years
before being eligible to serve on a shuttle
Jalas, Rakel mission. On September 12, 1992, she and six
fl. 1930s others traveled into space on the Endeavor to
conduct numerous experiments. She stud-
Rakel Jalas was a leading psychiatrist in Fin- ied weightlessness, motion sickness, tissue
land prior to 1948. She was a consultant to growth, and the loss of calcium in bones.
the Ministry of Social Affairs and was Jemison’s background in both engineer-
elected to the Finnish parliament in 1948. ing and medicine allows her to make
unique contributions; she was recently in-
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women volved in coordinating a space-based com-
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan munications system to support health care
(1957); Seppanen, Anni, “Medical Women in delivery in the developing world. She feels
Finland,” Journal of the American Medical very strongly that people of all backgrounds
Women’s Association 5 (1950): 291. and races have a right to have input on the
direction of the space program. Jemison cur-
rently lives in Houston.
Jemison, Mae Carol
1956– References: Bailey, Martha J., American
Women in Science, 1950 to the Present: A Bio-
Better known as the first female African graphical Dictionary, Santa Barbara, CA:
American astronaut, Mae Jemison is first a ABC-CLIO (1998); “Jemison, Mae C.,” Cur-
physician who has been able to apply her rent Biography Yearbook, New York: H. W.
108
Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa
Wilson (1993); Welch, Rosanne, Women in Sophia completed her studies in 1861 and
Aviation and Space, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC- then felt a need to go abroad. She visited
CLIO (1998). various countries, teaching on occasion and
learning as much as she could about differ-
ent cultures. She visited the United States in
Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa 1865 and worked under Dr. Lucy Sewall at
1840–1912 the New England Hospital for Women and
Children. In 1868 she began her own med-
Sophia Jex-Blake was the leader of the ical study in New York under Elizabeth
movement in Great Britain to open medical Blackwell.
schools to women. Along with Elizabeth Returning to England upon the death of
Garrett Anderson, she founded the London her father, Sophia looked to her own coun-
School of Medicine for Women. Jex-Blake try for the remainder of her medical educa-
was born in Sussex, Hastings, on January tion. The Medical Act of 1858 seemed to
21, 1840, to Thomas and Maria Emily Jex- have closed all roads to women seeking an
Blake. Three years before Sophia was born, education in medicine, but she persevered
her grandfather had the family name of and was finally accepted by the medical
Blake officially changed to Jex-Blake in school at Edinburgh.
honor of his grandmother, Elizabeth Jex. Thus began a long battle for her and the
Sophia was the youngest of three children; four other women undertaking medical
she had a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Car- studies at Edinburgh. Although at first the
oline. Three other children had died in in- women were only occasionally subjected to
fancy. Her father was the proctor of Doctors heckling and rude behavior, more and more
Commons. male professors and students came to resent
Sophia’s parents educated her at home their presence. In November 1870, a mob of
until she was eight. The various boarding protestors, some drunk and not even stu-
schools she attended after that found the en- dents, gathered at Surgeon’s Hall to prevent
ergetic and bored Sophia hard to handle. As the women from attending class. Several
a late teen, she began thinking about a vo- hecklers, mudslingers, and trash throwers
cation; she did not want to marry, the goal showed up to perform. Supportive male
of most girls her age. classmates helped them get through the en-
She considered teaching but was very dis- trance and into the buildings. In the same
appointed in the education she had received year, college officials denied the women en-
in girls’ schools with teachers she felt should trance to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,
have been better educated. She persuaded where medical students were required to
her parents to allow her to attend Queen’s obtain clinical training. The women chal-
College for Women. She thrived at college, lenged this decision.
hungry for knowledge and taking a full load In January 1871, Mr. Craig, the student
of courses in many areas: math, philosophy, Jex-Blake had indicated as the instigator of
English, French, religion, astronomy, and the riot at Surgeon’s Hall, filed a defamation
history. Because of her proficiency in math, writ against her. Mr. Craig worked for Pro-
she was asked to be a tutor. By her second fessor Christison, who was adamantly
year she was teaching women for the Soci- against having females educated in medi-
ety for Promoting the Employment of cine. Sophia defended herself in court four
Women, founded in 1858 to help women months later. The jury found in favor of the
learn simple skills so that they could acquire claimant but awarded him one farthing in-
work as clerks and in shops. This work stead of the 1,000 pounds he wanted. Sophia
brought her into contact with women who and her female colleagues, who had served
had fallen on hard times, and she sent some as her witnesses, were seen as the victors.
of these people to her parents for assistance. The women also had to fight to take the
Active members of the Anglican Church, professional examinations; the faculty did
they were quick to help the needy. not support giving them to women. The
109
Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa
university court had ruled the women women. She gathered some opponents of
would have to accept certificates of profi- the bill, but eventually it was deferred and
ciency instead of medical degrees, or leave. then dropped. However, it wasn’t until
The women students sued the university 1885 that women could qualify to practice
and won the right to stay in medical school surgery.
in 1872, but that judgment was reversed in In 1894, Edinburgh University finally al-
1873. They were not allowed to take the de- lowed women to graduate from the medical
gree examinations until the Russell Gurney program. Jex-Blake’s mother, who had suf-
Enabling Act of 1876. fered from a long illness, died in 1881. Af-
Helping the women’s cause during these terward, an assistant at the dispensary died
years was public opinion. A wave of public suddenly, and Sophia blamed herself for not
sympathy and support countered every noticing that the assistant had been working
setback the women experienced. Why ad- too hard. Suffering from depression over
mit the women and then prevent them these losses as well as exhaustion, she didn’t
from completing their education? Jex- practice medicine for almost two years.
Blake’s mother and brother were also very There are no letters or diaries from this
encouraging. period. Margaret Todd, a friend of Sophia’s
In 1874, Jex-Blake founded the London later in life, received all her personal papers,
School of Medicine for Women. Clinical but many assume that she destroyed all the
work had to wait until 1877, when the Royal documents prior to committing suicide.
Free Hospital opened its doors to women. In 1883, Jex-Blake returned to her work.
In the meantime, Sophia had obtained her Her practice thrived once again, and she
M.D. in Berne. She returned to qualify in also was pleased to see the Edinburgh Hos-
Great Britain by taking the license of mid- pital and Dispensary become Scotland’s
wifery at the College of Surgeons. This plan first hospital staffed by women for the treat-
was foiled when the examiners resigned en ment and care of women.
masse. In response, Parliament passed the In 1887, Sophia and friends opened the
Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, which Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women.
obligated all medical examining bodies to It wasn’t long, however, before the school
examine women (except in the field of sur- was competing with the second women’s
gery) and stipulated that women had the medical college, the Medical College for
same rights as men to enter the medical pro- Women. It had been founded in part by
fession. That same year Sophia Jex-Blake women younger than she who had left her
gained license to practice medicine through school because they disagreed with her
the Irish College of Physicians. She was fi- ideas and strict standards.
nally able to start a private practice in Edin- The new college had a lower tuition and
burgh and begin her career. obtained access to the Edinburgh Royal In-
In her busy practice, she was especially firmary for clinical practice in 1892. Sophia’s
popular with working-class women. Within Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women
months of opening her practice, she estab- was forced to close in 1898, and Sophia re-
lished an outpatient clinic where poor tired to Sussex the following year.
women could receive care for a few pence. Once in Sussex, she continued to follow
She saw patients at her dispensary, traveled the progress of women medical students.
to their homes, or received them in her Her home was always a haven for students,
home. During these years she was attentive friends, and colleagues. She continued to
to political developments regarding med- suffer from heart problems off and on, hav-
ical education for women. She was deeply ing had a heart attack before leaving Edin-
concerned about a bill in 1878 that would burgh. In her later years, the problem wors-
have required medical practitioners to ob- ened, and she died on January 7, 1912.
tain qualifications in both internal medicine Margaret Todd, a very close friend and a
and surgery. At the time, no examining writer who became a physician, wrote a bi-
body that qualified surgeons examined ography of Sophia in 1918.
110
Johns Hopkins University
See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Black- M. Carey Thomas, Miss Mary Elizabeth
well, Elizabeth; Edinburgh School of Medi- Garrett, Miss Mary Gwynn, and Miss Eliza-
cine; Medical Act of 1858; Russell Gurney beth King. They were daughters of the
Enabling Act of 1876; Sewall, Lucy Ellen trustees of Johns Hopkins and proponents
References: Jex-Blake, K., “Jex-Blake, Sophia of the women’s rights movement.
Louisa,” Dictionary of National Biography When the women proposed raising the
1912–1921: Supplement 3, London: Oxford funds needed to open the medical school,
University Press (1927); Roberts, Shirley, $500,000, they made sure the university
Sophia Jex-Blake: A Woman Pioneer in Nine- would admit women and hold to very high
teenth-Century Medical Reform, London: Rout- standards for all students. The requirements
ledge (1993); Todd, Margaret G., The Life of for admittance included a bachelor’s de-
Sophia Jex-Blake, London: Macmillan (1918). gree; language skills in Latin, German, and
French; and a background in biology, chem-
istry, and physics. Most of the faculty were
Johns Hopkins University taken aback at such high standards. As Dr.
William Osler reportedly said to Dr. William
Johns Hopkins University was among the Welch, it was lucky they got in as professors
first major medical schools in the United because they could not have made it as stu-
States to admit women. The university dents (Bernheim 1948, 31).
would not have been able to open its med- The medical school opened with four
ical school in 1893 had it not been for the renowned physicians as the founding med-
fundraising abilities of four women: Miss ical educators: William H. Welch, William S.
111
Joliet-Curie, Irene
Halsted, William Osler, and Howard Kelly. ship linked Mme Curie and this young girl.
The school was a huge attraction for women The Polish woman was solitary no longer.
medical students, who wanted to attend the She was able to talk of her work or of her
traditionally male schools because of their personal worries now with a collaborator
better facilities and their hospital affilia- and friend” (Curie 1937, 301). Marie Curie
tions. Here, women could gain practical ex- had complete confidence in Irene’s ability to
perience as well as a good academic educa- help even though she was very young.
tion. After the war Irene completed her doc-
toral degree in physics and began working
References: Bernheim, Bertram Moses, for her mother at the Radium Institute of the
The Story of Johns Hopkins: Four Great Doc- Sorbonne. There she met Frederic Joliot,
tors and the Medical School They Created, who had been hired as a laboratory assis-
New York: Whittlesey House (1948); tant. Since he had no experience working
“Women (or the Female Factor),” http:// with radioactive materials, Marie Curie
w w w. h o p k i n s m e d i c i n e . o rg / h i s t o r y. turned his training over to Irene. They even-
html#women. tually found they had similar interests, and
in 1926 they married.
They began collaborating and studied
Joliet-Curie, Irene polonium, which Irene’s parents had dis-
1897–1956 covered to be radioactive. They found that
when polonium was placed next to alu-
Irene Joliet-Curie was a Nobel Prize–win- minum, positrons and neutrons poured out
ning chemist and physicist who, along with of the aluminum. When they announced
her husband, Frederic, discovered artificial their finding at the Solvay Conference in
radioactivity. Like her mother, she studied Belgium in 1933, many scientists were skep-
the medical possibilities radioactivity of- tical, and they were discouraged. However,
fered. She also contributed much toward the a few scientists, including Wolfgang Pauli,
understanding of the neutron. encouraged them.
Born to the famous couple Pierre and They returned to Paris to continue their
Marie Curie on September 12, 1897, in Paris, experiments and soon saw that they had
Irene was the older of two daughters. Her been correct; further experiments with alu-
sister, Eve, was born in 1904. They were minum in close proximity to polonium pro-
both educated at home. Her grandfather, duced radioactivity. This discovery of artifi-
Eugene Curie, who came to live with the cial radiation would have a huge impact on
family when she was very young, had a chemistry, biology, and medicine. They re-
great influence on her. She was taught by a ceived the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935.
group of elite scientists who were friends of In 1937 Irene began working at the Ra-
the Curies. For a time her mother taught her dium Institute as a professor and became in-
physics, Paul Langevin taught her mathe- terested in the results of assailing uranium
matics, and Jean Perrin taught her physics. with neutrons. She did much of the original
Her mother sent her to the College Se- research that Otto Hahn was able to build on
vigne, where she graduated before the out- in order to discover atomic fission. He would
break of World War I. She also studied math win a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944.
and physics at the Sorbonne. She eventually She and Frederic had two children, He-
gained licenses in physics and math while lene in 1927 and Pierre in 1932. She enjoyed
also working as a nurse during the war. She motherhood immensely and also thrived
helped her mother set up the equipment for working in the laboratory even though she
taking X rays of the wounded soldiers. suffered for many years with tuberculosis.
It was during the war that Irene became As World War II approached, Frederic be-
much closer to her mother. They shared a gan to work more on nuclear fission. He and
similar mission in helping wounded sol- Irene did not think an atomic bomb could be
diers. “An intimate and charming comrade- produced by the end of the war; moreover,
112
Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon
they were more interested in nuclear energy help, had been successful in constructing
because at the time France was very reliant Zoë, France’s first nuclear reactor, in 1948.
on other countries for fuel. She also continued her research at the Ra-
During the war the Joliots, particularly dium Institute and spoke out for women’s
Frederic, had less time for their research and rights whenever she could.
spent more time on politics. Frederic even- She knew that the exposure to radiation
tually headed the most organized of the had taken a toll on her, and she became
French Resistance groups. When the Ger- weaker as time went on. By 1950, many sci-
mans occupied Paris and were a threat to entists realized the dangers of working with
the lab where he and Irene did their re- radiation, and new precautions were in
search, he worked on protecting it. He also place in labs around the world. “To the end,
had to arrange for Irene and their children she maintained her faith in science. During
to be smuggled out of the country to the last year of her life, she wrote, ‘Science is
Switzerland in 1944. the foundation of all progress that improves
Another important issue was protecting human life and diminishes suffering’”
the uranium that France had, along with the (McGrayne 1998, 142). Like her mother, she
“heavy water” (water enriched by deu- suffered from leukemia. She died on March
terium) that was necessary for the atomic 17, 1956. Both her children became scientists.
generator they wanted to construct. When
the Nazis asked Frederic where the heavy References: Curie, Eve, Madame Curie: A Bi-
water was, they were aware that Frederic ography, New York: Doubleday (1937);
had put it on a ship bound for England. McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize
However, they did not know which ship. Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and
Frederic gave them the name of one of the Momentous Discoveries, Secaucus, NJ: Carol
ships he knew had sunk. He also managed (1998); McKown, Robin, She Lived for Sci-
to keep the uranium safe. ence: Irene Joliot-Curie, New York: J. Messner
Irene was very proud of Frederic. He had (1961); Perrin, Francis, “Joliot-Curie, Irene,”
worked with the Resistance to get Jewish Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, New
children out of Germany, giving them non- York: Scribner (1973); Shearer, Benjamin F.,
Jewish names and cards, and to shelter Jew- and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the
ish families until the end of the war. He as- Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary,
sisted many who escaped from Germany. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1997).
Frederic joined the Communist Party and
was against nuclear power for weapons.
This position eventually hurt his career. Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon
Irene was also a controversial political fig- 1828–1908
ure during and after the war. They both
eventually lost favor with many people be- Mary Jones was a physician who excelled in
cause of their Communist views. However, gynecological surgery when it was still a
Irene continued to be more interested in re- new and controversial specialty. In the nine-
search than in politics and went on with her teenth century, Jones was considered just as
experiments even as she grew more ill from much an expert in the area as many male
radiation exposure. surgeons. She is a controversial figure in the
Eventually she went to look for natural history of women in medicine because she
sources of uranium in France and its over- defied the norm for women physicians of
seas territories. Unlike many physicists, she her day and proceeded on a course that
was very knowledgeable about mineralogy alienated her from many of her female col-
and geology, particularly about minerals leagues. The scandal surrounding her surgi-
that produced natural radioactive sub- cal ability made the headlines in 1892. Pub-
stances. This work she did in conjunction lic sentiment, professional opinion, and the
with the French Atomic Energy Commis- social norms of the time all played a part in
sion from 1946 to 1950. Frederic, with her the trials that followed.
113
Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon
Born February 17, 1828, in Dorchester many of the leading men she most ad-
County, Maryland, she was one of several mired” (Morantz-Sanchez 1999, 79).
children of Noah Dixon and Sarah Turner. Rather than quietly treat patients, Jones
Her family was Methodist, middle-class, wrote extensively and engaged in self-pro-
and in the shipbuilding business. She was motion in order to gain a good reputation.
able to obtain a good education at Wesleyan Some other women physicians thought she
Female College, graduating in 1845. was too forward. Many male physicians
She worked upon graduation as an in- found her to be very competent and were
structor of physiology and literature at Wes- impressed with her knowledge not only of
leyan, then moved on to teach at the Balti- surgery but also of pathology. She also
more Female College. She eventually took a worked on keeping a dialogue open be-
position at a girls’ seminary as the principal. tween herself and the male professionals
All along she studied medicine with some she admired, both in the United States and
local physicians. abroad.
After her marriage in 1854, she moved Beginning in 1889 the Brooklyn Eagle pub-
west. She had three children and eventually lished a series of articles accusing her of var-
the couple moved back to Baltimore so that ious unethical methods, from mismanage-
her husband, John Quincy Adams Jones, ment of funds for her hospital to
could practice law. She then left the family unnecessary surgeries. She was also ac-
and went to New York City in 1862 and re- cused of not educating patients enough be-
ceived a degree from the Hygeio-Therapeu- fore they had surgery. Hysterectomies were
tic College. quite controversial at the time. Many had
After the Civil War ended, she lived in the view that a woman’s reproductive sys-
Brooklyn with her children while her hus- tem belonged to the nation and that it was
band stayed in Baltimore. She lectured on every woman’s duty to have children; by
health issues for a time and was involved in performing hysterectomies on young
some of the women’s rights events of the women, a physician was hurting the coun-
day. Her practice was quite successful, but try. The fact that Jones performed so many
she decided in 1872 to pursue a traditional hysterectomies came up in some of the
medical degree from the Women’s Medical newspaper articles and in a trial when she
College of Pennsylvania, graduating after was accused of manslaughter. She was
the required three years in 1875. found to be innocent, but she then sued the
It is not known why she went on to get a Brooklyn Eagle to seek restitution. She lost
traditional degree, but this course was not that battle, and her career was irreparably
uncommon for women at that time. She damaged.
also would certainly have been presented After losing the libel suit, she left Brook-
with patients who had problems she did lyn and went to New York City with her
not have the skill to handle. Upon grad- son, Charles, also a physician. She spent the
uation she opened her private practice rest of her years publishing articles and died
again and specialized in surgery and prob- in 1908. Her son continued to practice med-
lems of women. She again sought further icine in Brooklyn and New York City.
education in 1881 with Benjamin Franklin
Dawson, the founder of the American Jour- References: Morantz-Sanchez, Regina,
nal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and “Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon,” American Na-
Children. tional Biography, vol. 12, New York: Oxford
Gynecology and surgical procedures in University Press (1999); Morantz-Sanchez,
this area were still a relatively new field. Regina Markell, Conduct Unbecoming a
“As a surgeon, she was bold, radical, and in- Woman: Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-the-Cen-
novative, quick to criticize the temporizing tury Brooklyn, New York: Oxford University
of more conservative colleagues and anx- Press (1999).
ious to advertise her innovations in tech-
nique. In this she mirrored the behavior of
114
Jordan, Lynda
115
Joteyko, Josephine
116
K
Kagan, Helena less shelter for children in 1927 and some
1889–1978 nurseries for working mothers. She super-
vised and trained many of the workers in
One of the earliest women physicians in Is- these nurseries.
rael while it was still under Ottoman rule, She worked for a time at Bikur Cholim
Helena Kagan gained acceptance as a physi- Hospital in Jerusalem and was also associ-
cian even before women were given licenses ated with Hebrew University for many
to practice medicine. She was the first years. She received an honorary doctorate
woman to be awarded the Medal of the in 1967. She was one of the sole reasons for
Freedom of Jerusalem in 1958. the expansion of health care in Israel, as she
She was born September 25, 1889, in was really on her own for much of her early
Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her father was an en- work. She established the Israel Pediatric
gineer. Hard times came when her father re- Association in 1927 and in 1975 received a
fused to convert to Christianity and lost his special Israel Prize in recognition of all her
job. Her parents were still able to pay for her work. She passed away in 1978.
and her older brother to attend school. She
graduated in 1905. References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor,
She went to Bern University in Switzer- Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra-
land to study medicine, graduating in 1910. phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC:
She continued to study there, particularly Hemisphere (1978); Kagan, Helenah, Reshit
pediatrics, for four more years. She went to darki bi-Yerushalayim, Tel-Aviv: Vitso, His-
Jerusalem in 1914 to practice medicine but tadrut ‘olamit le-nashim Tsiyoniyot; Tel-Yit-
was not able to obtain a license. Instead she shak ha-midrashah ha-Liberalit ‘a. s. Dr. Y.
assisted a physician at Jerusalem Municipal Forder (1980); Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
Hospital and trained young Arab and Jew- Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
ish women as nurses for the typhus epi- (1957).
demic. After the outbreak of World War I,
the physician she worked for died, and she
had to take over for him. Because of the Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson
shortage of doctors, she found herself in 1929–
charge of the typhus and cholera wards at
the hospital as well as overseeing the prison Joyce Kaufman is a talented scientist whose
hospital. ability to combine chemistry, physics, phar-
She eventually received a work permit macology, computing, and biology has sig-
and in 1916 founded a small children’s hos- nificantly aided in the understanding of how
pital, which would eventually become part drugs affect the central nervous system.
of the Hadassah Medical Organization. She Born in New York City on June 21, 1929,
worked there as head of the pediatrics de- she attended Johns Hopkins University and
partment until 1925. She founded a home- received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in
117
Kelsey, Frances Oldham
1949, followed by a master’s degree in 1959 became a faculty member at the University
and a D.E.S. (diplôme d’études supérieures) of Chicago. She married Dr. Fremont Ellis
in theoretical physics from the Sorbonne in Kelsey in 1943, and they had two daughters.
1963. She worked at various jobs as a physician
Kaufman has worked at various compa- and teacher before being hired by the U.S.
nies doing research in many areas, includ- Food and Drug Administration in 1960. It
ing physiochemical studies and the nervous was here that she did her important work
system. She has worked at Johns Hopkins on studying thalidomide and its effects,
University in both the chemistry depart- studying reports from Europe on its effects
ment and the School of Medicine’s anesthe- on humans, and requiring the drug com-
siology and surgery departments. She has pany that was marketing it to provide more
an unusual gift for understanding many sci- information.
ence disciplines and their interrelationships. Kelsey continues to work for the FDA.
She married Stanley Kaufman in 1948 and
has one daughter. References: Bren, Linda, “Frances Oldham
Kelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves Her
References: American Men and Women of Sci- Mark on History,” FDA Consumer 35, no. 2
ence, 20th ed., New York: Bowker (1998); (March–April 2001): 24–29; Grigg, William,
Bailey, Martha J., American Women in Science: “The Thalidomide Tragedy—25 Years Ago,”
1950 to the Present, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC- FDA Consumer 21, no. 1 (February 1987):
CLIO (1998). 14–17; Mintz, Morton, “‘Heroine’ of FDA
Keeps Bad Drug off of Market,” Washington
Post (15 July 1962): A1.
Kelsey, Frances Oldham
1914–
Kenny, Elizabeth
Frances Kelsey fought to ban thalidomide in 1886–1952
the United States and determined to keep a
drug company from distributing it in 1962, Elizabeth Kenny was an Australian nurse
thus saving thousands of unborn babies who treated polio victims with methods
from deformities. Her persistent skepticism that went against the medical practices of
about the drug and its testing made her a the time but eventually gained acceptance
heroine with the public and earned her the by the American Medical Association and
President’s Award for Distinguished Fed- others interested in treating polio victims
eral Civilian Service in 1962. She also helped before a vaccination was developed. A
establish the groundwork for tougher drug nurse serving in the backcountry, she
laws and brought greater awareness to the treated people with hot packs and stimula-
public as to the dangers of new drugs that tion, using her instincts rather than pre-
do not have proper and thorough testing. scribed, traditional methods. “Kenny clin-
Born in Cobble Hill, British Columbia, she ics” were established around the country.
developed an interest in science as she Born in Warialda, New South Wales, on
“grew up in the country where she collected September 20, 1886, she had very little formal
everything from bugs to bird eggs” (Bren training as a nurse. Her parents were
2001, 27). She went to McGill University in Michael and Mary Kenny, and she was one of
Montreal and earned a bachelor’s degree in nine children. Her father was a veterinarian.
1934. She continued her studies during the She served in the Australian bush from
depression and obtained her master’s in 1911 until World War I. It was during this
pharmacology the next year. She then ac- early period of her career that she came
cepted a scholarship from the University of across victims of poliomyelitis. The popular
Chicago, where E.M.K. Geiling was estab- treatment of the day was to splint or cast the
lishing a new pharmacology department. affected limbs right away. Having no idea of
While working, she earned her Ph.D. and the accepted treatment in those early years,
118
Kenny, Elizabeth
however, she developed her own technique She eventually straightened out the prob-
of physical therapy. She treated her first case lem, and later when the other members of
with warm, moist packs applied to the af- her unit came, “I guided them through the
fected muscles. She then worked with the intricate process by which they were re-
muscles to retrain them and make them stored to the land of the living, and we all
more flexible. Using the same treatment went out to celebrate our resurrection”
with several other patients was successful. (Kenny 1943, 43).
When she reported her treatments to Dr. Ae- After a shrapnel wound to her leg and
neas McDonnell, he was surprised and knee, she managed to survive the influenza
shocked that the children had survived. He epidemic of 1918 while tending hundreds of
informed her of the accepted method of the patients on a ship bound for Australia. Soon
day. “Then he fetched from his library some thereafter she suffered a heart attack and
impressive-looking tomes that dealt with was treated in Germany before returning
this baffling disease. What I discovered in again to her home country.
their pages left me speechless with aston- Kenny recovered and resumed her nurs-
ishment. It simply could not be that I, in ing work when the war was over. She in-
contraposition to wise authorities, had vented a stretcher on wheels, the Sylvia
blundered upon a treatment that had met Stretcher, after seeing so many in battle and
with success!” (Kenny 1943, 29). She told Dr. at home die on the way to medical care via
McDonnell she had treated the symptoms a bumpy road. Traditional stretchers could
she saw—spasms; this symptom was not put the patients in shock, and many did not
even mentioned in the book. survive these trips. Her stretcher kept pa-
She treated many other types of ailments tients off the ground, allowing the tires and
and delivered numerous babies in less than not the patients to absorb the bumps and
desirable surroundings. She traveled also allowing Kenny to treat the patient for
mainly by horseback, spending many shock while in transit. Kenny named the
nights under the sky. By 1913 she had a cot- stretcher after the little girl whose accident
tage hospital in Clifton not far from her inspired it and patented it in 1927 so that it
mother’s house. When World War I broke could be made available in more areas.
out, she volunteered and served at the front In the years that followed, Kenny strug-
in France. gled to gain acceptance for her methods of
There were many dangers in serving as a treating infantile paralysis. She tried in Aus-
nurse at the front as well as aboard the ships tralia and England but was disappointed
going to and from. During one troublesome each time. Kenny felt part of the problem
but ultimately successful trip, her ship was was that officials perceived her as claiming
reported as lost off the coast of Africa. Upon a cure. “In the first place, I did not—and do
going to headquarters the next morning, she not—claim a cure for infantile paralysis. I
“presented my pay book to the pay officer. had written a personal letter to each mem-
He looked at the book, took my name, and ber of the English committee emphasizing
consulted his records. Then he informed me this fact. Infantile paralysis, like any other
that I had been lost at sea and was dead. Un- disease, takes its toll in human suffering. . . .
der the circumstances, he could not possibly Discovery of a cure would be enough to
give me any money. The announcement electrify the world. In the meantime, if the
gave me pause. It was difficult to believe toll can be reduced and the legacy made less
that a ghost should feel so keenly the need severe, any treatment accomplishing such
of replenishing her wardrobe. But the pay- results should be worthy of the most careful
master was obdurate. He was very busy at consideration before it is dismissed as use-
the time, and took no further notice of me. less” (Kenny 1943, 176–177).
Even the fact that he was dealing with After failing to win support from the es-
someone who had been dead for several tablished medical communities in Australia
days failed to awaken the slightest interest and Great Britain, in 1940 she went to the
in his official heart” (Kenny 1943, 42–43). United States and demonstrated her meth-
119
Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway
ods of treatment on polio victims. In Min- went to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania
neapolis, she gained some listeners and to study biology before entering the School
eventually supporters who helped spread of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in
the idea and founded Kenny clinics in nu- Baltimore. She had the great fortune to ob-
merous places. tain training from some of the most promi-
She died on November 20, 1952, after nent teaching physicians of the day: William
having been given diplomatic status by the Henry Welch, Sir William Osler, William
U.S. Congress, having lunched with Presi- Stewart Halsted, and Howard Kelly, still
dent Roosevelt, and most important, having known as the Big Four at Johns Hopkins.
seen her method of treatment accepted and Following graduation she worked at the
able to help hundreds of polio victims suf- Johns Hopkins University Hospital for a
fering from pain. year before moving to Babies Hospital in
New York City in 1905. She studied child-
References: Cohn, Victor, Sister Kenny: The hood diseases and worked with Luther Em-
Woman Who Challenged the Doctors, Min- mett Holt and Martha Wollstein, pioneers in
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press pediatrics. Following a six-year residency,
(1975); Hiestand, Wanda C., “Think Differ- she opened her own practice and in 1911
ent: Inventions and Innovations by Nurses, married James Henry Kenyon, a neurosur-
1850 to 1950,” American Journal of Nursing geon on the staff of Babies Hospital.
100, no. 10 (October 2000): 72; Kaufman, Josephine had a great interest in educat-
Martin, Stuart Galishoff, and Todd L. Savitt, ing the public on childcare and hygiene. She
eds., Dictionary of American Medical Biogra- had done some lecturing on the topic before
phy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1984); leaving Babies Hospital and was appointed
Kendall, Florence P., “Sister Elizabeth Kenny as a lecturer at Columbia University’s
Revisited,” Archives of Physical Medicine and Teachers College in 1913. It was in this area
Rehabilitation 79, no. 4 (April 1998): 361–365; that she would gain national recognition.
Kenny, Elizabeth, And They Shall Walk, New In the early 1920s she began writing ad-
York: Dodd, Mead (1943); Snodgrass, Mary vice for mothers in Good Housekeeping and
Ellen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing, contributed popular articles on child and
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999). baby care to other lay publications of the
day. She appealed to so many women be-
cause she was a mother herself (of two
Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway daughters) and a physician. Her book
1880–1965 Healthy Babies Are Happy Babies was so pop-
ular that it went through five revised edi-
Josephine Kenyon was a pediatrician par- tions and nineteen printings.
tially responsible, following the lead of Kenyon stressed that a mother’s health
Luther Emmett Holt, for fueling the boom was as important as the baby’s was. Ahead
in “baby books” during the early twentieth of her day, she also talked about the child’s
century. Her 1934 publication Healthy Babies emotional health while maturing. She
Are Happy Babies: A Complete Handbook for stressed the importance of children taking
Modern Mothers was remarkably successful. responsibility within the family: “We have
She was born to Charles Carroll Hemen- heard much of the unquestioning obedience
way and Ida Eliza Shackelford in Auburn, of the children of an older generation and the
New York, on May 10, 1880. Her father was wonderful men and women who resulted
a Presbyterian minister. In 1891 the family from that discipline. In my opinion, the
moved to Glasgow, Missouri, after her fa- strong men and women developed, not be-
ther took a job as president of Pritchett Col- cause of this implicit obedience or from fear
lege. She attended college there and re- of the consequences of disobedience, but be-
ceived her bachelor’s and a master’s in 1898 cause these people, when young, had to take
and 1899, respectively. definite responsibilities as part of the work-
She wanted a career in medicine and ing unit—the family” (Kenyon 1934, 276).
120
Klein, Melanie
Kenyon maintained affiliations with 1919, then went to Switzerland for a time.
many hospitals and universities and was The marriage ended in divorce in 1923 after
called to speak on childcare innumerable they had had three children, Melitta, Hans,
times. She worked for various charitable and Eric.
and religious organizations whose aim was It was in Budapest that Klein began read-
to make babies, mothers, and children safer. ing Sigmund Freud’s work and became
She also worked in educating women on very interested in psychoanalysis. She was
proper conduct in the military while around encouraged by Sandor Ferenczi and later by
soldiers and worked with various social Karl Abraham, who recognized her gift at
leaders of the day. She closed her private analyzing children. She presented a paper
practice in 1950 and moved to Colorado to in 1921 on the development of children and
be near family. Kenyon died on January 10, received full membership in the Hungarian
1965, in Boulder, Colorado. Psycho-Analytical Society.
She continued her studies in Berlin. There
References: Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway, had been no work on the analysis of chil-
Healthy Babies Are Happy Babies: A Complete dren under the age of five or six, and she de-
Handbook for Modern Mothers, Boston: Little, veloped a method for understanding very
Brown (1934); “Kenyon, Josephine Hemen- young children who could not yet talk by
way,” [obit] JAMA 192, no. 1 (5 April 1965): analyzing the way they played with toys.
75; Opitz, Donald L., “Kenyon, Josephine She felt she could interpret much about a
Hemenway,” American National Biography, child by the associations observed during
vol. 12, New York: Oxford University Press free play.
(1999). She was asked to speak in England a
number of times and moved there perma-
nently in 1926. Her methods and results
Klein, Melanie caused conflict in the field of psychoanaly-
1882–1960 sis. She had traced Freud’s views further
back to the infant child, and many Freudian
Melanie Klein was one of the most influen- thinkers believed she did not have sufficient
tial psychoanalysts in Great Britain. Her proof of the capability she attributed to in-
work has had a lasting impact on psychoan- fants. Many colleagues, however, embraced
alysts and physicians. She built on the ideas her methods. There was not a distinct divi-
of Freud and extended them. Her innova- sion in the British Psychoanalytical Society
tive method of analyzing child’s play between the Klein and Freud theories until
helped her later with adult psychoanalysis. a series of controversial discussions took
Today many child clinics still employ her place. Then it was clear there were two
methods. schools of thought (each of which has sur-
Born in Vienna, Austria, on March 30, vived).
1882, she had three siblings. Her father, She contributed a great deal to psychoan-
Moritz Reizes, was a physician and Jewish alytic theory by studying infants and chil-
scholar, and her mother was Libusa Deutsch dren the first ten years she was in London.
from Hungary, who for a time ran a store After her oldest son was killed in 1933 in a
selling exotic plants. Her childhood was mountaineering accident, she began to look
marred by the early deaths of her sister, at depression, sorrow, and emotion. She
Sidonie, and her brother, Emmanuel. Her fa- used her own dreams in writing about sor-
ther died when she was eighteen. row and mourning.
She received a good education and had a Her research involved studying many
desire to become a physician like her father. children with problems and analyzing their
However, her financial situation and early behavior. One of the more controversial as-
marriage to a second cousin, Arthur pects of Klein’s work is that she analyzed
Stephan Klein, changed her course. They her own children. Many analysts today find
moved to Budapest and were there until that disturbing. She had a very troubled re-
121
Krajewska, Teodora
lationship with her psychoanalyst daughter, Urzedowa W Dol. Tuzle I Sarajewie,” Archi-
Melitta Schmideberg, who openly argued wum Historii i Filozofii Medycyny (Poland) 50,
with and lashed out at her mother in pro- no. 1 (1987): 75–98.
fessional meetings.
Klein’s pioneering work in child psycho-
analysis has endured and helped numerous Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth
children and adults around the world. She 1926–
passed away on September 22, 1960.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross revolutionized the
See also: Freud, Anna way physicians, psychiatrists, and other
References: Grosskurth, Phyllis, Melanie health care providers view death and gave
Klein: Her World and Her Work, New York: them a tremendous amount of information
Knopf (1986); MacGibbon, Jean, “Klein, in order to better understand the stages of
Melanie,” Dictionary of National Biography, death, the acceptance of death as a part of
1951–1960, London: Oxford University life, and most important, the tools needed to
Press (1971); Segal, Hanna, Melanie Klein, counsel the terminally ill and their families.
New York: Viking Press (1980); Sheehy, Medical and counseling centers around the
Noel, Antony J. Chapman, and Wendy A. world continue to use her ideas and findings.
Conroy, Biographical Dictionary of Psychology, Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 8,
London: Routledge (1997). 1926, Kubler-Ross was one of triplet girls.
Her parents, Emmy Villiger Kubler and
Ernst Kubler, were strict at home but spent
a lot of recreational time with their three
Krajewska, Teodora daughters and an older son. She enjoyed her
1854–1935 family but had a hard time finding her own
identity, as so many persons of multiple
Teodora Krajewska was a Polish physician births do. She had the same kinds of clothes
who was one of the first female physicians and toys as the other girls and in her early
to serve in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She days wanted to be different from them.
faced cultural barriers but succeeded in When Kubler-Ross was very young she
helping Muslim women as a social worker, had a serious bout with pneumonia and de-
healer, and educator. veloped a bond with her roommate in the
She was born in Warsaw in 1854. Her fa- hospital.
ther, Ignacego Kosmowskiego, was a
teacher. She had several sisters and was ed- That evening she stirred more than
ucated in Warsaw. She obtained her medical normal. As I tried to get her attention,
degree around 1892. she kept looking past me, or through
She traveled to Bosnia along with Anna me. ‘It’s important that you keep fight-
Bayerova of Czechoslovakia to help women ing,’ she explained. ‘You’re going to
in the Muslim faith receive proper health make it. You’re going to return home
care, many for the first time. She helped with your family.’ I was so happy, but
with the establishment of better local health then my mood changed abruptly.
services and lived and worked in Dolnja ‘What about you?’ I asked. She said
Tuzla and Sarajevo for almost thirty years, that her real family was ‘on the other
from 1893 to 1922. side’ and assured me that there was no
Krajewska died in 1935. need to worry. We traded smiles be-
fore drifting back to sleep. I had no
See also: Bayerova, Anna fear of the journey my new friend was
References: Krajewska, Teodora Kos- embarking on. Nor did she. It seemed
mowska, Pamietnik, Krakow: Krajowa as natural as the sun going down
Agencja Wydawnicza (1989); Necas, Ctibor, every night and the moon taking its
“Dr. Med. Teodora Krajewska, Lekarka place” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 29).
122
Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth
Her friend died peacefully that night. From was interested in mental as well as physical
this experience, she learned that dying can health.
be a relief from pain and thus a positive In 1951 she began medical school at the
event. University of Zurich, intending to follow
She did well in school, especially in sci- the Swiss model of a physician—a country
ence. In 1942 she set her sights on medical doctor who served the community. She
school, but her parents didn’t see that she passed her Matura, excelling in all sections
needed higher education. After a maid posi- except Latin.
tion away from home did not work out, she Numerous times while at the University
found a job as a lab assistant, thinking the of Zurich she saw C. G. Jung but avoided
experience would help her get into medical meeting him. She didn’t want to become a
school. In her work in the lab, she took psychiatrist, just a physician.
blood from people with late-stage venereal She met her future husband, Emmanuel
disease. She felt she was “called” to help Robert Ross (Manny), in medical school, but
those who were ill. “In those days, before at the time she was not impressed with any
penicillin, VD sufferers were treated like of the American medical students: “My first
AIDS patients would be in the 1980s—they impression of them as a group, based on how
were feared, abandoned, shunned, locked they handled the corpse, was not a good one.
away” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 55). She found They made jokes about the dead man’s body,
she could help them physically and emo- jumped rope with his intestines and teased
tionally by just listening to them and re- me about the size of his testicles. It wasn’t
sponding sympathetically. funny. I thought they were disrespectful, in-
The hospital where she worked was sensitive cowboys” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 94).
overwhelmed with refugees from all over Despite that, she and Manny dated
Europe after the Normandy invasion in through medical school, and they married
1944. She later became a member of the In- in 1958, a year after graduating. They went
ternational Voluntary Service for Peace and to the United States and both worked as in-
traveled about helping all she could, finally terns at Glen Cove Community Hospital on
reaching Poland in 1948. She had promised Long Island, New York. She then took a res-
a doctor at the hospital where she worked ident position in psychiatry at Manhattan
in Switzerland that she would help the Pol- State Hospital because she needed a job.
ish people recover from the aftermath of The situation at Manhattan State Hospital
the war. was appalling to her. Mentally ill patients
The devastation was overwhelming. She were used for experiments with psychotic
helped to rebuild schools and nurse the ill in drugs, beaten and punished, or totally ig-
a small farming town called Lucima. A trip nored. She began listening to the patients
to one of Hitler’s death camps, Maidanek, and responding to their needs, and in turn
forever etched the horror of hatred in her they responded with better behavior. Men-
mind as she visited those who had lost their tal patients had to learn to do chores like
entire families. She also experienced dis- making their beds and they would be re-
crimination when people who thought she warded with such incentives as going out-
was Polish refused to help her when she be- side for a walk. She had another job offer af-
came seriously ill on the trip home. She ter her first year at the hospital but decided
would see such discrimination again in the to stay. She obtained releases for many func-
treatment of AIDS patients. tional patients and helped others finds jobs
Returning home, she was still determined outside the hospital.
to become a physician and went back to lab She started an open-house program, find-
work at the hospital. She talked with pa- ing families in the neighborhood who
tients, taking an interest in their problems would visit the patients and develop rela-
and fears, and was able to handle more re- tionships with them. Patients began to look
sponsibility. She had seen that healing in- forward to these visits, and a large percent-
volved more than physical care, and she age of them got well and were released.
123
Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth
Such numbers of recoveries were unprece- her On Death and Dying in a little over three
dented at the hospital. months. In the book, Kubler-Ross describes
After two miscarriages in as many years, the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bar-
Kubler-Ross gave birth, in 1960, to her first gaining, depression, and acceptance. Mac-
child, Kenneth Lawrence. She had only one millan published the book that same year. It
more year of residency, and it was too late to continues to be popular today and is re-
change her acquired psychiatry specialty. quired reading for numerous college and
Montefiore Hospital accepted her, and not university courses. It is also useful for ther-
content to be only a wife and mother, she apists, clergy, social workers, and families
went back to work. At Montefiore, she dealing with death issues.
worked with many terminally ill patients, Soon after the publication of On Death and
talking frankly to them about death. Dying, Life magazine highlighted one of her
Kubler-Ross lost her own father during seminars. The Life article featured a young
this time. He was very ill in Switzerland, and girl named Eva who was dying of leukemia.
the doctors would not grant his request to In response to the piece, hundreds of people
die at home. Kubler-Ross arrived and signed and organizations asked Kubler-Ross to
papers releasing the hospital from responsi- give lectures. She was suddenly famous, the
bility. She and her mother then took her fa- world’s expert on death and dying.
ther home, where he died peacefully in 1960. Over the next few years, Kubler-Ross had
After she finished her residency in 1962, some paranormal experiences that alienated
she and her husband obtained jobs in Denver some of her followers. “She had been com-
at the Colorado School of Medicine. It was missioned, she felt, to use her renown to de-
here that she gave her first lecture on death. clare to anyone who would listen that man
In 1963 she had a second, premature, child, indeed possessed a spirit and that his spirit
Barbara Lee. After the birth, Manny took a survived death—which she now refers to as
job in Chicago and she underwent psycho- the ‘transition’” (Gill 1980, 313). She contin-
analysis for three years as a requirement of ued to write about death and life after
her training at the Psychoanalytic Institute. death. In 1983 she was asked to help with
She worked at Billings Hospital, which is af- AIDS, an endeavor that totally absorbed
filiated with the University of Chicago, as a her. Again, she felt that caring and uncondi-
physician and assistant professor of psychia- tional love would be more helpful than sci-
try from 1965 to 1970. She disagreed with the ence. She conducted thousands of AIDS
traditional practices of the psychiatrists in workshops all over the world.
her department at Billings, whose treatments Kubler-Ross currently lives in Arizona.
relied mainly on drugs. She felt that psychia- Some critics argue she has no scientific
trists should focus more on the individual proof or clinical trials to support her claims
patient’s personality and family life. of success with psychotic patients and the
She began regular lecturing on death in terminally ill. As a result of her work, how-
1967; at each lecture, she was accompanied ever, there is more awareness today of the
by a terminally ill patient who was willing right of the dying to determine their own
to talk to the audience about his or her feel- destiny and a hospice movement to support
ings. Priests, nurses, rabbis, counselors, so- this right. Many physicians now also sup-
cial workers, and students crowded in to port patients’ rights to not avail themselves
find out about a subject no one else wanted of life-sustaining medical equipment.
to deal with. Physicians did not often attend
because as a group, they looked upon death References: Gill, Derek L. T., Quest: The Life
as failure to cure the patient. In 1969, a copy of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, New York: Harper &
of an article she had written for the Chicago Row (1980); Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, On
Theological Seminary on the purpose of her Death and Dying, New York: Macmillan
death-and-dying seminars found its way to (1969); Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, The Wheel of
an editor at Macmillan in New York. In re- Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying, New
sponse to a call from Macmillan, she wrote York: Scribner (1997).
124
L
Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Women’s Biography, New York: Continuum;
Macmillan (1982).
Duges
1769–1821
125
Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill
Medical College of Pennsylvania and grad- Pierre, who both were able to attend col-
uated in 1889. lege. After her husband’s death in 1905, she
She served an internship at the Women’s settled in Walthill in the year of its found-
Hospital in Philadelphia, affiliated with the ing, 1906, and continued to speak for the
Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, betterment of Indians everywhere. She
treating outpatients, observing surgery, and helped organize the County Medical Soci-
preparing medications. She also went on ety, served on the local health board, and
rounds with the resident physician to some stood firm on eradicating alcohol on reser-
very poor neighborhoods. This was valu- vations and instilling good sanitation and
able experience, since she had had little clin- nutrition practices.
ical training while in medical school. Her final efforts were toward getting a lo-
In order to serve the Indians of her tribe, cal hospital. She helped raise funds, a long
she applied for a physician position with and hard task. “A few years before her
the Omaha Agency Indian School. The com- death, Susan asserted that she believed ‘in
missioner of Indian Affairs believed in Indi- prevention of diseases and hygienic care’
ans becoming educated and serving their more than she did ‘in giving or prescribing
people, and she got the job. She quickly re- medicine.’ She said her ‘constant aim’ was
turned to the Omahas, becoming a medical ‘to teach these two things, particularly to
leader and organizer. She served members young mothers,’ and her ‘greatest desire in
of the Omaha tribe for over four years re- having the hospital built was to save the lit-
gardless of the problems with getting sup- tle children” (Tong 1999, 177).
plies, low pay, difficult physical conditions, This goal may well have arisen because
and the obstacles of travel. she had seen many infants and children die
“Making home visits was no easy task. from disease while she was waiting for
Omahas were scattered over an undevel- medical supplies.
oped, undulating terrain that was thirty In 1913 she attended the opening of the
miles long by fifteen miles wide. Most of the hospital at Walthill, which remained a vital
so-called roads were little more than poor part of health care in the area until 1947. On
dirt tracks, which were so bad that a single September 18, 1915, La Flesche succumbed
horse could not pull a wagon on them” to a long bout with a cancerous bone infec-
(Tong 1999, 94). During this time, she spoke tion. In that year, hospital officials gave the
whenever she could to groups off the reser- hospital her name. She was buried in the
vation about the Omahas and her work with nearby Bancroft cemetery next to her hus-
them. She was a good speaker who did not band, Henry.
alienate whites, and she knew she had to
work with them in order to improve condi- References: Tong, Benson, Susan LaFlesche
tions for Native Americans. Picotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and Re-
In the 1890s, La Flesche worked unceas- former, Norman: University of Oklahoma
ingly to end drinking among the Indians. It Press (1999).
had led to illness and death and was de-
structive to family and community relation-
ships. Her efforts were fruitless, and she be- Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill
came quite frustrated. She blamed the 1895–1981
whites for making alcohol available, and al-
though some religious groups supported Rebecca Lancefield was a bacteriologist
her efforts to enforce the law against pro- and researcher. She was a pioneer in classi-
viding alcohol to Indians, cooperation from fying and identifying the various strains of
law enforcement was not forthcoming. She streptococci.
continued to fight against drinking, as her Born in Ft. Wadsworth, New York, on Jan-
father before her had done. uary 5, 1895, she was the daughter of
She married Henry Picotte, half Sioux and Colonel William E. Craighill and Mary
half French, and had two sons, Caryl and Wortley Byram Craighill and had five sis-
126
Lazarus, Hilda
ters. She attended Wellesley College, gradu- was one of twelve children, nine of which
ating in 1916 with a degree in zoology. After survived to adulthood. Her grandfather
her father died, she taught for a year to help was one of the earliest Brahmins to convert
support her sisters. Seemingly headed for a to Christianity. Her parents were well edu-
teaching career at Teachers College in New cated, and her father served as principal of
York, she persuaded the administrators to the London Mission High School, Visakha-
let her pursue a master’s in bacteriology. patnam. Despite frequent illnesses as a
She excelled and took a part-time position child, Lazarus was a good student who
with the Rockefeller Institute, working with studied physiology at a local college in or-
Oswald Theodore Avery and Alphonse Ray- der to prepare for medical school. She had
mond Dochez, who were studying strepto- decided early on that she wanted to be a
coccal bronchopneumonia for the surgeon physician and obtained her M.D. from the
general of the United States. She left to fin- University of Madras in 1917.
ish her master’s and married Donald Lance- She began her career with the Women’s
field. Her husband finished his Ph.D. in Medical Service and served briefly at the
1921, and they both went to Oregon for a Lady Hardinge Medical College Hospital in
few years to work. Later they returned to New Delhi. After a few months she was
New York, and Lancefield went back to transferred to the Dufferin Hospital in Cal-
work for the Rockefeller Institute, where cutta and had to deal with multiple lan-
she would stay for the rest of her career. guages in treating patients as well as a
While she was there, her laboratory grew tremendous workload.
in reputation, becoming the world leader in
identifying different strains of strep. She de- There I had to attend to all emergen-
veloped a unique classification system that cies, all special paying patients, outpa-
is still used today. tients, and a ward of twenty beds, as
Lancefield had one daughter, Jane. She well as being responsible for all statis-
died on March 3, 1981. tics. The only languages I was ac-
quainted with were English, Telugu,
References: Elliott, S. D., “Obituary: Re- and Tamil, but here I was obliged to
becca Craighill Lancefield, 1895–1981,” Jour- lecture to midwives in Hindi, to deal
nal of General Microbiology 126, pt. 1 (Sep- with Bengalis, and to study Urdu. It
tember 1981): 1–4; McCarty, Maclyn, was compulsory for every officer of
“Rebecca Craighill Lancefield,” Biographical the Women’s Medical Service to pass
Memoirs, vol. 57, Washington, DC: National in Urdu before confirmation of service.
Academy of Sciences (1987); Shearer, Ben- I managed this with credit in two and
jamin, and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable a half months and then began to study
Women in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic- Bengali, in order to understand the pa-
tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press tients and help them to understand
(1996). me. (cited in Hellstedt 1978, 39)
127
L’Esperance, Elise Depew Strang
well qualified to assume in 1940 the position more clinical research was needed on many
of principal of the Lady Hardinge Medical of the child illnesses she saw and treated.
College in New Delhi. She held this position She left private practice after several years
for three years and later became chief of the to join the Tuberculosis Research Commis-
Women’s Medical Service for India. She re- sion in New York.
mained in this post until 1947 and then be- Her interest in pathology developed when
came the superintendent of Vellore Medical she later worked with James Ewing at Cor-
College as it entered a transitional phase of nell University Medical School. She studied
coeducation. tumors and cancerous cells and realized can-
She remained active in the administration cer could be detected in its early stages. In
of hospitals after she retired from Vellore in 1917, she moved on to the New York Infir-
1950. She also served for a time as professor mary for Women and Children. She worked
at the Andrha Medical College in Visakha- there for over thirty years while also work-
patnam and worked to better the facilities. ing as an instructor at various hospitals and
as an assistant professor at Cornell.
References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor, When her mother died in 1930, she
Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra- opened the Kate Depew Strang Tumor
phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC: Clinic with the help of her sister, May
Hemisphere (1978); Lazarus, Hilda, “Mes- Strang, at the New York Infirmary. The
sage from India,” Journal of the American clinic focused on cancer detection in women
Medical Women’s Association 3, no. 6 (June and children as opposed to treatment of the
1948): 250; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women illness. L’Esperance felt strongly that malig-
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan nant cancers could many times be pre-
(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, vented if physicians knew what to look for.
eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Her clinic later expanded to include male
Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to patients and became so successful that she
the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge opened another one in 1940.
(2000). She became an expert on cervical cancer,
and research at her clinic led to the Pap
smear for detecting cervical cancer and the
proctoscope for detecting colon and rectal
L’Esperance, Elise cancer. She encouraged women physicians
Depew Strang to stay in the field and was a leader in edu-
1878–1959 cating women about their health, the impor-
tance of routine examinations, and cancer
Elise L’Esperance opened the first clinic in prevention. She passed away in Pelham
the United States for cancer detection. Manor, New York, on January 21, 1959.
Born in Yorktown, New York, in 1878, she
was the third daughter of Albert Strang and References: Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth, “L’Es-
Kate Depew. Her father wanted a physician perance, Elise Strang,” American National Bi-
in the family and, not having a son to follow ography, vol. 13, New York: Oxford Univer-
in his footsteps, encouraged his third sity Press (1999); Shearer, Benjamin F. and
daughter to pursue medical studies. Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life
Elise attended school in Albany, New Sciences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
York, at St. Agnes Episcopal School before (1996).
attending the Women’s Medical College of
the New York Infirmary for Women and
Children. She graduated in 1900 with her Levi-Montalcini, Rita
medical degree and married David A. L’Es- 1909–
perance.
L’Esperance served as a pediatrician in Rita Levi-Montalcini was the 1986 Nobel
both New York and Detroit but decided Prize recipient, along with Stanley Cohen,
128
Levi-Montalcini, Rita
129
Longshore, Hannah Myers
duced that the saliva gland produced nerve Simon, Renaissance Women in Science, Lan-
growth factor that they were able to purify ham, MD: University Press of America
it. Levi-Montalcini continued to work on (1999).
NGF after Cohen left Washington Univer-
sity in 1959. She felt strongly that the scien-
tific community did not realize the impor-
tance of the discovery.
Longshore, Hannah Myers
She left in 1961 to return to Rome and es- 1819–1901
tablished the Laboratory of Cellular Biol-
ogy. She continued her work there, and as Hannah Longshore was the first female fac-
time passed, her discovery attracted more ulty member in a medical college of the
attention. By the mid-1980s, many neurobi- United States and the first to practice in
ologists were aware of the importance of Philadelphia. Longshore was an early pio-
growth factors. It became clear “that the neer in women’s medical education in the
nerve growth factor keeps cells from dying United States.
in their early embryonic stages. Without She was born on May 30, 1819, in Sandy
nerve growth factors, half of some kinds of Spring, Maryland, to Samuel Myers and
cells would die; with NGF, they survive. Paulina Oden Myers. She married Thomas
NGF affects particular kinds of cells, E. Longshore in 1841 and had two children.
whether they are in the central nervous, the Her brother-in-law, Joseph Longshore, tu-
peripheral nervous system, or the brain. It tored Hannah privately to prepare her for
also appears to link the immune and the entrance to the Female Medical College of
nervous systems of the body” (McGrayne Pennsylvania (renamed the Women’s Med-
1998, 220). ical College of Pennsylvania in 1867).
In 1986, she and Cohen received the No- Joseph Longshore was a physician and,
bel Prize in physiology or medicine for their with some other male doctors, had played a
discovery. Some scientists were surprised vital role in the establishment of the college.
that Viktor Hamburger was excluded. Levi- Hannah graduated in 1851 and became a
Montalcini’s defense of the Nobel commit- demonstrator of anatomy there, the first
tee’s decision to give the award to her and woman in the United States to hold a fac-
Cohen strained her relationship with Ham- ulty position in a medical school.
burger, who received the national Medal of Hannah also taught for a year at the New
Science in 1989. England Female Medical College in Boston.
She had served in Rome as the director of After Joseph Longshore was ostracized by
the Institute of Cell Biology from 1969 to the faculty at the Female Medical College of
1979. After winning the Nobel Prize, she be- Pennsylvania for wanting to teach water
came a national celebrity and continued to cures and other eclectic therapies, he
work as much as she could on NGF, later founded the Pennsylvania Medical Univer-
taking an interest in degenerative diseases. sity. Hannah taught anatomy there from
She served as president of the Italian Multi- 1853 to 1857.
ple Sclerosis Association for many years. Her private practice thrived to the point
that she eventually gave up teaching and
References: Levi-Montalcini, Rita, In Praise lecturing to spend all her time with the 300
of Imperfections: My Life and Work, New York: families under her care. She died on October
Basic Books (1988); McGrayne, Sharon 18, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their
Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, See also: Medical College of Pennsylvania
Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Shearer, Ben- References: Kaufman, M., “Longshore,
jamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Hannah E. Myers,” Dictionary of American
Women in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic- Medical Biography, Westport, CT: Green-
tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press wood Press (1984); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and
(1996); Van der Does, Louise Q., and Rita J. Joy Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary
130
Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl
of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An- murdered. Some of the local people sus-
cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New pected her brother of murdering them for a
York: Routledge (2000). dog sledge. Speculation mounted, and a few
months after the snow had melted, her
brother’s body was also found—shot like
Lopez, Rita Lobato Velho the others. The mystery was partly solved,
1866–19? but Esther could no longer bear to stay in
Alaska. She moved and set up a private
Rita Lopez was the first woman doctor who practice in Portland, Oregon, and commuted
graduated from a medical school in Brazil. to Skagway in order to visit her husband.
She received her degree in 1887 from the When their son was born in 1901, Emil
University of Bahia. moved to Portland as well and set up a
practice. Lovejoy became involved with the
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Portland Board of Health in 1905, becoming
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan the first woman to head such a department
(1957). in 1907. She witnessed numerous child ill-
nesses due to unhealthy school conditions
and contaminated milk. Frederick, her only
Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl child, died in 1908 from what she believed
1870–1967 to be the result of contaminated milk. She
fought and won the battle for advanced san-
Esther Lovejoy was the first woman to head itation standards, and a milk ordinance was
a city health department. She raised the is- eventually passed. Her husband died three
sue of public health in the schools and es- years after she lost her son. In 1913, she mar-
tablished school health inspections, became ried George Lovejoy; they divorced in 1920.
a leader of women in medicine by establish- Much of her later career focused on orga-
ing the Medical Women’s International As- nizational activities in order to promote
sociation, and was instrumental in docu- women as able physicians and to provide
menting numerous medical women’s channels for women to lend aid to those in
events and accomplishments. need. This work led to the establishment of
She was born November 16, 1870, in the American Women’s Hospital Service
Seabeck, Washington. Her parents, Edward (AWH) in 1917, which she helped direct.
and Annie Quinton Clayson, moved around With her organizational skills, fundraising
to make a living. Esther first lived in a log- ability, and tireless effort, the AWH was able
ging camp where her father worked, then in to work in numerous countries in coopera-
a hotel her parents managed, and later on a tion with the Red Cross. She also helped
farm. Her early education was in Seabeck; found the Medical Women’s International
later she had a professor as a tutor. She Association to help women physicians and
worked to earn money for medical school. also soldiers and victims of war, famine,
She attended the University of Oregon and epidemics around the world. She wrote
Medical School and became the second a great deal about women in the medical
woman graduate in 1894. She married Emil field and their contributions.
Pohl, a surgeon, later that year, and did Lovejoy died in New York on August 17,
postgraduate work at the West Side Post 1967.
Graduate School in Chicago, where she
studied obstetrics and gynecology. In 1898, References: Bass, Elizabeth, “Esther Pohl
they went to Alaska, where her brothers Lovejoy, MD,” Journal of the American Med-
lived, to set up practice, and they were in- ical Women’s Association 6, no. 9 (September
strumental in setting up Union Hospital. 1951): 354–355; Burt, Olive Woolley, Physi-
Her brother Fred Clayson mysteriously cian to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy, New
disappeared while she lived there, and two York: J. Messner (1973); Dodds, G. B.,
men he had been traveling with were found “Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,” Dictionary of Ameri-
131
Luisi, Paulina
Luisi, Paulina
1875–1950
References: “Outstanding Uruguayan Wo- and Clifford James Lyon. She grew up in
men,” http://www.correo.com.uy/ filatelia/ various locations in England and graduated
frames/MujeresDestacadas_ingles.htm; from Cambridge with a degree in zoology in
Sapriza, Graciela, “Clivajes de la Memoria: 1946.
Para una Biografía de Paulina Luisi,” in Lyon was fascinated by the emerging
Uruguayos Notables, Montevideo: Fundación field of embryology, an interest that led to
BankBoston (1999). her work in genetics. She studied under
R. A. Fisher and Conrad H. Waddington in
England, receiving both her M.A. and her
Lyon, Mary Frances Ph.D. in 1950. Upon completion of her
1925– Ph.D., Waddington offered her a position at
the Medical Research Council in the United
Mary Lyon is a geneticist who proposed the Kingdom, where she has carried out most of
well-known Lyon hypothesis, which states her work and where she formed her Lyon
that females have two X chromosomes, one hypothesis.
inactivated early in an embryo’s life. This
hypothesis has led to a better understand- References: Grinstein, Louise S., Carol A.
ing of sex-linked diseases and opened the Biermann, and Rose K. Rose, eds., Women in
door to research on numerous genetic issues the Biological Sciences: A Biobibliographic
and hereditary traits. Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
She was born in Norwich, England, on (1997); Parry, Melanie, Chambers Biographical
May 15, 1925, to Louise Frances Kirby Lyon Dictionary, Edinburgh: Chambers (1997).
132
M
Mabie, Catharine Louise Roe ily I had concentrated on them, both in
1872–1963 dissecting them and in Gray’s
Anatomy, so I got off with a good
grade. (Mabie 1952, 21)
Catharine Mabie was an early medical mis-
sionary to the Congo. She battled tuberculo-
Upon her graduation, the Woman’s Bap-
sis, infections, sleeping sickness, and super-
tist Foreign Missionary Society (WBFMS)
stition to become a trusted physician among
appointed her to serve in the Democratic
various tribes.
Republic of the Congo (formerly known as
Born in Rock Island, Illinois, she was de-
the Belgian Congo and later as Zaire) in
termined early on to become a missionary.
1898. She did much of her work at the Banza
She frequented Methodist revivals and was
Manteke Hospital. Mabie was deeply in-
baptized in a Baptist church. When she was
volved in trying to change local attitudes
only ten she ventured out to neighborhoods
toward illness and healing:
in Chicago in an effort to reach troubled
youth with religion. The Congo knows very little about
She received her medical training and de- anatomy, and has no sane notions
gree at Rush Medical College, where, she whatever concerning physiology, hy-
felt, most of her professors were not biased giene, pathology, or therapeutics. With
about women in class. his animistic notions he attributes all
his physical and mental ailments to
Saturday mornings from 8 to 1:30 all spirit interference through an interme-
classes were in surgical clinic. At the diary or to direct interposition. In
opening session several men who dreams his own spirit wanders apart
could not take it were carried out but from the body, and if too rudely awak-
never one of the girls. We girls were a ened may fail to return. To dream of
very small minority and not welcomed the dead gives rise to great anxiety,
by the men students. For the most part and much importance is attached to
our professors were neutral. Our interpretation of dreams. Whenever se-
anatomy professor, however, definitely rious illness occurs, the person be-
did not like having us in his class and witching the patient is sought, and be-
dissecting room. He made a point of fore the white man interfered trial of
trying to make us jittery, asking us to witches was frequent and usually fa-
demonstrate difficult complex combi- tal. Delirium is greatly feared; another
nations of muscular action and reac- spirit than the sufferers is in posses-
tion. One by one he called us into his sion and speaking strange things.
office for oral examinations. One of Epileptic seizures, insanity, and all
mine on the twelve pairs of cranial mental aberrations are diagnosed as
nerves lasted well over an hour. Luck- due to direct spirit possession. Witch-
133
Macklin, Madge Thurlow
doctors and fetishes were their chief bryology. Her early publications, some with
reliance in sickness. (Mabie 1917, 23) her husband, concerned anatomy, but by
1926 she had become very interested in
Mabie died in 1963. medical genetics. She studied heredity in re-
lation to mental retardation and to cancer
References: Anderson, Gerald H., Biograph- and other diseases.
ical Dictionary of Christian Missions, New She utilized data from a Canadian mental
York: Macmillan Reference USA (1998); hospital to validate her belief in eugenics
Franklin, James Henry, Ministers of Mercy, and the consequences of persons with men-
New York: Missionary Education Move- tal illness procreating. She wrote several pa-
ment of the United States and Canada pers on the topic and later became the di-
(1919); Hume, Edward Hicks, Doctors Coura- rector of the Eugenics Society of Canada. At
geous, New York: Harper (1950); Mabie, the same time, she began advocating med-
Catharine Louise Roe, Congo Cameos, ical genetics as a valid part of the curricu-
Philadelphia: Judson Press (1952); Mabie, lum in all medical schools.
Catharine L., Our Work on the Congo: A Book Her views were not well received by
for Mission Study Classes and for General In- some, particularly late in the 1930s and the
formation, Philadelphia: American Baptist 1940s, as the public became aware of
Publication Society (1917), as reproduced in Hitler’s attempts to exterminate the men-
the History of Women Collection, no. 7541.1, tally ill and create an elite race. Because of
New Haven, CT: Research Publications her views, she lost her position at the Uni-
(1976). versity of Western Ontario in 1945.
In 1946 she obtained a position as a cancer
researcher at Ohio State University, the first
Macklin, Madge Thurlow medical school to have a medical genetics
1893–1962 course. Her research there focused on
heredity and breast cancer. Her husband re-
Madge Macklin was a leading genetics re- mained at the University of Western On-
searcher of the early twentieth century. She tario, and she commuted back and forth for
advocated tirelessly for the inclusion of a many years. They had three daughters.
curriculum that included medical genetics at Macklin died in Toronto on March 14,
all medical schools. She also wrote vocifer- 1962.
ously on eugenics and the repercussions of a
decline in the offspring of the intellectually References: Rechnitzer, Peter A., “Macklin,
fit. She was a controversial spokesperson for Madge Thurlow,” American National Biogra-
sterilization of the mentally ill. phy, vol. 14, New York: Oxford University
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Press (1999); Shearer, Benjamin S., and Bar-
February 6, 1893, to Margaret De Grofft and bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sci-
William Harrison Thurlow, she attended ences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
Goucher College in Baltimore and received (1996).
an A.B. degree in 1914. She was briefly an
outspoken suffragist before going to Johns
Hopkins Medical School and receiving her Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean
medical degree in 1919. While in medical 1899–1968
school she met Charles Macklin, a Canadian
anatomist. They married in 1918. Jean Macnamara was an Australian scientist
Both Macklin and her husband went to who did research on polio, helping to dis-
the University of Western Ontario in Lon- cover that there was more than one strain of
don, Canada, in 1921 when Charles was of- the polio virus. In an unrelated interest, she
fered a position as head of the Department was also instrumental in lobbying for use of
of History and Embryology. Madge worked the controversial virus myxomatosis to con-
for low pay teaching both histology and em- trol Australia’s rabbit population.
134
Mahoney, Mary Eliza
Born in Beechworth, Victoria, on April 1, organizing black nurses and pursuing equal
1899, she gained a medical education from opportunities for black women interested in
Melbourne University, graduating in 1922 nursing as a profession. She was central to
and becoming one of the first female resi- the success of the National Association of
dents at Melbourne Hospital. Several Mel- Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN).
bourne hospitals had for years refused to Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on
take on women, blaming their lack of toilets; May 7, 1845, she was the daughter of
Melbourne Hospital installed toilets. Charles Mahoney and Mary Jane Stewart
Jean encountered many polio victims and Mahoney. She had one brother, Frank, and
worked to alleviate the crippling effects of two sisters, Ellen and Louise. Louise died at
infantile paralysis with traditional methods an early age.
that sometimes were at odds with the ex- For a time she attended the Phillips Street
perimental treatments of Elizabeth Kenny. School in Boston. She worked for several
In the poliomyelitis epidemic of 1925 she in- families as a private nurse before she en-
troduced a serum with limited success. She tered the School of Nursing at the New En-
then traveled to the United States and gland Hospital for Women and Children.
Canada to do further research. Back in Aus- She did well and received her diploma on
tralia she worked with Sir Macfarlane Bur- August 1, 1879. Linda Richards had re-
net, and together they discovered there was ceived her diploma in 1873, becoming the
more than one strain of the polio virus. This first professional nurse in the United States.
discovery would eventually help in the de- Like most black nurses of her era, Ma-
velopment of the Salk vaccine. She also is re- honey entered private-duty nursing be-
sponsible for introducing the first artificial cause most hospitals would not hire black
respirator in Australia. nurses. She realized early on that black
She married Ivan Connor, a dermatolo- nurses must organize in order to have a
gist, in 1934, and they had two daughters, voice in nursing affairs. She was able to be-
Joan and Merran. She traveled throughout come a member of the Nurses Associated
Europe, the United States, Australia, New Alumnae (later the American Nurses Asso-
Zealand, and Canada to speak about myxo- ciation); however, she realized many other
matosis to control rabbits and also about po- blacks could not become members because
lio treatments. She passed away on October a requirement for joining that organization
13, 1968. was membership in their state nursing asso-
ciations, which were often closed to blacks.
See also: Kenny, Elizabeth She was a gifted speaker, welcoming all to
References: Crystal, David, The Cambridge the first convention of the NACGN in 1908,
Biographical Encyclopedia, Cambridge: Cam- and a good organizer. She remained active
bridge University Press (1998); Muir, Hazel, in the NACGN all her life. In 1911 she be-
Larousse Dictionary of Scientists, Edinburgh: came the supervisor at the Howard Orphan
Larousse (1994); Sherratt, Tim, “No Stand- Asylum for Black Children, located on Long
ing Back: Dame Jean Macnamara,” Aus- Island in Kings Park. She worked until 1922,
tralasian Science 13, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 64; when she retired.
Zwar, Desmond, The Dame: The Life and Mahoney never married. She died of pro-
Times of Dame Jean Macnamara, Medical Pio- gressive breast cancer on January 4, 1926.
neer, South Melbourne: Macmillan (1984). She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in
Everett, Massachusetts. Her grave was un-
covered and restored during a ceremony on
Mahoney, Mary Eliza August 15, 1973, and a monument was
1845–1926 placed at the gravesite. She was inducted
into the Nursing Hall of Fame in 1976, and
Mary Mahoney was the first black profes- an award is still given in her name to honor
sional nurse in the United States. She was a nurses who have made significant contribu-
leader in nursing and was instrumental in tions to the field.
135
Malahlele, Mary Susan
136
McClintock, Barbara
She rose to become the deputy assistant sec- away in the Army Medical Corps, and her
retary for health within the U.S. Department mother refused. When her father returned,
of Health and Human Services. he allowed her to enroll in Cornell’s College
Manley has encouraged women and mi- of Agriculture. She graduated in 1923 after
norities to go into education and careers in having already done graduate work and
the sciences. She is currently the president stayed on at Cornell to earn an M.S. in 1925
of Spelman College. and a Ph.D. in 1927. She majored in cytology
and minored in genetics and zoology.
References: Manley, Albert E., A Legacy Con- Barbara’s mother was worried she would
tinues: The Manley Years at Spelman College, never marry and become a professor in-
1953–1976, Lanham, MD: University Press stead. McClintock felt marriage would be a
of America (1995); “Manley, Audrey mistake because she was such a dominant
Forbes,” Who’s Who of American Women, 22d person, and she never wed.
ed., New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who’s McClintock worked long hours while at
Who (2000). Cornell and later at the University of Mis-
souri. Before she obtained her Ph.D., she
“developed a method of studying individual
McClintock, Barbara chromosomes of Indian corn (maize) under a
1902–1992 microscope. This discovery allowed concur-
rent study of the chromosomes and the phys-
Barbara McClintock received the 1983 Nobel ical traits of maize” (Shampo and Kyle 1995,
Prize in physiology or medicine for discov- 448). McClintock published on the genetics
ering that genes could move from one place of corn in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
to another on plants, thus changing future While at the University of Missouri she
generations. Although researchers had long discovered that after X rays break chromo-
believed the “jumping genes” theory, there somes, the chromosomes repair themselves,
was no hard evidence of the phenomenon sometimes fusing together in rings. This
until McClintock proved it to be true. discovery came well before the study of
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June DNA in the 1950s, at which time some sci-
16, 1902, McClintock was the third of three entists were observing the damage-and-
daughters of Sara Handy and Dr. Thomas repair process and others still believed that
Henry McClintock. She always had a dis- chromosomes were stable. McClintock re-
tant relationship with her mother, who had ceived a Guggenheim Fellowship and used
wanted a boy when Barbara was born and, it to visit Germany in 1933. She was so dis-
with the son born after Barbara, had four tressed to find the scientific community in
small children to raise. When Barbara was disarray as a result of Hitler’s ridding the
young, her mother sent her to spend a lot of universities of the Jews that she immedi-
time with an aunt and uncle in rural Massa- ately returned to Cornell. With the depres-
chusetts, where she enjoyed collecting in- sion on, she was able to secure two years at
sects and studying them, fixing machinery, Cornell only with the help of the Rockefeller
and going about with her uncle, who sold Foundation.
fish. Her father raised his daughters no dif- Unable to obtain a full-time faculty posi-
ferently than he did his son. Both parents tion at Cornell because of her gender, she
supported Barbara’s activities even when took a faculty position, her first, at the Uni-
they differed from the norm. She was an in- versity of Missouri in 1936. She was uncon-
dependent child who spent a lot of time out- ventional (she did not wear dresses, did not
doors and alone. work well in organized settings, and did not
Barbara did well in school and loved sci- like to teach as well as she liked doing re-
ence and math at Erasmus Hall High School search), and did not last long there. In 1942,
in Brooklyn, New York. When she was she obtained a position with the Carnegie
ready for college, she told her mother she Foundation working at Cold Spring Harbor,
wanted to go to Cornell. Her father was an environment that suited her tempera-
137
McGee, Anita Newcomb
138
Medical College of Pennsylvania
olution (DAR). She also wrote articles for an References: McGee, Anita Newcomb, The
encyclopedia, was active in politics, and Nurse Corps of the Army, Carlisle, PA: Associ-
had an interest in science. In 1888 she mar- ation of Military Surgeons (1902), reprinted
ried William John McGee; they had three in History of Women Collection, no. 10001, New
children. She decided to attend medical Haven, CT: Research Publications (1977);
school the year after her marriage and en- Reeves, Connie L., “McGee, Anita New-
rolled at Columbian College (now called comb,” American National Biography, vol. 15,
George Washington University). New York: Oxford University Press (1999).
During her last year, the college decided
to refuse admittance to future female appli-
cants. She fought this decision but to no McKinnon, Emily H. S.
avail; women were not admitted after she 1873–1968
graduated. She went on to intern at the
Washington, D.C., Women’s Clinic and later Emily McKinnon was the first female to be-
opened a private practice. Following the come a physician in New Zealand. She
death of her son in 1895, she joined the staff graduated from the University of Otago in
of the Women’s Dispensary. 1896. More information on her life is at the
War with Spain seemed inevitable in Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.
1898, and McGee used her influence to per-
suade the army to allow the DAR to assist in References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
placing trained nurses in the military and Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
setting criteria for nurses’ qualifications. (1957).
However, her work with organizing nurses
put her in a negative light with the Red
Cross, which felt slighted when it was not
selected to be in charge of military nurses.
Medical Act of 1858
McGee was instrumental following the
The British Parliament passed the Medical
war in drafting legislation to form the
Act of 1858 to restrict the medical profession
Nurse Corps as a part of the Army Medical
to those who were perceived to be qualified.
Corps. She was determined to see nurses as
The law excluded women from British med-
part of both the Army Medical Corps and
ical schools. The act was overturned by the
the reserves. “In addition to this permanent
Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, which
force, definite provision should be made for
gave women the same rights as men to enter
war reserves. The Army and National
medical schools and earn their M.D. degrees.
Guard will supply corps men for the ardu-
ous field service, but they cannot maintain a
See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa; Russell
large enough corps to fill the needs of war
Gurney Enabling Act of 1876
emergency, with its large Army and large
References: Waddington, Ivan, The Medical
percentage of sick, and neither can they turn
Profession in the Industrial Revolution, Dublin:
recruits into competent nurses in a few
Gill and Macmillan (1984).
weeks” (McGee 1977, 6).
She was active in the Russo-Japanese War,
training nurses and inspecting hospitals
overseas. She believed that nurses deserved Medical College
a higher professional status and that the of Pennsylvania
military deserved nurses as well qualified 1850–
as those who served civilians.
Her husband died in 1912, and she spent The Medical College of Pennsylvania was
time with her children and lecturing on var- originally founded by Quakers in Philadel-
ious health topics. She died on October 5, phia in 1850 as the Female Medical College
1940, and was buried with honors at Arling- of Pennsylvania. In 1867, it became known
ton National Cemetery. as the Women’s Medical College of Pennsyl-
139
Medical Women’s International Association
vania. In 1969, it became coeducational. Medical Women’s Association and their for-
During the 1920s and 1930s it was the only eign guests in October 1919, was the first or-
medical college for women that survived. ganization to unify women physicians
Struggling financially at times, it stayed a worldwide. The Medical Women’s Federa-
course that would ensure a permanent place tion of Great Britain was the only other
in Philadelphia history and in the history of large association in existence at the time; it
women in medicine around the world. was organized in 1917.
The association grew out of a recognized
References: Peitzman, Steven J., A New and need for international cooperation on health
Untried Course: Women’s Medical College and care and medical education for women.
Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850–1998, Women health care workers had been over-
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University whelmed during World War I by the condi-
Press (2000). tions in some countries, especially regard-
ing the health of women and children and
general nutrition. The war opened the
Medical Women’s world’s eyes to the needs of the underde-
veloped countries.
International Association Today the MWIA has over 20,000 mem-
(MWIA) bers in seventy countries. The majority of
1919– members are from affiliated national associ-
ations; a small number of members are indi-
The Medical Women’s International Associ- vidual women who come from countries
ation, created by members of the American that do not have a national association.
140
Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed
They continue to strive for equal opportuni- ances satisfied her need to be challenged
ties in medical education for women, to dis- mentally that went all the way back to the
seminate information on various health is- days when she had been tutored by Anna
sues, and to attempt to overcome gender Gunning. It incorporated her love of biol-
discrimination in the medical field. ogy that she had discovered at Smith and al-
The MWIA has maintained an affiliation lowed her to escape from the social pres-
with the World Health Organization (WHO) sures placed on her while she was at home”
since 1954 and has recently collaborated (Halamay 2000, 54).
with WHO on women’s health, AIDS, and Her mother had not managed the fi-
immunization. It has also worked with nances of the family well enough to support
UNESCO and other national and interna- her well in college, and she became more in-
tional agencies in providing information on terested in a career. After her sojourn at
various health care issues. MWIA’s home Johns Hopkins, where she discovered the
office is in Dortmund, Germany. Reed-Sternberg cells, she worked for four
years at Babies Hospital in New York under
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Dr. Emmett Holt.
Physicians and Surgeons: National and Interna- She married Charles Elwood Mendenhall
tional Organizations, Livingston, NY: Liv- in 1906, and they had four children. The first
ingston Press (1939), http://www.who.int/ died in childbirth, and this tragedy affected
ina-ngo/ngo/ngo143.htm. Mendenhall for the rest of her life. She
blamed the death on poor obstetrical care
and afterward worked on exploring the
Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed problems of infant mortality and the impor-
1874–1964 tance of nutrition. She became an active
public health physician, working for the
Dorothy Mendenhall was a physician who U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Chil-
helped discover the cells important for the dren’s Bureau, and the Wisconsin State
diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease. Both she, an Board of Health.
American, and Carl Sternberg, from Aus- Mendenhall was a rarity in her time. For
tria, gave the most thorough descriptions of the most part, a woman either had a career
the cells (Sternberg in 1898 and Mendenhall or had a husband and children. “Dorothy
in 1902), now called Reed-Sternberg cells. Reed Mendenhall represented a third type
Mendenhall was born on September 22, that is not present in the usual depiction of
1874, in Columbus, Ohio. Her parents were early twentieth century women. She was a
William Pratt Reed and Grace Kimball. The professional woman who married and had
family had a certain amount of financial se- children, and who managed to pursue a ca-
curity even though her father, a shoe manu- reer after her marriage. A study of her life al-
facturer, passed away when she was a child. lows us to see that some women did exist
She was able to obtain a good education during the late nineteenth and early twenti-
at home. eth centuries who, even in the face of vehe-
She went to Smith College in Northamp- ment opposition, used innovation and inge-
ton, Massachusetts, in 1891. She became in- nuity to carve out new lives and, in so doing,
terested in biology and discovered that a found fulfillment” (Halamay 2000, 137).
medical career was possible through Johns Mendenhall published several reports
Hopkins. She obtained her degree from about children’s health and childbirth is-
Smith and then went to the Massachusetts sues and remained active until her retire-
Institute of Technology to better her under- ment. She died in Chester, Connecticut, on
standing of chemistry. She also began a cor- July 31, 1964.
respondence with Dr. William Welch of
Johns Hopkins and later enrolled. One of References: Halamay, Kate Elizabeth, “‘I
her classmates was Florence Sabin. “The Like Everything about Medicine, Ex-
study of medicine itself and its many nu- cept . . .’: Dorothy Reed Mendenhall and the
141
Mendoza-Gauzon, Marie Paz
Issues Confronting Women Physicians in compete with men for a position at the Cook
the Early Twentieth Century,” Ph.D. disser- County Insane Asylum. She did well, but the
tation, Smith College (2000); Mauch, Peter hospital board prevented her from taking the
M., et al., Hodgkin’s Disease, Philadelphia: position. She then chose to do postgraduate
Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins (1999); work in Zurich, Switzerland.
Morantz-Sanchez, Regina, “Mendenhall, She later became an assistant in Chicago
Dorothy Reed,” American National Biogra- to William H. Byford, a gynecologist. The
phy, vol. 15, New York: Oxford University following year she gained a position at the
Press (1999). Women’s Medical College and gradually
rose to become its dean. She also worked at
Cook County Hospital, the Women’s Hospi-
Mendoza-Gauzon, Marie Paz tal of Chicago, Wesley Hospital, and the
18?–19? Chicago Hospital for Women and Children.
Mergler died in Los Angeles, California, on
Marie Mendoza-Gauzon was the first fe- May 17, 1901.
male physician of the Philippines. She grad-
uated from the College of Medicine at the References: Fine, Eva, “Mergler, Marie
University of the Philippines in 1912 and Josepha,” American National Biography, vol.
married Dr. P. Gauzon, who was head of 15, New York: Oxford University Press
Philippine General Hospital’s Department (1999); Southgate, M. Therese, “Women in
of Surgery. She served as a professor of Medicine II,” in John Walton, Paul B. Bee-
pathology at the university. son, and Ronald Bodley Scott, eds., The Ox-
ford Companion to Medicine, Oxford: Oxford
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women University Press (1986).
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
(1957).
Miller, Jean Baker
1927–
Mergler, Marie Josepha
1851–1901 A pioneering psychiatrist, Jean Miller broke
new ground in understanding women and
Marie Mergler was an early gynecological their psychological needs with the publica-
surgeon who became dean of the Women’s tion in 1976 of Toward a New Psychology of
Medical College of Chicago in 1899. Her ex- Women. She continues her work today at the
ample and teaching influenced a number of Jean Baker Miller Institute at Wellesley Col-
women pursuing medical careers in the late lege in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
nineteenth century. She was well-known She was born in New York City on Sep-
and respected among the male physicians of tember 29, 1927. She graduated from Sarah
her day. She was born in Mainstockheim, Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York,
Bavaria. Her family moved to Illinois when in 1948 with a B.A. and then went to Co-
she was a child. Her mother was Henrietta lumbia University, where she obtained her
von Ritterhausen and her father, a physi- M.D. in 1952. She was an intern and later a
cian, was Francis R. Mergler. resident at Montefiore Hospital and then
She gained an education from her father studied and was a resident in psychiatry at
during her childhood and eventually helped Bellevue Medical Center. Miller expressed
him in his medical work. She trained for a some of the feelings that prompted her to
teaching career, however, because of the nu- write her first book:
merous obstacles facing women who wanted
a medical career. She taught high school for a Well, for years I was practicing psy-
time before deciding to enter the Women’s chotherapy, and also teaching psychia-
Medical College of Chicago in 1877. She try, and it seemed to me that some-
graduated with honors and was allowed to thing was fundamentally wrong with
142
Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa
the formulations about women, which References: Antler, Joyce, “Book Review: To-
were based upon traditional psychoan- ward a New Psychology of Women,” Social Pol-
alytic theories. I thought that they icy 18, no. 3 (Winter 1988): 63–64; Bowman,
were wrong, but I didn’t have a frame- John S., The Cambridge Dictionary of American
work for an alternate way of thinking. Biography, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Uni-
Also, in addition to thinking that these versity Press (1995); Kester-Shelton, Pamela,
formulations were wrong, I always felt ed., Feminist Writers, Detroit: St. James Press
that the women whom I was seeing in (1996); Miller, Jean Baker, Toward a New Psy-
my practice had a lot of strengths. chology of Women, Boston: Beacon Press
These capabilities, such as making re- (1976); Miller, Jean Baker, and Irene Pierce
lationships and knowing how to do Stiver, The Healing Connection: How Women
that, or helping the whole family sur- Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life,
vive and flourish a little, were extraor- Boston: Beacon Press (1997); Welch, Amy S.,
dinarily valuable. However, in our cul- “Learning from Women,” Women and Therapy
ture, the women themselves could 17, nos. 3–4 (1995): 335–346.
never really perceive them as being
strengths, and so these strengths did
not help them anywhere near as much Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa
as they should. (Welch 1995, 336–337) 1876–1952
Toward a New Psychology of Women reexam- Lillie Minoka-Hill was the second Native
ined women’s roles as workers, mothers, and American woman to become a physician.
wives, as well as women’s strengths. She She served the Oneida community in Wis-
says that these strengths derive in part from consin for many years.
women’s subservient roles throughout his- She was born August 30, 1876, on the St.
tory and that they can be used toward be- Regis Reservation in New York. Her mother
coming proactive participants rather than was a Mohawk and her father was Joshua
passive victims. Her book “has had a pro- Allen, a physician. She received an educa-
found impact on the development of psycho- tion at Grahame Institute in Philadelphia
logical theory and practice concerning gen- before attending the Women’s Medical Col-
der roles. The book has helped to deconstruct lege of Pennsylvania, obtaining her medical
and reconstruct the questions and methods degree in 1899. She interned at the Women’s
of psychological research and has played a Hospital in Philadelphia and then had a pri-
major role in the development of new psy- vate practice.
chology, not only of women but of human She married Charles Abram Hill in 1905
behavior generally” (Antler 1988, 63). and had six children. They moved to
Miller has been a professor or lecturer at Oneida, Wisconsin, where Minoka-Hill
many institutions with long stays at the Up- maintained an informal practice for many
state Medical Center at the State University decades. After the death of her husband in
of New York, Albert Einstein College of Med- 1916, she had to work harder as a physician,
icine, Harvard Medical School, Wellesley attending to friends, relatives, and neigh-
College, and Boston University School of bors and taking whatever they could afford
Medicine. Miller currently is the director of to pay. In 1934 she took the state medical
the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute in exam and passed it, allowing her to receive
Wellesley, Massachusetts, and clinical profes- government reimbursement for some of her
sor of psychiatry at Boston University School desperately needed services.
of Medicine. She is married and has two chil- Minoka-Hill had a great deal of respect
dren. She has continued her writing and has for traditional Indian medicinal cures but
emphasized that “studying women’s lives of- also used Western medications and health
fers us a crucial key to thinking about socie- care practices to further the welfare of the
tal transformation—and that this transforma- people she served. She passed away on
tion is essential” (Miller and Stiver 1997, 62). March 18, 1952, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
143
Mission Work
References: Apple, R. D., “Minoka-Hill, Lil- Mission work had gone on for centuries
lie Rosa,” Dictionary of American Medical Biog- in large part due to the Catholic Church. At
raphy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1984); the close of the eighteenth century, however,
Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth, “Minoka-Hill, Lillie Catholic missions were somewhat at a
Rosa,” American National Biography, vol. 15, standstill for various reasons. In the six-
New York: Oxford University Press (1999); teenth through the eighteenth centuries,
Thomas, David Hurst, Betty Ballantine, and there was some movement on the part of
Ian Ballantine, The Native Americans: An Illus- Protestants as well. “Zealous Protestant
trated History, Atlanta: Turner (1993). missionaries, fueled by the Pietist move-
ment of continental Europe and the evan-
gelical awakenings in England and North
Mission Work America, had established pockets of believ-
ers in the coastlands of Asia, India, Africa,
Church missions provided women in the and the Middle East. These areas already
medical field with another professional op- were occupied by significant communities
portunity. As the twentieth century ap- of Roman and Orthodox Catholics” (Terry,
proached, there were still few professions Smith, and Anderson 1998, 199).
open to women. Nursing and teaching were In Canton, China, Protestant medical mis-
the most common, with physician work a sionary work was well under way before
possibility for a small number of women 1850. The Canton Hospital, which opened
who had the tenacity to gain admission to a in 1835, was China’s first Western medical
medical school and the endurance to gradu- establishment. By 1879 local Cantonese
ate and become licensed. The women’s women were taking classes at the nearby
movement fueled the fight late in the nine- Canton Medical Missionary Hospital. The
teenth century, and the various religions goals of the missions were varied, but in
proved a good ally because they were begin- Canton the church was open to educating
ning to see the need for female medical mis- the local females in medical care as well as
sionaries about the same time. Thus there having able female physicians treat native
was finally another route for women to take females.
if they had a medical degree but could not When a rift between two of the head
find employment. This opportunity also physicians split loyalties there in 1899, the
convinced some schools that educating women were left out. This prompted Mary
women in the medical field had real merit. Fulton to work to establish an educational
Church leaders had early on perceived setting for the local women. In 1902 it took
the need to spread Christianity to foreign the name Hackett Medical College due to
lands. By the 1800s, the push was coming a donation from Mr. E.A.K. Hackett of
from Europe and the United States. In the Indiana.
1880s the American Medical Missionary So- In Persia the Church Missionary Society
ciety (AMMS) published a pamphlet, A of the Church of England realized early on
Great Field for Women, in which the society that offering medical treatment was the best
urged women to become medical mission- means of establishing a relationship with
aries. Realizing that some cultures forbade Iranian women. “During the period be-
women to seek out male physicians for ad- tween 1891 and 1934 many women worked
vice, they turned to women for help. “These as missionary nurses and doctors in Iran”
millions of women cannot be reached by (Ward and Stanley 2000, 97). The fact that
male missionaries. The doors are shut and Iranian women could not consult males for
locked against such. Nor can Christian medical treatment gave early impetus to
women, ordinarily, gain entrance to them. promoting medical education for women.
But the female Medical Missionary is able to “Female workers were necessary in order to
do it, for her professional acquisition is a gain easier access to Iranian women who
key. She can unlock the doors and secure for lived largely in seclusion. As the number of
herself a welcome” (AMMS 1977). women missionaries began to increase, the
144
Mission Work
tasks they carried out were divided into the nineteenth century unfolded. At the be-
three distinct categories: education, medi- ginning of the twentieth century, the mis-
cine, and evangelism” (Ward and Stanley sionary movement was well aware of the
2000, 96). Physician Emmeline Stuart ar- growing need for women with physician
rived in 1897 and very effectively oversaw credentials. Many women left their own
the female medical staff in Persia, where the countries to serve as medical missionaries;
society opened hospitals and set some stan- others stayed home to serve the under-
dards for the future. served populations in the countries where
Ida Scudder made enormous headway in they lived.
India when she opened a school for nursing
in 1909 in Vellore in southern India; the Vel- See also: Fulton, Mary Hannah; Guang-
lore Medical College followed in 1918. Both zhou, China; Scudder, Ida Sophia; Whately,
were extremely successful at training Indian Mary Louisa
women to become nurses and physicians. References: American Medical Missionary
Missionaries like Scudder who found them- Society (AMMS), A Great Field for Women,
selves in rural areas and had to work with Chicago: American Medical Missionary So-
local governments to get things done had to ciety (1880?), reprinted in History of Women,
be accomplished in diplomacy as well as reel 939, no. 8277, Woodbridge, CT: Re-
health care. In 1950 the Vellore Medical Col- search Publications (1977); Drake, Fred W.,
lege began accepting male students and be- Ruth V. Hemenway, MD: A Memoir of Revolu-
came affiliated with Madras University. tionary China, 1924–1941, Amherst: Univer-
In Egypt, Mary Louisa Whately estab- sity of Massachusetts Press (1977); Fleming,
lished a medical mission after establishing Leslie A., Women’s Work for Women: Mission-
two schools for Muslim children. In Africa, aries and Social Change in Asia, Boulder, CO:
David Livingstone’s explorations of the Westview Press (1989); Jeffrey, Mary
continent and medical missionary work Pauline, Dr. Ida: India; The Life Story of Ida S.
greatly aided all missionaries. The large Scudder, New York: Fleming H. Revell
growth in African missions was due in large (1938); Jordan, Louis Garnett, Up the Ladder
part to the desire of African Americans re- in Foreign Missions, Nashville, TN: National
cently freed during the American Civil War Baptist Publishing Board (1903); Laurie,
to reach out to their ancestors in Africa. An- Rev. Thomas, Women and the Gospel in Per-
other factor that helped within the mission sia, New York: Fleming H. Revell (1887);
community as a whole was the formation of Rubinstein, Murray A., The Origins of the
several women’s missionary groups. Before Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in
they became active, most church donations China, 1807–1840, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
for evangelical work in foreign fields were Press (1996); Terry, John Mark, Ebbie Smith,
designated for preaching. Pastors’ wives and Justice Anderson, Missiology: An Intro-
worked in health care, but few single duction to the Foundations, History, and
women had substantial support. “Before the Strategies of World Missions, Nashville, TN:
formation of these women’s organizations, Broadman and Holman (1998); Tucker, Sara
mission funds had been collected by minis- W., “Opportunities for Women: The Devel-
ters and other church leaders, most of opment of Professional Women’s Medicine
whom emphasized parish work or home at Canton, China, 1879–1901,” Women’s
missions to the Indians or freedmen. What Studies International Forum 13, no. 4 (1990):
money was spent on foreign missions was 357–368; Ward, Kevin, and Brian Stanley,
under the control of exclusively male for- The Church Mission Society and World Chris-
eign mission boards that were uniformly tianity, 1799–1999, Grand Rapids, MI:
uneasy about the radical new idea of send- William B. Eerdmans (2000); Whately, Eliz-
ing independent, unmarried women out abeth Jane, The Life and Work of Mary Louisa
into the mission field” (Tucker 1990, 363). Whately, London: Religious Tract Society
Hospitals grew in number in India, (1890).
China, Africa, Japan, and the Middle East as
145
Montoya, Matilde
146
N
Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal In 1994 Neufeld received the National
1928– Medal of Science. Currently she is chair of
the Biological Chemistry Department at
An authority on genetic diseases, Elizabeth UCLA’s School of Medicine. She married in
Neufeld became the first female to head a 1951 and has two children. Her research on
department at UCLA’s School of Medicine. rare diseases has prompted others in the
Her major contributions have been in re- medical community to find cures for MPS
search on inherited disorders such as Hurler disorders. She continues to teach and do
and Sanfilippo syndromes. research.
She was born in Paris, France, on Septem-
References: American Men and Women of Sci-
ber 27, 1928, to Jacques and Elvira Fondal,
ence, 20th ed., vol. 5, New York: Bowker
Russian refugees. The family moved to New
(1998); Grinstein, Louise S., Carol A. Bier-
York while she was still a child, and she at-
mann, and Rose K. Rose, Women in the Bio-
tended a New York high school before go-
logical Sciences: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook,
ing on to Queens College and obtaining a
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1997);
B.S. degree in 1948. She later worked in Bar
Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,
Harbor, Maine, at the Jackson Memorial
Notable Women in the Life Sciences, Westport,
Laboratory and decided on graduate study
CT: Greenwood Press (1996).
at the University of Rochester.
She later moved to Baltimore and briefly
worked at the McCollum-Pratt Institute of
Johns Hopkins University before entering New England Female
the University of California, Berkeley, to Medical College
study for her Ph.D. in 1952. She received her 1848–1874
doctorate in comparative biochemistry in
1956. The New England Female Medical College
She worked as a biochemist for the Na- was founded in Boston in 1848 by Samuel
tional Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Gregory, who initiated the effort to provide
Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1963 this educational institute for women because
to 1973. It is associated with the National In- he believed that male midwives and physi-
stitutes of Health (NIH). She worked in var- cians were offensive to women in labor.
ious other positions at NIH, focusing on re- Because Gregory had limited funds, he
search in genetic diseases. Her work began by organizing a class with two male
involved the study of arthritis, metabolism, physicians teaching twelve women. Most
diabetes, and kidney diseases as well as rare of these women were preparing to become
disorders such as Hurler syndrome, Sanfil- midwives. Because of initial difficulties
ippo syndrome, and other mucopolysaccha- regarding the new institution’s charter, for
ride (MPS) disorders. a time the college collaborated with fac-
147
New England Hospital
148
Nightingale, Florence
149
Nightingale, Florence
150
Nightingale, Florence
candlesticks.’ In addition to the mis- She had set up a kitchen and laundry and
eries entailed by overcrowding, the sanitation guidelines. She would later teach
men lying on the floors of the corri- that organization and management have a
dors were tormented by vermin and huge role in nursing care: “All the results of
their limbs attacked by rats as they lay good nursing, as detailed in these notes,
helpless in their pain. (Tooley 1914, may be spoiled or utterly negatived by one
126–127) defect, viz.: in petty management, or in
other words, by not knowing how to man-
The medical men already there felt the age that what you do when you are there,
women would be more of a hindrance than shall be done when you are not there”
a help. Less than a day later the wounded (Nightingale 1975, 35).
soldiers from the Battle of Inkerman began On May 2, 1855, Nightingale left Scutari,
arriving, overwhelming a staff that had not Turkey, and set sail for the Crimea and Bala-
had the time to clean and organize. In the clava. It was her duty as superintendent to
crowded conditions, the wounded were inspect all hospitals, and she was anxious to
placed in the mud outside the hospital. see how the wounded in other hospitals
Nightingale set about tending the were faring. She was by now a household
wounded and assigning tasks to everyone word in England, and in the Crimea, sol-
who could help, including untrained, diers had heard about her work at Scutari.
wounded soldiers. Some got drunk on the She inspected some hospitals but then sud-
brandy that was for the patients. Many of denly became ill. Word spread quickly that
the men were dragged to the “dead house” she was dying; even the press in England re-
while they were still alive. ported this. However, she recovered enough
Nightingale saw, however, that it was not to decide to stay on in her war duties.
so much the incompetence of those tending On September 9, 1855, Sebastopol fell,
the sick that led to the state of general de- and the Russians retreated. With the end of
spair but the lack of organization. She began the war, Nightingale remained with the re-
organizing the staff, securing medical sup- maining wounded who needed treatment.
plies, and instituting a regimen to ensure Nightingale’s detailed notes and letters on
sanitary conditions. Later in her famous conditions in the field led to many reforms
Notes on Nursing, she would again stress or- as time went on and benefited many future
ganization and cleanliness. If a nurse “al- soldiers in Britain and around the world.
low[s] her sick to remain unwashed, or their
clothing to remain on them after being satu- Florence Nightingale knew how to get
rated with perspiration or other excretion, results. Against the backdrop of the
she is interfering injuriously with the natural Victorian era, when most women of
processes of health just as effectually as if she high birth were relegated to the draw-
were to give the patient a dose of slow poi- ing room, she changed the face of
son by the mouth” (Nightingale 1975, 93). health care forever. She championed
The doctors chose their surgical patients sanitary practices, such as hand wash-
based on their chances of survival, separat- ing and improving sanitation in health
ing those patients they felt would die. Many care institutions. She launched social
of the latter survived under Nightingale’s and health care reforms in England
care. She made her rounds at night carrying and abroad. She performed statisti-
a little lamp, and many later referred to her cally based research and used innova-
as the Lady with the Lamp. tive pie chart diagrams to illustrate her
By 1855, the hospital at Scutari was func- data. (“Tracing Nightingale’s Steps”
tioning well. Nightingale’s parents had 2001, 44)
given some financial help, Nightingale had
used her own monies, and the British gov- Upon returning to England, Nightingale
ernment was forthcoming with supplies was “haunted by the memories of the thou-
once she had explained the hospital’s needs. sands of soldiers who had died because of
151
Novello, Antonia Coello
the glaring deficiencies and unpreparedness Shipman, A Lost Commander: Florence Night-
of the army’s Medical Department. Of the ingale, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran
97,800 soldiers who had fought in the (1929); Baly, Monica E., Florence Nightingale
Crimean War, 4,500 had died of battle- and the Nursing Legacy, London: Croom
related causes, but nearly four times as Helm (1986); Cook, Sir Edward, The Life of
many—17,600—had died of disease and ex- Florence Nightingale, London: Macmillan
posure” (Dossey 2000, 186). (1925); Dossey, Barbara Montgomery, Flo-
Following the Crimea, she turned her at- rence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer,
tention to India. After the Sepoy Rebellion, Springhouse, PA: Springhouse (2000);
there were many reports of unsanitary con- Nightingale, Florence, Notes on Nursing:
ditions in India, and British soldiers were What It Is, and What It Is Not, New York: D.
again subject to poor medical care in the Appleton (1860), reprinted in History of
field. From her home, Nightingale gathered Women, reel 343, no. 2366, New Haven, CT:
statistics for reports to the government. In a Research Publications (1975); Snodgrass,
short time, her reports led to a reduction in Ellen, Historical Dictionary of Nursing, Santa
the mortality rate of the wounded. Eventu- Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999); Tooley,
ally her efforts aided in the establishment of Sarah A., The Life of Florence Nightingale,
a sanitary department with great authority London: Cassell (1914); “Tracing Nightin-
in India. gale’s Steps,” Nursing 31, no. 1 (January
In 1860 the Nightingale Home and Train- 2001): 44; Woodham-Smith, Cecil, Florence
ing School opened as part of St. Thomas’s Nightingale, 1820–1910, London: Constable
Hospital. It had been one of Nightingale’s (1950).
goals from the beginning to provide better
training for nurses that included setting
fractures, preparing medications, and basic Novello, Antonia Coello
chemistry as well as instilling a profession- 1944–
alism that had been lacking in the field of
nursing. Her training facility did not grow Antonia Novello was the first woman to be-
quickly, but her methods rapidly caught on come the surgeon general of the United
in Australia, Canada, and the United States, States. She was also the first Hispanic to
and over the years nursing schools were serve in that capacity. Her focus on AIDS
built around her teachings. awareness, injury prevention in children,
Often ill, some believe from a fever she and health care for minorities contributed to
had contracted in the Crimea, Nightingale public awareness of the challenges to come.
continued to plan and write from her home. Born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, on August
She proposed many changes that eventually 23, 1944, she was the eldest of the three chil-
became a reality, for example separate facil- dren of Antonio Coello and Ana Delia
ities for the insane, children, and those with Coello. She was born with an abnormally
infectious diseases. Many of her initiatives large colon that malfunctioned until she
are now protocols in hospitals, nursing was eighteen and had surgery to correct it.
schools, and nursing homes. She continued Before and after the operation, her ailment
her advocacy for better health care for all led to numerous hospital stays.
and a sound education for nurses. In 1907 Novello’s mother and her aunt, who was
she received the Order of Merit from King a nurse, encouraged her in her ambition to
Edward VII; she was the first female so become a pediatrician, a goal she had
honored. She also received the Norwegian formed in part to keep other children from
Red Cross, the Cross of Merit from Ger- suffering so long with a similar ailment. Her
many, and the gold medal of Secours aux pediatrician and her gastroenterologist,
Glessés from France, among other honors. who, she felt, were good examples of caring
She passed away on August 13, 1910. physicians, also influenced her.
Novello attended the University of
References: Andrews, Mary Raymond Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and graduated in
152
Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane
1965 with a B.S. She earned her medical de- Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane
gree in 1970 from the University of Puerto 1942–
Rico’s Medical School in San Juan. She mar-
ried a navy flight surgeon, Joseph Novello, Christiane Nusslein-Volhard received the
and they both went to the University of Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in
Michigan in Ann Arbor to continue their 1995 along with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F.
medical studies. She concentrated on pedi- Wieschaus for discovering how genes con-
atrics and nephrology. trol early embryo development.
Novello also earned a master’s degree in Born October 20, 1942, during World War
public health from Johns Hopkins Univer- II, she is the daughter of an architect, Rolf
sity in 1982. In 1976 she had opened a pri- Volhard, and Brigitte Haas Volhard of
vate practice in Springfield, Virginia, but Frankfurt, Germany. She is the second of
she empathized with her patients and their five children.
parents to the degree that she felt she had to She loved nature and knew she wanted to
move on and closed the practice after two be a biologist by the time she was twelve.
years. In 1978 she joined the National Insti- She didn’t do well in some subjects in
tutes of Health and quickly rose in the ranks school but excelled at science while attend-
to become the deputy director of the Na- ing Frankfurt’s Schiller School. She had an
tional Institute of Child Health and Human interest in evolution and genetics. School in
Development. post–World War II Germany involved dis-
During the 1980s she was very active in cussion of Hitler, anti-Semitism, and guilt.
tackling some issues of major concern to mi- Many children like Nusslein-Volhard were
norities, children, and women. She fought shocked and horrified by what had taken
for better warning labels on tobacco prod- place.
ucts, better education on AIDS prevention, Her father died just before she entered
and health care for the Hispanic commu- the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University in
nity. She also played a major role in the re- Frankfurt. She stayed there two years before
alization of the National Organ Transplant moving to the University of Tübingen,
Act of 1984, which would lead to better or- which had just started a biochemistry pro-
ganization and a network for acquiring or- gram. She received her diploma in 1968 in
gans needed for transplantation. biochemistry and continued her studies
She became the fourteenth surgeon gen- there in order to earn a Ph.D. in biology
eral of the United States and thus the “doctor with a concentration in genetics in 1973.
for all Americans” on March 9, 1990, after be- While studying for her Ph.D., she worked
ing nominated by President George Bush in as a research associate at the Max Planck In-
1989. She broadened her focus to many other stitute, where she wanted to study cells and
public health concerns, including domestic the role genetics plays in embryo develop-
abuse and underage drinking. She brought a ment. She spent hours in the lab studying
clever, intelligent, well-informed persona to the mutation of fruit flies, their eggs, and
the mission of the surgeon general. other characteristics, believing these studies
Novello served until Joycelyn Elders was would be key to dealing with more difficult
appointed in 1993 after being nominated by questions.
President Bill Clinton. She is currently the In 1978 she moved to Heidelberg to head
New York state health commissioner and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory
has recently been involved with state efforts (EMBL). She and Eric Wieschaus studied
to keep the West Nile virus under control. random gene mutations in the drosophila,
or fruit fly, and were able to identify fifteen
References: Associated Press, “NY Battle genes that control early embryo develop-
Plan: Less Spraying; Plan’s Emphasis on ment. “The genes identified by Nusslein-
Prevention,” Newsday (New York) (25 April Volhard and Wieschaus also influence for-
2001): A17; “Novello, Antonia,” Current Bi- mation of the body axis and specialization
ography 53, no. 5 (May 1992): 45–49. of individual segments of the development
153
Nutting, Mary Adelaide
of the human embryo. About 40 percent of Mary was born in Frost Village, Quebec,
idiopathic congenital malformations may be on November 1, 1858. The family soon
due to mutations in genes discovered by moved to Waterloo, where she grew up. She
Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus” (Raju was the daughter of a seamstress, Harriet
2000, 81). Sophia Peasley Nutting, and a county clerk,
Nusslein-Volhard moved on to zebra Vespasian Nutting. She had three older
fish, thinking they might be able to solve brothers, Charles, Arthur, and Jim, and one
more of the puzzle of cell development. younger sister, Harriette Armine.
They were poor but received an educa-
When Leonard Zon, associate professor tion at the local schools. The oldest, Charles,
of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in eventually graduated from law school at
Boston studied dozens of Nusslein-Vol- McGill University. The girls attended the
hard’s mutants that failed to form red Shefford Academy. Mary Adelaide also at-
blood cells in the usual fashion, he tended Bute House, a private school in
found that some of the mutants had Montreal, and developed some proficiency
the fish equivalent of various human in music. Later the girls’ mother moved
blood disorders, including thalassemia with them to Ottawa, where her son Jim
and a type of congenital anemia. “We was already settled and working and she
owe Janni a tremendous debt,” Zon felt they would have more opportunities.
says; “Her zebra fish mutants have Vespasian chose to stay behind.
provided not only a fantastic system They enjoyed Ottawa, but their financial
for studying the whole process of situation was still grim. Mary Adelaide
blood formation, they’re also providing taught music and did seamstress work as
critical insights into human disease. We she could find it. She nursed her mother
could never have gotten to this level during a brief illness that took her life in
without her.” (Ackerman 1997, 42) 1884. Increasingly lonely and in search of a
job, Mary Adelaide remembered reading
Nusslein-Volhard is divorced and has no about Florence Nightingale and discovered
children. She is currently the director of the there was a training school for nurses at
Max Planck Institute for Developmental Bi- Johns Hopkins. She applied and was ac-
ology’s Genetics Division in Tübingen. cepted in 1889. She excelled in nursing and
graduated in 1891 at the top of her class.
References: Ackerman, Jennifer, “Journey Once the medical school opened in 1893,
to the Center of the Egg,” New York Times, there was a great need for expanded hospi-
sec. 6 (12 October 1997): 42; McGrayne, tal activity, and upon Isabel Hampton’s res-
Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Sci- ignation, Nutting became the assistant su-
ence, Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Nusslein- perintendent of nurses.
Volhard, Christiane, and Jorn Kratzschmar, In 1894 she became full superintendent
eds., Of Fish, Fly, Worm, and Man: Lessons and worked to change students’ nursing re-
from Developmental Biology for Human Gene sponsibilities. As in many schools and as
Function and Disease, Berlin: Springer (2000); had been the case in Nutting’s student days,
Raju, T. N., “The Nobel Chronicles,” Lancet student nurses were many times over-
356, no. 9223 (1 July 2000): 81. worked as nurses in associated hospitals in-
stead of being given the needed time for
study.
Nutting, Mary Adelaide In a speech in 1896 to the American Soci-
1858–1948 ety of Superintendents of Training Schools
for Nurses, she stressed that it was time for
Mary Nutting contributed to a higher stan-
dard of nursing practice in the United “people [to realize] that training
States. She was the first nurse to become a schools were educational institutions.”
university professor. She pointed out the dangers of reduc-
154
Nutting, Mary Adelaide
ing students to servitude. Fearlessly was requisite but not without the funda-
she asserted that in many instances it mentals of instruction.
was not for the purpose of giving She served on many committees and
more and better training that they boards concerned with nursing education
were kept on duty so long, but rather and helped draft the first nursing-practice
that the amount of service to the hos- law in Maryland in 1904. She became a pro-
pital might be increased and the work- fessor of nursing in 1907 at Teachers Col-
ing force of the institutions be kept at lege in New York, which needed an au-
a minimum. As a rule the number of thority to teach courses to graduate nurses.
student nurses was less than propor- She remained at Teachers College until her
tionate to the number of patients. Such retirement.
attempts at economy were detrimental One of her greatest and timeliest achieve-
to student nurses and patients alike. ments was completing and publishing the
(Marshall 1972, 73) Standard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing in
1917 for the National League of Nursing Ed-
She advocated eight to nine work hours ucation (NLNE) just as the United States
per day as a maximum. She used statistical was getting involved in World War I. It
data from national surveys to show that helped nursing to move forward in obtain-
many student nurses were working fifteen ing professional status. Nursing schools in
and seventeen hours in some cases and then many parts of the United States scrutinized
were expected to study and go to class. As and implemented her methods. Nutting
she became more efficient in administrative passed away on October 3, 1948, in White
and organizational matters, she worked to Plains, New York.
obtain an endowment for the training
school, thus separating its budget from the See also: Robb, Isabel Hampton
hospital’s. She also enlarged the curriculum References: Drachman, V., “Nutting,
to three years instead of two because nurses M[ary] Adelaide,” in Martin Kaufman, Stu-
needed to be familiar with an ever-increas- art Galishoff, and Todd L. Savitt, eds., Dic-
ing number of medical specialties. tionary of American Medical Biography, West-
Nutting was instrumental in changing the port, CT: Greenwood Press (1984); Marshall,
public’s and the physician’s view of nurs- Helen E., Mary Adelaide Nutting: Pioneer of
ing. She provided leadership in establishing Modern Nursing, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop-
it as a profession with many requirements, kins University Press (1972); Snodgrass,
thus giving more weight to a nursing de- Mary Ellen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nurs-
gree. She realized that practical experience ing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).
155
O
Ockett, Molly versity, and also from a private medical
1750?–1816 school, Kojuin. The latter was an all-male
school, and she had difficulty gaining en-
An early Abenaki healer in Maine, Molly trance. After she graduated, the govern-
Ockett was the only medical help available ment resisted allowing her to take the ex-
for most people. She used herbs and en- aminations that were a prerequisite to
couraged mineral waters for ailing whites legally practicing medicine. After three
and Indians alike. years, in 1885, she was allowed to take the
Not much is known about her life, but examinations and passed. She worked at the
numerous stories abound about her, many Meiji Girls’ School and later went to
fictitious. A noted criminal of the day, Hokkaido to practice.
Henry Tufts, included her good deeds in his She contracted a venereal disease from
autobiography, which historians believe to her first husband that left her unable to bear
be an accurate description of life in the re- children. She divorced him on these
gion and of the people, both whites and In- grounds and later married Shikata Shizen.
dians. Ockett treated Tufts for a knife She returned to Tokyo after his death and
wound around 1772, for which he was for- died in 1913.
ever grateful. She died in 1816 and is buried
in Andover, Maine. References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-
vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of
References: Lecompte, Nancy, “The Last of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-
the Androscoggins: Molly Ockett, Abenaki cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New
Healing Woman” (August 1997), http:// York: Routledge (2000); “Ogino Ginko,” Ko-
www.avcnet.org/ne-do-ba/bio_moly.html; dansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 6, Tokyo:
Tufts, Henry, The Autobiography of a Criminal, Kodansha (1983).
New York: Duffield (1930).
157
Osborn, June Elaine
receiving a B.A. in 1957. She continued on to come involved at all in the care of people
medical school at Case Western Reserve with HIV. ‘Risk’ is cited as an excuse, but the
University and earned her medical degree risk is far lower from HIV than from many
in 1961. She has worked in several capaci- other hazards in the health care workplace.
ties at various medical schools and hospitals Ignorance is offered as another excuse—but
around the United States, concentrating in the proper response to ignorance on the part
pediatrics and epidemiology as well as be- of a professional is to learn, not to walk
ing deeply involved in all issues surround- away” (Osborn 1992, 64). Osborn is cur-
ing HIV and AIDS. rently president of the Josiah Macy, Jr.
She has published numerous scientific Foundation in New York.
and public policy papers. Her early work
focuses on many research areas, particularly References: American Men and Women of Sci-
those concerned with vaccines and im- ence, 20th ed., New York: Bowker (1998); Os-
munology. In the past couple of decades she born, June Elaine, “AIDS and the Politics of
has concentrated more on AIDS as a social Compassion,” Hospitals 66, no. 18 (20 Sep-
as well as a medical problem. tember 1992): 64; Osborn, June Elaine, “In-
Osborn has urged education about HIV. fections,” Journal of Urban Health 75, no. 2
“We’ve seen a shocking disinclination to be- (June 1998): 251–257.
158
P
Paget, Mary Rosalind socioeconomic status. Paget fought hard to
1855–1948 ensure equal care for women and children
regardless of the mother’s socioeconomic,
Mary Rosalind Paget was an English nurse professional, or marital status. “When sev-
and midwife who in 1881 founded the Mid- eral Queen’s nurses expressed confusion
wives Institute, later known as the Royal about whether or not they should attend
College of Midwives. The health of England only respectable married women, Rosalind
lay in increasing the birth rate, and midwives Paget was clear that the health and safety of
did not have proper training. The Royal Col- the mother and child were paramount and
lege of Midwives continues to operate. Paget that the mother’s marital status was irrele-
was born on January 4, 1855, in Greenbank, vant” (Hannam 1997, 91).
Liverpool, to Elizabeth Rathbone Paget and She founded and was the editor of Nurs-
John Paget, a police magistrate. Early on she ing Notes (later Midwives’ Chronicles) for
seemed to be pulled toward public service, many years. She played a large part in ad-
and she went to Westminster Hospital to vancing women’s midwifery skills, fighting
train as a nurse. In 1882 she went to the Lon- for better pay, and ensuring better prenatal
don Hospital and later to the British Lying-In care. Paget never married. She passed away
Hospital. It was during this initial training on August 19, 1948, in Bolney, Sussex.
that she became very concerned with infants
and the inadequate training opportunities References: Hannam, June, “Rosalind
for those practicing as midwives. Paget: The Midwife, the Women’s Move-
She and a small group of women founded ment and Reform before 1914,” in Hilary
the Midwives Institute in 1881, and she Marland and Anne Marie Rafferty, eds.,
worked hard to get the House of Commons Midwives, Society, and Childbirth: Debates and
to pass a bill requiring the registration and Controversies in the Modern Period, London:
certification of midwives. This effort met Routledge (1997); Pye, E. M., “Paget, Dame
with resistance for several years from those (Mary) Rosalind,” Dictionary of National Bi-
who believed the legislation would prevent ography, 1941–1950, London: Oxford Uni-
birthing mothers from getting help from versity Press (1959); Snodgrass, Mary Jane,
neighbors. The bill finally passed as the Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing, Santa Bar-
Midwives Act of 1902. The Central Mid- bara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).
wives Board was established, which Paget
served on for years. She was also the first
queen’s nurse, appointed by Queen Victoria Pak, Esther Kim
in 1891. 1877–1910
Many in the decades before World War I
concerned themselves with the moral char- Esther Pak was the first woman physician to
acter of unwed mothers and mothers of low practice Western medicine in Korea. She
159
Parrish, Rebecca
graduated from the Women’s Medical Col- eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in
lege of Baltimore in 1900, afterward return- Science, New York: Routledge (2000); Par-
ing to Korea to work with women and chil- rish, Rebecca, Orient Seas and Lands Afar,
dren. She has served as an inspiration for New York: Fleming H. Revell (1936).
other young women who wanted to become
physicians.
Pearce, Louise
References: “Doctor Esther Kim Pak,” 1885–1959
h t t p : / / w w w. c h a s s . u t o r o n t o . c a /
~youngran/WomenScientists/esther.htm; Louise Pearce was a physician and patholo-
Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of the gist who helped develop the drug try-
World, New York: Macmillan (1957); Pak, parsamide in order to treat trypanosomiasis
Rhoda Kim, “Medical Women in Korea,” (sleeping sickness). She tested it on humans
Journal of the American Medical Women’s As- in the Belgian Congo in 1920 and 1921 and
sociation 5, no. 3 (March 1950): 116–117. obtained great success that was recognized
with the Order of the Crown of Belgium
award.
Parrish, Rebecca She was born in Winchester, Massachu-
1869–1952 setts, on March 5, 1885, to Charles Ellis
Pearce and Susan Elizabeth Hoyt Pearce.
Rebecca Parish was the first female physi- She received her education at the Girls’ Col-
cian to practice in the Philippines. After re- legiate School in Los Angeles and then went
ceiving a medical education at the Medical to Stanford University and earned a bache-
College of Indiana, she traveled to the lor’s in physiology and histology in 1907.
Philippines in order to work as a Methodist She went to Boston University’s School of
medical missionary. She served there from Medicine and taught before she was admit-
1905 to 1933. In 1906, she established a dis- ted to the Johns Hopkins University School
pensary in Manila, where leprosy was of Medicine in 1909. She received her med-
prevalent because of the tropical climate. ical degree in 1912 and proceeded to the
“Health is always a problem in the tropics; Rockefeller Institute, where she remained
water is not safe, unless artesian wells are most of her career.
drilled. In the old days, with decaying fruits She and two other researchers, Walter A.
and vegetables, insects, especially mosqui- Jacobs and Wade Hampton Brown, worked
toes, insufficient fresh milk for the babies, together to find a treatment for sleeping
and the prevalence of cholera, smallpox, sickness. They found that tryparsamide was
malaria, leprosy, dysentery, and tropical ul- effective in treating rabbits with the disease.
cers and eruptions, there was a serious She then traveled to the Belgian Congo and
health question” (Parrish 1936, 26). After a treated humans with tryparsamide, and it
time she received money from an American was effective in overcoming the Trypanosoma
philanthropist and established the Mary parasite in the bloodstream. She treated pa-
Johnston Hospital for women and children. tients with mild to severe cases in a clinic in
It became an important medical facility over Leopoldville and was given access to a gov-
the next several decades and was restored ernment laboratory. Pearce’s treatment was
after damage restricted its operation during an important milestone in battling the ill-
World War II. Parrish died in Indianapolis, ness, which is carried by the tsetse fly and is
Indiana, on August 22, 1952. still an enormous problem today. It can be
deadly if untreated. The Rockefeller Institute
References: “Dr. Rebecca Parrish: Medical eventually patented the tryparsamide com-
Missionary,” New York Times (24 August pound and worked on improving it.
1952): 89; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doc- Pearce also studied syphilis, cancer, and
tors of the World, New York: Macmillan hereditary diseases while at the Rockefeller
(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, Institute and later as she continued her re-
160
Petermann, Mary Locke
search while serving as the president of the References: Heureaux, Mercedes A., “Old-
Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania est University in America,” Journal of the
from 1946 to 1951. She lived with the novel- American Medical Woman’s Association 10, no.
ist Ida White in Skillman, New Jersey, when 7 (July 1955): 249; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,
she retired. She died in New York City in Women Doctors of the World, New York:
1959. Macmillan (1957).
161
Pickett, Lucy Weston
Mary PhD.” [obit], New York Times (16 De- References: “Expert on Cell Surfaces to De-
cember 1975): 42, col. 3; Wool, Ira G., “Ribo- liver Lucy W. Pickett Lecture November
somes,” Encyclopedia of Human Biology, 2d 20,” College Street Journal (Mount Holyoke
ed., vol. 7, San Diego: Academic Press College) (17 November 2000), http://
(1997). 138.110.28.9/offices/comm/csj/111700/
pickett.shtml; Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-
bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Physi-
cal Sciences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press
Pickett, Lucy Weston (1997).
1904–1997
162
Preston, Ann
J. Simon, and Robert Booy, “Haemophilus in- Thrombosis and Haemostasis 35, no. 2 (30
fluenzae: Capsule Vaccine and Capsulation April 1976): 269–271.
Genetics,” Molecular Medicine Today 2, no. 4
(April 1996): 160–165; “NIH Lectures,”
http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/ Possanner-Ehrenthal,
ir-communictns/lecture-info. htm#Pitt(2002);
Proffitt, Pamela, Notable Women Scientists, De-
Garbrielle
troit: Gale Group (1999).
Garbrielle Possanner-Ehrenthal was the first
woman physician in Austria. She graduated
from the University of Zurich in 1893 and
Pool, Judith Graham was an assistant to Professor Friedrich
1919–1975 Schauta, who held graduate clinics in ob-
stetrics and gynecology in Vienna that were
Judith Pool was a major figure in the treat- attended by medical students the world
ment of hemophilia and in establishing a over. Much of her work was with poor
standard procedure for isolating the antihe- women and children.
mophilic factor in blood. Her method for
blood transfusions greatly advanced ther- References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
apy for hemophiliacs and was adopted Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
widely as a standard around the world. (1957).
Born in 1919 in New York City, she ob-
tained her Ph.D. in physiology at the Uni-
versity of Chicago. Her early studies fo-
cused on muscle physiology. In later
Preston, Ann
decades she studied blood coagulation and 1813–1872
looked for better ways to transfuse blood
for those suffering with hemophilia. Ann Preston became the first female to hold
She worked on many scientific commit- the position of dean of a medical school. She
tees and was graduated from the Female Medical College
of Pennsylvania in 1851 and successfully lob-
a member of several working groups bied for equal medical education for women,
dealing with the translation of re- particularly clinical experience, which was
search findings to practical applica- being denied to so many. She helped establish
tion, including preparation of factor a hospital connected to the college in 1861.
VIII concentrates, assay procedures Born on December 1, 1813, in West Grove,
and standards for factor VIII, and Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of
analysis of inhibitors. Her analytical Amos and Margaret Smith Preston. She
mind combined with good judgment helped her mother, who was in poor health,
made her a valued member of all raise the seven siblings that had survived
groups with whom she worked. Her infancy: Joseph, Simpson, Smith, Levi,
ability to sort out complex findings Charles, Rebecca, and Howard. Joseph was
and to come out with clear statements the oldest and Ann was only two years
with questions for future investigation younger, so many of the early chores fell to
was an attribute much admired. her. Her father had a large agriculture and
(Brinkhous 1976, 269) dairy trade that kept the family busy.
Strong Quakers, the family was well re-
Pool died on July 13, 1975. spected in the area. Her father was influen-
tial in the community and concerned about
References: Bailey, Martha J., American the social issues of the day. The family was
Women in Science, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO active in the abolition and temperance
(1994); Brinkhous, K. M., “Judith Graham movements of the day, and their home was
Pool, Ph.D. (1919–1975): An Appreciation,” many times used to hide runaway slaves.
163
Preston, Ann
164
Public Health and Women
vide better opportunities and better training knowledge that disease had wiped out en-
for the women who would follow her into tire populations in the past and that the new
the medical field” (Ford 1995, 1487). medicines would not be effective unless they
were distributed equitably and efficiently.
See also: Cleveland, Emeline Horton; Cole, During the Civil War, women volun-
Rebecca; Jacobi, Mary Putnam; Medical Col- teered to help with the wounded. Once
lege of Pennsylvania home, many put their energies into their lo-
References: Ford, Bonnie L., “Ann Preston,” cal communities. “Institutions for the deaf,
in Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Lives from His- blind, insane, and orphaned had been built
tory: American Women Series, vol. 4, Pasa- or expanded during the 1850s, giving
dena, CA: Salem Press (1995); Foster, women many opportunities to become in-
Pauline Poole, Ann Preston, M.D. (1813– volved in social welfare efforts and net-
1872): A Biography; The Struggle to Obtain works of voluntary associations” (Sivulka
Training and Acceptance for Women Physicians 1999, 2). Their gender still restricted them,
in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, Pitts- however, to unpaid volunteer work.
burgh: University of Pennsylvania Press In 1850, Lemuel Shattuck laid out some
(1984); Ohles, Frederik, Shirley M. Ohles, public health concerns in his Report of the
and John G. Ramsay, Biographical Dictionary Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts, more
of Modern American Educators, Westport, CT: commonly known as the Shattuck Report.
Greenwood Press (1997); Preston, Ann, He made many recommendations concern-
“The Status of Women-Physicians,” Medical ing the containment of diseases, accurate
and Surgical Reporter 16, no. 18 (4 May 1867): records on causes of death, physicians who
391–394, reprinted in American Periodical Se- were better trained in sanitation and hy-
ries II 1800–1850, new series, reel 1200; giene, and societal organization. Yet “there
Wells, Susan, Out of the Dead House: Nine- was very little effective public health work
teenth-Century Women Physicians and the going on in America in 1879” (Smillie 1955,
Writing of Medicine, Madison: University of 443). “The whole trend of the century was to
Wisconsin Press (2000). limit the teaching of medical students to the
intensely practical fields, of diagnosis and
treatment” (Smillie 1955, 444). Because
Public Health and Women women physicians were finding little public
What is a health which merely makes acceptance, they turned to the emerging
people ripe to be damaged, abused, and field of public health, just as they had
shot at again? turned in the past to nursing as a way to en-
—Ernst Bloch ter the medical profession. Male physicians
of the time took little interest in the field,
Early in the twentieth century, few women preferring the more lucrative private prac-
with a medical education had the option of tice, and thus women were welcome.
working in private practice or in hospitals Following World War I, many women
or clinics. The emerging field of public found that their competence in times of cri-
health offered opportunities for many. sis was not rewarded with compensated
Pasteur’s late-nineteenth-century discov- employment. The frustration of women
eries on contagious diseases and their causes who worked during the war with the Scot-
were the beginning of serious public health tish Women’s Hospitals, now disbanded, re-
initiatives. In 1946 the World Health Organi- flected the feelings of many: “For many of
zation was established in Geneva, Switzer- the women there was no option but to re-
land, and the Communicable Disease Center turn to the constrained middle-class exis-
(now known as the Centers for Disease Con- tence they had known before the war. Rose
trol and Prevention) was born in the United West, who fearlessly drove over Macedo-
States. The Pan American Health Organiza- nian mountain tracks as head of Motor
tion evolved through various names from Transport for the America unit, was not al-
1902 on. They all emerged from the growing lowed to have her own car when she got
165
Public Health and Women
home” (Leneman 1994, 213). Thus women and statistics, of physiology and
again turned their attention to social issues pathology and epidemiology, and in
and their energies to charitable work. some measure of sociology, and it
Sara Josephine Baker, a physician who builds upon these basic sciences a
tried private practice but could not make a comprehensive program of commu-
living at it, contributed much as a public nity service. . . . Preventive medicine
health administrator to the welfare of the must come, as a reality and not a pious
poor in early-twentieth-century New York phase, through a fundamental change
City. Baker realized that legislation recog- in the attitude of the physician and
nizing the right of every individual to through a fundamental change in the
health care was as important as the need for attitude of the medical school where
physicians. he is trained. (Winslow 1923, 1, 64)
Even after legislation was passed, how-
ever, numerous problems with organization Eventually there were graduate degrees of-
remained. Dr. Leslie Haden-Guest, a British fered in public health. In 1917, Baker be-
physician and social reformer, wrote in 1912 came the first female to hold such a doctor-
that there were no “standards of cleanliness ate degree.
and decency with regard to premises and In spite of increasing evidence, much of it
methods of serving the meals. I have myself gathered firsthand by Florence Nightingale,
seen school dinner centres in London, at that sanitation and hygiene played a crucial
which the food was served out of a bucket, role in health and growing recognition of the
and hundreds of plates and bowls ‘washed importance of the public health field, private
up’ between batches of children in one practice or surgery continued to command
small tub of filthy water!” (Haden-Guest, greater respect. Public health was a “mar-
1912, 3–4). Many public health educators ginal” area of medicine (Glaser 1987, 98).
agree that five women were giants in the Although physicians today are increas-
field in the twentieth century: Alice Hamil- ingly aware of phrases such as “population-
ton, Sara Josephine Baker, Lillian Wald, based health care,” which refers to better
Clara Barton, and Dorothea Dix. Ellen Swal- cost management in order to adequately
low Richards had done much work in the serve their communities, they need to be
late nineteenth century on sanitary issues better informed in prevention and public
and food safety as well (Smillie 1955, 479). health issues.
Another huge issue of the early twentieth
century was the modern birth control Unfortunately, the medical and public
movement, initiated by Margaret Sanger. health communities have worked sepa-
Prior to her efforts, it was against the law for rately from each other since the turn of
physicians and others to provide informa- the century. Medicine has taken a bio-
tion on contraception. A public health medical or bioengineering approach to
nurse, Sanger was aware of the detrimental medical care, stressing the achievement
effects of frequent childbirth on both chil- of health through disease reduction.
dren and mothers. The public health profession strongly
These women were all pioneers in the draws from a social model of health
field when public health education was not care that emphasizes health promotion
taken very seriously in medical schools. and disease prevention and under-
Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, the father stands health determinates as economic
of the public health movement in the early and cultural, as well as molecular and
twentieth-century United States, wrote, biochemical. Many clinicians have little
understanding of basic public health
Public Health is not a concrete intellec- tools, and many public health practi-
tual discipline, but a field of social ac- tioners have little experience in making
tivity. It includes applications of chem- their knowledge relevant to the clinical
istry and bacteriology, of engineering domain. (Ambrose 1997, 1722)
166
Public Health and Women
As the AIDS epidemic continues to over- fessions, 1890–1940, New Brunswick, NJ:
whelm some countries and as bioterrorism Rutgers University Press (1987); Haden-
continues to be a serious threat to popula- Guest, Leslie, Votes for Women and the Public
tions, those persons who go into the field Health, London: Women’s Freedom League
will feel a higher obligation than ever, and (1912); Leneman, Leah, In the Service of Life:
the women who broke new ground with The Story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish
discoveries, data gathering, and administra- Women’s Hospitals, Edinburgh: Mercat Press
tive skills will possibly be more appreciated. (1994); Sivulka, Juliann, “From Domestic to
Municipal Housekeeper: The Influence of
See also: Baker, Sara Josephine; Barton, the Sanitary Reform Movement on Chang-
Clara; Dix, Dorothea Lynde; Hamilton, Al- ing Women’s Roles in America, 1860–1920,”
ice; Nightingale, Florence; Richards, Ellen Journal of American Culture 22, no. 4 (Winter
Henrietta Swallow; Sanger, Margaret; Wald, 1999): 1–7; Smillie, Wilson George, Public
Lillian D. Health: Its Promise for the Future; A Chronicle
References: Ambrose, Paul, “Uniting Public of the Development of Public Health in the
Health and Medicine,” JAMA 278, no. 21 (3 United States, 1607–1914, New York:
December 1997): 1722; Bloch, Ernst, The Macmillan (1955); Tobey, James Alner, Riders
Principle of Hope, vol. 2, Cambridge, MA: of the Plagues: The Story of the Conquest of Dis-
MIT Press (1986); Delmege, James Anthony, ease, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons (1930);
Towards National Health; or, Health and Hy- Williams, Ralph Chester, The United States
giene in England from Roman to Victorian Public Health Service 1798–1950, Washington,
Times, New York: Macmillan (1932); “From DC: Commissioned Officers Association,
the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- U.S. Public Health Service (1951); Winslow,
tion. Achievements in Public Health, 1900– Charles-Edward Amory, The Evolution and
1999: Family Planning,” JAMA 283, no. 3 (19 Significance of the Modern Public Health Cam-
January 2000): 326–327, 331; Glazer, Penina paign, New Haven, CT: Yale University
Migdal, and Miriam Slater, Unequal Col- Press (1923).
leagues: The Entrance of Women into the Pro-
167
Q
Quimby, Edith Hinkley
1891–1982
169
Quimby, Edith Hinkley
volved in the safety issues surrounding the Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,
handling of radioactive materials. Even af- Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994);
ter she retired, she continued to be a con- Carey, Charles W., Jr., “Quimby, Edith Hink-
sultant and to write. She died in New York ley,” American National Biography, vol. 18,
City on October 11, 1982. New York: Oxford University Press (1999).
170
R
Ramsey, Mimi filled with misinformation, and remain
1953– blindly dedicated to continuing this
torturous tradition. (Burstyn 1995, 30)
Mimi Ramsey is a nurse and an activist. She
was instrumental in influencing the U.S. Ramsey has been of great help in counsel-
government to recognize the practice of fe- ing many who have been through the expe-
male genital mutilation (FGM) as child rience. The U.S. government banned the
abuse and outlaw its use. practice in 1998. It is also banned in many
Ramsey was born in Ethiopia. Like many other countries but is still practiced widely
other young girls in the region, she suffered around the world.
from the emotional trauma and physical
pain of FGM. After coming to the United See also: Female Genital Mutilation
States and after a time of dealing with her References: Burstyn, Linda, “Female Cir-
personal distress over the experience, she cumcision Comes to America,” Atlantic
became a vocal advocate of outlawing the Monthly 276, no. 4 (October 1995): 28–35;
practice, which was ongoing in the United Jensen, Rita Henley, “Mimi Ramsey,” Ms. 6,
States among African immigrants. no. 4 (January 1996): 50–52.
171
Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow
to Newport, Rhode Island, for a time after emergence of ecology and home economics
that, returning to Salem in 1841. as serious disciplines.
In the 1840s and 1850s, she lectured in the Born on December 3, 1842, in Dunstable,
United States and Europe on women’s Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Pe-
rights and antislavery. Because of her Amer- ter Swallow and Fanny Gould Taylor Swal-
ican background, audiences composed of low. She went to school at Westford Acad-
both men and women were allowed to at- emy and entered Vassar College, which had
tend her lectures in England. She had great been founded in 1861 for women. She grad-
popularity with both the social elite and the uated in 1870 and decided to go to the Mas-
working class. sachusetts Institute of Technology for fur-
Her brother Charles, a well-known aboli- ther studies in chemistry. She was the first
tionist, was a proponent of women’s rights woman admitted to MIT, but her tuition
and encouraged her to participate actively was waived because the university did not
in the cause. “Sarah’s decision to join her want a woman on its roster. Richards at-
brother was a courageous one given the pre- tended as an “experimental” case. She grad-
vailing gender expectations held by many uated in 1873 with a B.S. in chemistry and
black men involved in abolitionism” became the first woman to graduate from
(Brownlee 1997, 109). MIT. She became a laboratory assistant at
She went to France and settled in Flo- MIT after the school discouraged her pur-
rence, Italy, in 1866. She attended the Santa suit of a Ph.D.; officials did not want the
Maria Nuova Hospital from 1866 to 1868 first Ph.D. in chemistry to go to a woman.
and became a professional medical practi- She married Robert Hallowell Richards
tioner. She was well respected as a black and continued her career at MIT, teaching
physician. She died on December 13, 1894, sanitation chemistry. She conducted a huge
and is buried at the Protestant cemetery in survey of drinking water in Massachusetts
Rome. in order to check for pollution. While teach-
ing, she also was very active in advocating
References: Brownlee, Sibyl Ventress, “Out equal educational rights for women, partic-
of the Abundance of the Heart: Sarah Ann ularly in the sciences. By the 1890s she was
Parker Remond’s Quest for Freedom,” developing the field of home economics.
Ph.D. dissertation, Amherst (1997); Hunt, She was a very practical woman. When
Karen Jean, “Remond, Sarah Parker,” Amer- friends considered a location for a home or
ican National Biography, vol. 18, New York: summer cottage, “Mrs. Richards’s contribu-
Oxford University Press (1999); Porter, tion, or shall we say her part of the house-
Dorothy, B., “Remond, Sarah Parker,” in warming, would almost invariably be a
Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, thorough investigation of the water supply.
eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography, When we consider how many people fall
New York: Norton (1982). victims to typhoid fever during their sum-
mer outings, we realize how valuable this
contribution was” (Hunt 1912, 106). Rich-
ards continued her work until her death on
Richards, Ellen March 30, 1911.
Henrietta Swallow
1842–1911 References: Hunt, Caroline Louisa, The Life
of Ellen H. Richards, Boston: Whitcomb &
Ellen Richards was a chemist who led the Barrows (1912); Stage, Sarah, “Richards,
effort for better sanitation in homes and is Ellen Henrietta Swallow,” American National
commonly known as the mother of home Biography, vol. 21, New York: Oxford Uni-
economics for the twentieth century. Her versity Press (1999).
work in educating institutions on sanita-
tion, the proper handling of foods, and the
importance of water quality fueled the
172
Richards, Linda
Richards, Linda
(Melinda Ann Judson)
1841–1930
173
Robb, Isabel Hampton
174
Ruys, A. Charlotte
ation for the principles that govern See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa; Medical
such work will inevitably be followed Act of 1858
by a deficiency in thoroughness and References: Roberts, Shirley, Sophia Jex-
system. (Robb 1985, 28) Blake: A Woman Pioneer in Nineteenth Century
Medical Reform, London: Routledge (1993).
Robb’s devoted work for the nursing pro-
fession was prematurely cut short when she
died in a streetcar accident in Cleveland on
April 15, 1910. Ruys, A. Charlotte
1898–1980?
See also: Dock, Lavinia Lloyd
References: Noel, Nancy L., “Robb, Isabel Charlotte Ruys was a professor of microbi-
Hampton,” American National Biography, ology. She served as dean of the medical fac-
vol. 18, New York: Oxford University Press ulty at the University of Amsterdam.
(1999); Robb, Isabel Hampton, Educational Born December 21, 1898, in Dedemsvaart,
Standards for Nurses, New York: Garland the Netherlands, she was one of eight chil-
([1907] 1985). dren. She was interested in medicine at an
early age and went to Utrecht University.
During her final years there women were
Rodriguez-Dulanto, experiencing sexual harassment, so she
chose to transfer to the University of
Laura Esther Groningen, where she graduated in 1924.
18?–19?
She worked for the Public Health Service
as a physician beginning in 1928. “It was
Laura Rodriguez-Dulanto was the first fe-
wonderful to be able to combine practice
male physician in Peru. She graduated from
and research,” she said of the experience.
the University of San Marcos at Lima in 1900.
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women My first real success was when I was
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan able to demonstrate that microscopic
(1957). examination of specimens from
children with vulvovaginitis often led
to a false diagnosis of gonorrhea. In
studying typhoid fever, we found that
Russell Gurney contaminated water was frequently
Enabling Act of 1876 the source of infection. The new
methods of typing bacteria made
The Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, possible a more thorough study of
passed by the British Parliament, over- the epidemiology of many infectious
turned the Medical Act of 1858, which ex- diseases. In the 1930s I gave courses
cluded women from medical schools. The of lectures on food hygiene to girls
Russell Gurney Act gave women the same studying at a school of social science.
rights as men to enter medical schools and (Hellstedt 1978, 165)
receive a medical education. The bill was
proposed by Russell Gurney, a member of Ruys saw both world wars. During World
Parliament in London who supported equal War II, medical supplies and even food
education for both sexes, and Sophia Jex- were hard to come by. She tended both Ger-
Blake. Those who wanted women excluded mans and Allied soldiers but was an active
from medical schools and the practice of member of the resistance movement.
medicine opposed the act. With its passage, “In February of 1945 I was arrested be-
Jex-Blake was able to finally obtain her li- cause I was in contact with a radio transmit-
cense to practice medicine from the Irish ter of the Allies. A colleague bacteriologist
College of Physicians. and three others who were also arrested
175
Ruys, A. Charlotte
were shot a few days later. As I was a to 1953 and later worked with the Govern-
woman, I had to be shot in Germany. I was ment Advisory Commission for Health un-
in prison with two other women con- til 1966. She resigned from the university in
demned on the same charge. We were not 1969 when she was seventy years old.
moved, as transport to Germany was im-
possible; the Allies had blocked all the References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor,
roads. The day after the German surrender, Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra-
we were set free” (Hellstedt 1978, 166). phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC:
She married Guus Defresne in 1945 and Hemisphere (1978); Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,
they were together until his death in 1961. Women Doctors of the World, New York:
Ruys served as dean of the medical faculty Macmillan (1957).
at the University of Amsterdam from 1949
176
S
el Saadawi, Nawal scourge of poverty, ignorance and sickness
1931– did to them. Women bore a double burden
since they also suffered from the oppression
Nawal el Saadawi is known for her writ- exercised on them by fathers and husbands,
ings, which reveal the hardships many brothers and uncles and other men. I saw
young girls and women endure in some young girls burn themselves alive, or throw
Arab cultures. A physician and psychiatrist, themselves into the waters of the Nile and
Saadawi has been persecuted many times drown, in order to escape a father’s or a hus-
for her advocacy of women’s sexual rights, band’s tyranny” (Saadawi 1999, 290–291).
and she has worked to educate others on the Saadawi found that one physician could
harmful medical and emotional conse- not fix the bigger problem and turned to
quences of female circumcision. writing in order to better help those who
She was born on October 27, 1931, in Kafr suffered.
Tahla, Egypt, to el Sayed and Zeinab. She “I was not attracted to the medical profes-
attended Cairo University and earned a sion. It seemed unable to do much in face of
medical degree in 1955 and a master’s in the sufferings imposed on people. I realized
public health (M.P.H.) from Columbia Uni- how sickness and poverty are linked to pol-
versity in 1966. She used her education to itics, to money and power, that medical
gain employment as the director of health practice was removed from our everyday
education with the Egyptian government’s life. Writing became a weapon with which
Ministry of Health. In 1971 she was dis- to fight the system, which draws its author-
missed from her job due to her outspoken ity from the autocratic power exercised by
views on women’s rights. the ruler of the state, and that of the father
In The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the or the husband in the family. The written
Arab World, Saadawi gives a graphic de- word for me became an act of rebellion
scription of her and her sister being circum- against injustice exercised in the name of re-
cised when she was six years old. That ex- ligion, or morals, or love” (Saadawi 1999,
perience, as well as seeing innumerable 291–292).
little girls in her clinic who were suffering Saadawi has most recently been a visiting
from the physical and psychological effects professor at Duke University. She has two
of circumcision—effects that sometimes in- children.
cluded death—changed her focus. She lost
interest in a medical career and became References: Hiro, Dilip, Dictionary of the
more involved in speaking out against the Middle East, New York: St. Martin’s Press
continuing tragedy. (1996); “Nawal El Saadawi,” Contemporary
“As a rural doctor I lived close to village Authors Online, Gale Group (2001); Saadawi,
people, shared their experiences, learnt Nawal, A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiography
about their lives, witnessed what the triple of Nawal El Saadawi, London: Zed Books
177
Sabin, Florence Rena
178
Salpêtrière Asylum
health issues. She became very well-known became naturalized in 1961. She worked in
in Colorado during her day as a public Boston at the Children’s Hospital Medical
health proponent and did much to encour- Center and the Martha Eliot Health Center
age better funding, conditions, and legisla- for several years before moving to the Duke
tion. She died in Denver, Colorado, on Oc- University School of Medicine. Her inter-
tober 3, 1953. Her statue is in the U.S. ests lay in rural health care and equal care
Capitol. for the poor in both urban and rural set-
tings. She taught her students with enthusi-
See also: Johns Hopkins University asm and tried to give them a sense of what
References: Bluemel, Elinor, Florence Sabin: poor people had to go through to obtain
Colorado Woman of the Century, Boulder, CO: proper care.
University of Colorado Press (1959); De- The discrimination Salber faced as a
laney, James J., Jr., “Roy Cleere and Florence woman and a Jew did not deter her from
Sabin,” Colorado Medicine 80, no. 2 (February success as both a physician and a mother. In
1983): 46–47; Harvey, Abner McGehee, “A her autobiography she says, “I believe that
New School of Anatomy: The Story of being a mother made me a gentler, more
Franklin P. Mall, Florence R. Sabin and John sympathetic doctor and that being a doctor
B. MacCallum,” Johns Hopkins Medical Jour- made me a more loving and understanding
nal 136, no. 2 (February 1975): 83–94; Mc- mother. It isn’t easy for women to combine
Master, Philip D., and Michael Heidel- motherhood and work outside the home,
berger, “Florence Rena Sabin,” Biographical and we often feel guilty, but reviewing my
Memoirs 34, New York: National Academy life enabled me to acknowledge that my
of Sciences (1960); Morantz-Sanchez, Re- well-being depended not only on the love of
gina, “Sabin, Florence Rena,” American Na- my family but also on the satisfaction I got
tional Biography, vol. 19, New York: Oxford in being useful to some of society’s disre-
University Press (1999). garded people” (Salber 1989, 273). Salber
passed away on November 18, 1990.
179
Sanger, Margaret
Sanger, Margaret
1879–1966
180
Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode
181
Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird
ment, New York: Amaryllis Press (1984); Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, Reminis-
Parry, Melanie, ed., Chambers Biographical cences, London: Williams and Norgate
Dictionary, Edinburgh: Chambers (1997); (1924), reproduced in the Gerritsen Collec-
Saunders, Cicely, “A Personal Therapeutic tion of Women’s History, no. 2518.2, San-
Journey,” British Medical Journal 313, no. ford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of
7072 (21–28 December 1996): 1599–1601. America (1975–1977).
Mary Ann Dacomb Scharlieb was the first Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis of Scotland founded
woman in England to be appointed to a the Scotland Women’s Hospitals (SWH).
medical position at a general hospital They were established in order for women
(Royal Free Hospital in London) and to serve as physicians and allied health
founded the Royal Victoria Hospital in In- practitioners in World War I.
dia around 1884. During World War I, women who had
Born in London on June 18, 1845, she re- training as physicians and nurses were
ceived her early education in Manchester. It barred from serving in regular medical
wasn’t until after her marriage in 1865 to units. Inglis raised the money and in late
William Scharlieb, and their move to India, 1914 established the Scottish Women’s Hos-
that she became interested in medicine. pitals, made up of numerous units that
Her husband was an attorney and while served all over Europe until the close of
helping him with his practice, she found World War I. The women of the Scottish
herself assisting the local women with Women’s Hospitals not only served the war
childbirth after hearing about their reluc- effort but proved that an all-woman med-
tance to see male physicians if they had ical unit could get the job done. Many lost
problems. She determined to study medi- their lives in service.
cine and went to the Madras Medical Col-
lege in India. Although she qualified for a This characteristic common to them
medical license there, she returned to En- all, of strength, reliability, and effi-
gland to gain more medical education, re- ciency, has been impressed on each
ceiving her M.D. from London University Unit largely by its chief medical offi-
in 1888. She was the first woman to obtain cer. These last tragic years disclose in
a medical degree there, with the encour- the ranks of the S.W.H., and many an-
agement of Florence Nightingale and Eliza- other organization, an unfailing sup-
beth Garrett Anderson. ply of women with force of character,
Eventually she began teaching at the largeness of mind, and powers of lead-
Madras Medical College as well as continu- ership, combined with professional
ing to build her own practice in India, be- skill in various directions, who have
coming an able surgeon. Her husband died devotedly given their services to hu-
in 1891. Two of her three children became manity in noble and unselfish labour.
doctors. She died on November 21, 1930. This must be a source of profound joy
to all who love their country. (McLaren
References: Cullis, W. C., “Scharlieb, Dame 1919, 358)
Mary Ann Dacomb,” Dictionary of National
Biography, 1922–1930, Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press (1937); Haines, Catharine The all-woman hospitals, using prisoners
M. C., and Helen Stevens, International as orderlies, served Serb, Russian, French,
Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to Italian, German, British, Austrian, Turkish,
1950, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (2001); Greek, Bulgarian, and Romanian soldiers
182
Scudder, Ida Sophia
and civilians. They traveled anywhere they not swerve from her accepted purpose.
were needed. They dealt with difficult ter- India claimed a devotion that never
rain in all weather conditions and drove wavered. To return to India, qualified
through explosions and gunfire to set up by skill and science to be of service to
hospital units. They were a dependable, her people, was the one absorbing am-
very competent, and courageous group of bition of this eager and impetuous, yet
women who fought epidemics, typhus, tu- disciplined woman. The dream of one
berculosis, and dysentery and performed who had no sisters of her own was
numerous surgical operations. that the day would come when she
might be a sister to others who, in
See also: Inglis, Elsie Maud seclusion, suffered pain that might be
References: McLaren, Eva Shaw, A History abated and died preventable deaths.
of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, London: Her busy brain seethed with great
Hodder & Stoughton (1919). plans for the future. (Jeffery 1938, 57)
183
Seacole, Mary Jane Grant
her. The hospital in Vellore was built in a Her autobiography was very successful
short time after she arrived and opened in in the years following the war. She wrote of
1902. As the workload increased she real- the siege of Sebastopol: “A line of sentries
ized she would need to teach Indian women forbade all strangers passing through with-
to care for the people. She opened a nursing out orders, even to Cathcart’s Hill; but once
school and eventually the Vellore Medical more I found that my reputation served as a
College. permit, and the officers relaxed the rule in
Scudder stayed active in India most of her my favour everywhere. So, early in the day,
life, working, teaching, and caring for the I was in my old spot, with my old appli-
people there. The friends and the patients ances for the wounded and fatigued; little
she cared for were her family. She died on expecting, however, that this day would so
May 24, 1960, near her home in Kodaikanal. closely resemble the day of the last attack in
its disastrous results” (Seacole 1988, 170).
References: Jeffery, Mary Pauline, Dr. Ida: Some soldiers referred to her long after
India—The Life Story of Ida S. Scudder, New the war ended as the Crimean Heroine. She
York: Fleming H. Revell (1938); Jumonville, died on May 14, 1881, of a stroke.
Robert Stuart, “Scudder, Ida Sophia,” Amer-
ican National Biography, vol. 20, New York: References: Brice-Finch, Jacqueline, “Sea-
Oxford University Press (1999). cole, Mary,” Oxford Companion to African
American Literature, New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press (1997); Seacole, Mary, Wonder-
Seacole, Mary Jane Grant ful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands,
New York: Oxford University Press ([1857]
1805–1881
1988); Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, Historical En-
Mary Jane Seacole was a Jamaican who cyclopedia of Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA:
served as a nurse with the British during the ABC-CLIO (1999).
Crimean War. She received the Order of
Merit posthumously in 1990.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to an African Seibert, Florence Barbara
American woman and a Scottish soldier, 1897–1991
Mary Jane became very successful running
boardinghouses for soldiers, as her mother Florence Seibert was a scientist who helped
had done. While tending to the needs of her develop the tuberculin test. She also con-
guests, she developed skills in treating tributed to implementing better safety stan-
wounds and tropical diseases and even per- dards for drug therapy.
formed minor surgeries. Born on October 6, 1897, in Easton, Penn-
She had married Edwin Horatio Seacole, sylvania, Seibert survived polio at age three
but after his early death, she and a brother to graduate with high honors from high
left Jamaica and went to New Granada school. She attended Goucher College in
(now known as Colombia, Ecuador, Pan- Towson, Maryland, and majored in chem-
ama, and Venezuela). She found herself istry. After graduating in 1918 she worked
treating people suffering from cholera. during World War I at Hammersley Paper
When cholera broke out in epidemic pro- Mill as a chemist and then won a scholar-
portions in Jamaica in 1853, she returned ship to Yale. She earned a doctorate in 1923
and served people there in large part based in biochemistry.
on her experiences in New Granada. During her doctoral work she discovered
She traveled to Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, that patients receiving drug therapy could
and eventually to England, where she develop fevers from contaminated distilled
served in the Crimean War. She was a free water. She developed a new method for dis-
black woman, unlike many of her contem- tillation that killed all the bacteria. She con-
poraries, and was able to make a significant tinued her research at the University of
contribution to the war effort. Chicago and then taught and conducted re-
184
Sewall, Lucy Ellen
185
Shaibany, Homa
Sewall led the way for many other Nuneaton Emergency Hospital. After it was
women to seek a medical education. She destroyed by bombing, she worked at nu-
suffered from poor health off and on her en- merous other British hospitals and operated
tire life and died on February 13, 1890, in during wartime conditions of bombings
Boston from heart disease. and heavy casualty loads.
After the armistice she remained in Lon-
See also: New England Hospital; Zakr- don at St. Leonard’s Hospital until 1948,
zewska, Marie Elizabeth when she returned to Persia to finally
References: Kass, Amalie M., “Sewall, Lucy serve her own country. She found much
Ellen,” American National Biography, vol. 19, opposition from men and no possibility to
New York: Oxford University Press (1999); teach or obtain a post at a university. How-
Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell, Sympa- ever, she persevered because she knew
thy and Science: Women Physicians in Ameri- Muslim women were forbidden to be seen
can Medicine, New York: Oxford University by a male physician and thus needed her
Press (1985). services.
She was eventually aided and encour-
aged by Princess Shamse, head of the Per-
Shaibany, Homa sian Red Cross. She established a hospital
1913?–19? for the Red Cross and aided in its successful
operation, always dealing with resentment
Homa Shaibany was the first woman sur- from male physicians.
geon in Iran. She received a scholarship
from the Persian government to attend References: Fahimi, Miriam, “Homa Shai-
London University in 1930. She was one of bany, M.B.B.S.: First Woman Surgeon of
the fortunate few foreigners to gain admit- Iran,” Journal of the American Medical
tance to one of the only two colleges that Women’s Association 7, no. 7 (July 1952): 272–
admitted women. She proved to have ex- 273; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of
ceptional talent. the World, New York: Macmillan (1957).
Shaibany was born in Tehran to the
daughter of a Cambridge graduate and
wanted to study medicine in order to help Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921
the women of her country. She was edu-
cated at a U.S. mission school before pro- The Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 was
ceeding to London University. During “her passed by Congress under pressure from
pre-clinical years she proved so brilliant in women physicians, particularly those of the
human anatomy and morphology, embryol- U.S. Children’s Bureau, to better educate
ogy, and neurology, that her professors ad- women about prenatal care, regulate mid-
vised her to postpone clinical study and wifery, and establish health centers. Many
take a degree in these subjects” (Fahimi male physicians of the American Medical
1952, 272). Association were convinced that the Ameri-
She subsequently stayed at London Uni- can Medical Women’s Association had
versity and received her B.Sc. in anatomy pressed for the act in order to show some
and morphology. She obtained clinical ex- political weight, as women had just ob-
perience in Dublin at the Rotunda Hospital tained the right to vote. They felt that
and earned her licentiate from the Royal women were trying to control maternal
College of Physicians. Unfortunately she health care and lobbied to overturn the act.
could not return to Iran when she received The ensuing battle reflected both good in-
her M.B.B.S. in 1939, since World War II had tentions and political motivations, and Con-
started. She stayed in England, and since gress rescinded the act in 1929.
there was a need for physicians there, she
worked in the Redlands Hospital for References: Barker, Kristin, “Women Physi-
Women in Glasgow and then at the cians and the Gendered System of Profes-
186
Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de
Siegemundin, Justine
Sherrill, Mary Lura Dittrichin
1888–1968 1630–1705
Mary Sherrill worked on antimalarial drugs Justine Siegemundin was a Silesian mid-
to replace quinine, which was impossible wife. She wrote a text for midwives that was
for countries in Southeast Asia to obtain heavily utilized. She was self-taught and
during World War II. Some of the new drugs served the royal family of Prussia.
that came out of the research Sherrill
headed are still used instead of quinine in References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-
many instances. vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary of
Born on July 14, 1888, in Salisbury, North Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-
Carolina, she was the daughter of Miles Sher- cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New
rill and Sarah Bost Sherrill. The youngest of York: Routledge (2000).
seven, she received her early education at the
public schools before entering Randolph-
Macon Women’s College. She received her Solis, Manuela
bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1909 and a 18?–18?
master’s in physics in 1911. She remained at
Randolph-Macon for five years as a teacher. Manuela Solis was the first female physician
In 1916 she went to the University of in Spain. She graduated from the University
Chicago to work on her Ph.D. in chemistry. of Valencia. She did graduate study in Paris
Before she obtained her degree she was and returned to Valencia and enjoyed a suc-
asked to work with the Chemical Warfare cessful practice. She later moved to Madrid
Service during World War I. She eventually and practiced obstetrics and gynecology.
obtained her doctorate in 1923 while also
working at Mt. Holyoke College in South References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
Hadley, Massachusetts. She advanced to as- Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
sociate professor in 1924, full professor in (1957).
1931, and chair of the Department of Chem-
istry in 1946. Her research at Mt. Holyoke
focused on antimalarials to replace quinine. Solis Quiroga, Margarita
She also studied briefly with the physicist
Johannes D. van der Waals in Amsterdam in Delgado de
order to learn more about synthesizing and fl. 1926–1957
purifying organic compounds. She received
the Garvan Medal from the American Margarita Solis Quiroga was an early Mexi-
Chemical Society in 1947. She retired in 1954 can physician. She also served as a physiol-
and after several years moved back to North ogy and biology professor at the University
Carolina. She died in High Point, North of Mexico.
Carolina, on October 27, 1968.
References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
References: Grinstein, Louise S., Carol Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
Rose, K. Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich, (1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,
Women in Chemistry and Physics: A Biobiblio- eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women in
graphic Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Green- Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to
wood Press (1993); Shearer, Benjamin F., and the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge
Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the (2000).
187
Spaangberg-Holth, Marie
188
Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney
189
Stewart, Alice
University in Ohio, where she taught vari- ernment wanted to study the safety of the
ous health courses for over twenty years. munitions plants before they opened again
She also was an excellent writer and orator for World War II. She concluded quickly
who presented papers in the United States that the handling of such substances as
and overseas on various medical topics, es- TNT would indeed impede a person’s abil-
pecially the needs of black women for equal ity to form blood. The British government
education and opportunity. subsequently changed its manufacturing
Steward was unusually successful rela- procedures.
tive to other black female physicians in the Stewart became a very well-known epi-
nineteenth century. Aspiring female physi- demiologist and in 1956 turned her atten-
cians of the time greatly appreciated her in- tion to low levels of radiation, finding that
tellectual gifts, musical talent, and oratory children who were exposed to more prena-
skills. She died on March 7, 1918. tal X rays died from cancer at twice the rate
of those who received lower exposures.
References: Hayden, Robert C., “Steward, These findings were met with great opposi-
Susan Maria Smith McKinney,” American tion, but over the next two decades more
National Biography, vol. 20, New York: Ox- studies verified that her findings were ac-
ford University Press (1999); Hine, Darlene curate. She testified in the late 1980s in U.S.
Clark, and Kathleen Thompson, Facts on File congressional committees that the Depart-
Encyclopedia of Black Women in America, vol. ment of Energy procedures for assessing ra-
11, New York: Facts on File (1997); Sam- diation exposure and hazards were not ad-
mons, Vivian Ovelton, Blacks in Science and equate.
Medicine, New York: Hemisphere (1990). She also is a strong advocate of getting
medical students more involved in the
study of diseases.
Stewart, Alice
1906– The medical profession is very
gravely to blame for not putting
Alice Stewart is a British epidemiologist more of its brain into epidemiology.
who uncovered the dangers of low-level ra- I’m absolutely certain that the present
diation, particularly as it affected children system of teaching epidemiology
with cancer. She has also fought for workers just puts medical students off. They
in high-risk occupations despite fierce op- come to it too late. They should be
position from the atomic energy industry. introduced to the subject before they
Born in Sheffield, England, on October 4, get gripped with the fascination of
1906, she is the daughter of two physicians. clinical medicine—which should grip
Her father, Albert Ernest Naish, was an in- them. I know the excitement someone
ternist who taught at Sheffield University has coming from clinical medicine.
and her mother, Lucy Welburn Naish, was But if you get to students before
an anatomy teacher there. She had seven they’re seized with this passion and
siblings and with her parents’ support at- reach them with the excitement of
tended Cambridge University to become a looking at disease through the lens
physician. Three of her siblings also studied of the group, if you could attune
medicine. them to think of the larger picture
She became a physician in 1931 and in every time they looked at an
1941 took a position at Oxford University. individual disease, you could get
During World War II she aided the British them to see the fascination of
government in studying the harmful ef- epidemiology. (Greene 1999, 225)
fects on workers of handling TNT during
World War I. Following World War I, many Alice Stewart continues to speak to stu-
munitions workers developed blood disor- dents and scientists about many public
ders, including liver disease, and the gov- health issues and has been steadfast in her
190
Stowe, Emily
191
Sundquist, Alma
whom she had influenced to go into medi- attended the Karolinska Institute of Stock-
cine, and they attended lectures at the holm University and then organized and
Toronto School of Medicine. Trout decided to worked in free clinics in Stockholm. Her
go to the Women’s Medical College of Penn- work brought the problems of venereal dis-
sylvania in 1872, and from that time forward ease to the attention of the authorities, who
there was friction between the Stowes and needed to understand the importance of
Trouts. This friction grew even more when preventive methods and treatment. Sund-
Trout became licensed before Stowe, and quist became a well-respected physician in
they moved on in their careers and founded her lifetime. She died in January 1940.
different medical schools for women.
Stowe was involved in a scandal in 1879 References: Journal of the American Medical
involving the death of Sarah Lovell, whom Women’s Association 6, no. 1 (January 1951):
she had known and who had died from tak- 33–34; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors
ing poison to abort her unborn child. Stowe of the World, New York: Macmillan (1957);
denied giving Lovell any poison and was Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The
found innocent in two separate trials con- Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science,
cerning the death. Soon thereafter, officials New York: Routledge (2000).
in the profession granted her a license to
practice. Jennie Trout had gained her license
in 1875; she was the only woman licensed to Swain, Clara A.
practice medicine in Canada until Stowe ob- 1834–1910
tained her license in 1880.
Stowe helped found the Ontario Medical Clara Swain was the first medical mission-
College for Women, which became the ary to Asia in 1869. She worked diligently
Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. for the Methodists, who sent her from the
She was a vocal and strong-willed propo- United States to treat patients in India, teach
nent for women, especially those seeking medicine to women, and eventually open a
medical education. Stowe passed away on large hospital to take care of the needs of the
April 30, 1903. people of Bareilly.
Born on July 18, 1834, Swain was the
See also: Trout, Jennie Kidd daughter of John Swain and Clarissa
References: Duffin, Jacalyn, “The Death of Seavey. She was born in Elmira, New York,
Sarah Lovell and the Constrained Feminism but her family moved to Castile when she
of Emily Stowe,” Canadian Medical Associa- was very young. She graduated from the
tion Journal 146, no. 6 (15 March 1992): Canandaigua Seminary and taught school
881–888; Fryer, Mary Beacock, Emily Stowe: for many years.
Doctor and Suffragist, Toronto: Hannah Insti- Many relatives encouraged her to become
tute; Dundurn Press (1990). a nurse because she had a gift for caring for
others who were ill. She decided to become
a physician and worked at the Castile Sani-
Sundquist, Alma tarium at the invitation of Dr. Cordelia
1880?–1940 Greene, who had founded the institution,
until she earned her medical degree at the
Alma Sundquist was a Swedish physician Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
active in the League of Nations. She special- in 1869.
ized in the treatment of venereal diseases of During the 1860s many traditional
women and children. Very active in estab- churches were organizing to preach, teach,
lishing the medical women’s organizations and lend medical aid in foreign countries.
of her day, she served as president of the Swain’s church had raised money to sup-
Medical Women’s International Association port a small mission in India, and Swain,
in 1934. who had just graduated and who was very
Born in Sweden around 1880, Sundquist religious, decided to serve.
192
Sylvain, Yvonne
In 1869, she left with another woman for 21, New York: Oxford University Press
India. She opened a small clinic and found (1999); Swain, Clara A., A Glimpse of India:
herself very busy. The first year she made Being a Collection of Extracts from the Letters of
hundreds of visits to zenanas, the female Dr. Clara A. Swain, First Medical Missionary to
part of Indian homes, and to other patients India of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Soci-
outside the clinic. ety of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Amer-
She began teaching classes in anatomy ica, New York: J. Pott (1909), reprinted in
and diseases the next year, and later some of History of Women Collection, no. 6170, New
the women became licensed physicians. As Haven, CT: Research Publications (1977).
more and more people came to the clinic,
Swain realized they would need a hospital.
A donor gave her an estate with over Sylvain, Yvonne
forty acres to build a dispensary, and in 1874 1907–1989
the first women’s hospital opened in India.
“At first we find it a little difficult to per- Yvonne Sylvain was the first female physi-
suade the women to let us examine them, cian of Haiti. She is one of the most re-
even to get at their pulse or to see their spected and admired Haitian women of all
tongue, but this reluctance soon wears off, time. “She is an esthete and an aristocrat, a
and some of the women now in the hospital daughter of an elite, extraordinarily edu-
have lost a good deal of their shyness and cated and accomplished family whose roots
meet us freely” (Swain 1977, 89). go back deep into Haiti’s violent and stub-
The Indian men were also very grateful for bornly independent history. She is the best
a female physician. “Quite a number of na- known woman in Haiti today” (“Doctor
tive gentlemen have called to pay their re- Number One” 1955, 93).
spects, as they say. Some of them have told She received her medical degree in 1940
me that they appreciate my having left my from the University of Haiti. She was the
native land and all my friends to come here first woman accepted into the medical
to care for their women who can never see a school, and following graduation she
physician of the other sex” (Swain 1977, 29). worked in clinics in Port-au-Prince, made
As she was increasingly called on by the house calls, educated people on hygiene and
sick, she herself became ill and had to travel birth control, and worked on gaining proper
to the United States to recover. She contin- therapies for cancer. She lived her life to
ued to return to India and was asked to be- serve others. She was active in the women’s
come the physician to the women of the suffrage movement. Sylvain died in 1989.
palace for the rajah of Khetri. She remained
in the palace for many years. Swain died on References: “Doctor Number One,” Holiday
Christmas Day, 1910. 17, no. 2 (February 1955): 92; Lovejoy, Esther
Pohl, Women Doctors of the World, New York:
References: Beatty, William K., “Swain, Macmillan (1957).
Clara A.,” American National Biography, vol.
193
194
T
Taussig, Helen Brooke til her retirement in 1963. She determined
1898–1986 early on that something could be done for
children suffering from tetralogy of Fallot,
Helen Taussig was a pioneer in pediatric which results in a lack of oxygen in the
cardiology. Her work with Alfred Blalock blood. She was one of the first doctors to re-
led to the “blue-baby operation,” which rev- ally understand congenital heart malforma-
olutionized cardiac surgery and gave hope tions.
to hundreds of parents who had children
with cardiac problems. She also was instru- Because a person with one congenital
mental in avoiding a national tragedy by anomaly not infrequently has others,
helping to keep thalidomide off the market. some of Taussig’s children with tetral-
This drug causes phocomelia, or shortened ogy of Fallot also had a persistent duc-
limbs. tus. As she studied these patients in
One of four children, she was born May her clinic and followed several of them
24, 1898, in Cambridge, Maine. Her mother, to the autopsy table, she began to ap-
Edith Guild, died when she was still a child. preciate the fact that children with
Her father, Frank W. Taussig, was a very both a persistent ductus and a tetral-
well-known professor who helped establish ogy did reasonably well, but would
the Harvard Graduate School of Business begin to deteriorate if the ductus spon-
Administration and is regarded as one of taneously closed later in childhood.
the founding fathers of economics in the Obviously, the ductus was serving to
United States. She received an education at accomplish the opposite of what it did
the Cambridge School for Girls and went on in the embryo: it allowed blood to pass
to Radcliffe in 1917. After two years she was from the high-pressure aorta into the
ready to get out from under her father’s low-pressure pulmonary artery be-
shadow and transferred to the University of yond the obstruction. By shunting the
California at Berkeley. circulation around the obstructed pul-
Upon graduation in 1921 she told her fa- monary outflow tract, it provided a
ther she wanted to become a doctor. He ad- bypass that markedly increased flow
vised her to go into public health, but she to the lungs. The logical solution for
wasn’t interested. She chose to go to Johns patients with tetralogy, then, was to
Hopkins, which admitted women, to study surgically build a ductus. To Helen
cardiology. She obtained her M.D. degree in Taussig, the building of a ductus
1927 and stayed at Johns Hopkins Hospital seemed a straightforward matter of
to train in cardiology and pediatrics. plumbing—put a length of pipe in the
In 1930 she began her career as head of right place, and thereby divert the blue
the Children’s Heart Clinic at Johns Hop- blood around the narrowed pul-
kins University and would remain there un- monary artery and into the lungs so
195
Taussig, Helen Brooke
196
Thompson, Mary Harris
almost as if we were again face to face tion at Troy Conference Academy in West
across a room. From time to time Teddy Poultney, Vermont, and Ft. Edward Colle-
needed to return to Hopkins for checkups, giate Institute in New York. She had to teach
and I always received another friendly, un- in her teens in order to support her educa-
pretentious letter. . . . Dr. Taussig will al- tion. She was a gifted student and devel-
ways be a heroine to me” (Carlisle 2001, 59). oped an early interest in physiology and
Taussig retired in 1963 but continued her anatomy, two subjects she was able to teach
work and stayed active in the field until she others.
was killed in a car accident on May 21, 1986, In 1863 she received her medical degree
in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. from the New England Female Medical Col-
lege, having spent one year at the New York
See also: Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Sey- Infirmary for Women and Children with the
mour; Kelsey, Frances Oldham Blackwell sisters, where she gained some of
References: Carlisle, Richard C., “Helen her clinical experience. She then decided to
Taussig—A Heroine,” Pharos of Alpha Omega try to establish a practice in Chicago.
Alpha–Honor Medical Society 64, no. 1 (Win- She found employment with the Sanitary
ter 2001): 59; Grigg, William, “The Thalido- Commission, where she worked with
mide Tragedy—25 Years Ago,” FDA Con- women and children who had lost their
sumer 21, no. 1 (February 1987): 14–17; husbands and fathers in the Civil War. She
Keene, Ann T., “Taussig, Helen Brooke,” also helped many of the returning soldiers
American National Biography, vol. 21, New with their medical needs. It wasn’t long be-
York: Oxford University Press (1999); Mc- fore she decided to raise money for a hospi-
Namara, Dan G., et al., “Historical Mile- tal to tend to the overwhelming numbers of
stones: Helen Brooke Taussig: 1898–1986,” women and children seeking medical help.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology The Chicago Hospital for Women and Chil-
10, no. 3 (September 1987): 662–671; Nu- dren opened in 1865. She became the sur-
land, Sherwin B., Doctors: The Biography of geon and top physician.
Medicine, New York: Knopf (1988); Parks, Even though she had a medical degree,
Edward A., “Foreword,” in Helen B. Taus- she applied to Rush Medical College for
sig, Congenital Malformations of the Heart; more training. The college denied her appli-
Taussig, Helen B., Congenital Malformations cation until she enlisted the help of William
of the Heart, New York: Commonwealth Byford of Chicago Medical College. She
Fund (1947); Taussig, Helen B., “Dangerous graduated in 1870. More women were not
Tranquility,” Science 136, no. 3517 (25 May able to follow due to numerous objections
1962): 683; Taussig, Helen B., “Little Choice by male students and faculty. After gradua-
and a Stimulating Environment,” Journal of tion, she and Byford founded the Woman’s
the American Medical Women’s Association 36, Hospital Medical College in connection
no. 2 (February 1981): 43–44. with her hospital.
She was a professor at the college and also
maintained her position at the hospital, be-
coming one of the best-known women sur-
Thompson, Mary Harris geons in the nation. She specialized in pelvic
1829–1895 and abdominal surgery and also sought to
improve current surgical instruments by in-
Mary Thompson was a physician and sur- venting her own. Because of her compe-
geon. She established a hospital and a med- tence, some males in the field who had
ical college in Chicago so that women could doubts about a woman’s capacity to practice
gain both academic and practical experience medicine came to change their views. She
in the field. published numerous articles on a variety of
Born on April 15, 1829, she was the medical topics and used her influence to aid
daughter of John Harris Thompson and Ca- women in pursuing careers as physicians.
lista Corbin. She received her early educa- She also opened a nurses-training program
197
Tilghman, Shirley Marie Caldwell
198
Turner-Warwick, Margaret
199
U
University of Bologna views regarding women receiving higher
1088?– education, as well as teaching. Beginning in
1772, Laura Bassi taught anatomy and
The first university in the world, the Uni- physics at the University of Bologna.
versity of Bologna was founded about 1088.
Although it became well-known mainly for See also: Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina
law studies, prominent women professors References: Rashdall, Hastings, The Univer-
in the sciences, including medicine, taught sities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 1:
there. By the eighteenth century the Enlight- Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Oxford: Clarendon
enment had brought about more liberal Press (1936).
201
University of Salerno
202
V
Van Hoosen, Bertha Believing that women had a right to bear
1863–1952 children painlessly, she was a strong propo-
nent of twilight sleep (the use of scopo-
Bertha Van Hoosen was a strong organizer lamine-morphine) during childbirth, a con-
of women in the medical field. She was an troversial subject. Van Hoosen closely
outstanding surgeon and founded the monitored patients using the drug and had
American Medical Women’s Association in a very good success rate in delivering
order to keep women abreast of current healthy babies. She published a book on the
events, develop a voice for female physi- use of scopolamine-morphine in 1915.
cians and enhance their image, and, most Responding to a growing need for a sup-
important, provide a supportive network port system for women in the field, she
for women physicians. founded the American Medical Women’s
Born in Stony Creek, Michigan, on March Association in 1915. She was an excellent
26, 1863, she was the daughter of a farmer, surgeon, looked up to by her students.
Joshua Van Hoosen, and a teacher, Sarah Other women in the field best know her for
Ann Taylor. She attended school in Pontiac, her leadership qualities. She died in Romeo,
Michigan, and then, despite her parents’ Michigan, on June 7, 1952.
misgivings and after teaching and nursing
to earn the tuition, enrolled at the Univer- See also: American Women’s Hospitals
sity of Michigan Medical School, from References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
which she graduated in 1888. During her Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
studies there she encountered much gender (1957); McGovern, Constance M., “Van
discrimination and fought for better clinical Hoosen, Bertha,” American National Biogra-
experience, as she wanted to become a sur- phy, vol. 22, New York: Oxford University
geon. She gained more clinical experience Press (1999).
after she went to the New England Hospital
for Women and Children in Boston, and also
had experience as an intern at the Women’s Vejjabul, Pierra Hoon
Hospital of Detroit. 1909–
She opened her own practice in Chicago
in 1892. In the early years, she found it very Pierra Vejjabul, a physician, worked to bet-
difficult to attract patients, but as her repu- ter the social standing of women in Thai-
tation grew, so did her practice. Her contin- land. Confronting many obstacles, she
ued learning and teaching at various uni- fought for the rights of all in her country,
versities around Chicago culminated in her particularly children and the poor, to ade-
appointment in 1918 at Loyola University quate living conditions and medical care.
Medical School as a professor and head of Born in Lampang on November 27, 1909,
obstetrics. Vejjabul was the daughter of Thongkich
203
Villa, Amelia Chopitea
Hoontrakul and Phon He, a third wife. Vej- she boldly opposed unhygienic prac-
jabul witnessed some of the rivalry among tices in child care, the custom of
her father’s wives and was very much in polygamy, legal prostitution, and some
support of monogamy at an early age. other customs of her people, in her de-
A French doctor who helped her mother termination to dignify women and to
influenced her to go into medicine; she was raise living conditions—especially
also deeply affected by an unwed mother among the underprivileged. (“Vej-
who committed suicide, dying in her arms. jabul” 1964, 455)
She decided to work on raising the status of
women as well as advocating better rela- Currently Vejjabul lives in Thailand.
tionships between children and mothers.
Her father was against her planned ca- References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
reer, so she ran away to Saigon when she Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
was only sixteen. Her father brought her (1957); “Vejjabul (Kunying) Pierra,” Current
back home. Later she ran away to Paris and Biography Yearbook 1964, New York: Wilson
went to the Sorbonne School of Medicine. (1964).
She had to work and sell many of her per-
sonal belongings to make ends meet, but
she managed to graduate in 1936 with a Villa, Amelia Chopitea
medical degree from the Sorbonne School of 1899?–1942
Medicine.
She went back to Thailand and worked for Amelia Villa was the first female physician
the government, combating venereal dis- in Bolivia. She graduated from the Univer-
ease. She was strongly against prostitution sity of San Francisco Xavier in Sucre in 1926.
and helped with blood tests for people from She did some graduate work in Paris and
all walks of life to determine whether they also founded the Pabellon de Niños at the
had syphilis. She established some organiza- Oruro Hospital. The Bolivian government
tions to fight prostitution and worked to en- recognized her service.
act the law in 1960 that abolished it.
She also worked to aid the blind and as- References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
sist poor mothers and children, taking nu- Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
merous children into her own home until (1957).
there was a place for them with a family.
Premier Luang Pibul Songram dubbed her
Vejjabul, or “complete doctor.” She received Villa-Komaroff, Lydia
much recognition and many awards for her 1947–
work on educating the public about proper
health care, including the Order of the Lydia Villa-Komaroff was involved in the
White Elephant for meritorious service. discovery that insulin could be produced
from bacteria and has done extensive re-
In evaluating the pioneering humani- search to add to the knowledge of recombi-
tarian contributions that Dr. Pierra Vej- nant DNA. She is the third Mexican Ameri-
jabul has made to the improvement of can who has earned a Ph.D. in a science
medical, sanitary, and moral standards field.
in her country, journalists of the Amer- Born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on Au-
ican press have called her the Jane Ad- gust 7, 1947, she is the daughter of violinist
dams of Thailand and the Dr. Albert and teacher John Vias Villa and Drucilla
Schweitzer of Asia. A conventionally Jaramillo Villa, a social worker. She grew up
reared daughter of a well-to-do family, with five siblings in a family where educa-
she defied tradition by becoming a tion was highly valued. She developed an
doctor. Then as Dr. Pierra, the name by early interest in science and pursued a col-
which her patients generally know her, lege education.
204
Villa-Komaroff, Lydia
She began her education at the University Her work on recombinant DNA was use-
of Washington and then transferred to ful in providing a technique to study genes
Goucher College along with her future hus- within bacteria. This led to her work on
band, Anthony Komaroff. They married af- cloning the insulin gene in rats, which even-
ter Lydia graduated with a degree in biol- tually led to success in producing insulin for
ogy in 1970. She went to work at the people from bacteria. Villa-Komaroff is cur-
National Institutes of Health and became in- rently vice-president for research at North-
terested in molecular biology, pursuing fur- western University.
ther study at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where she obtained her Ph.D. References: Proffitt, Pamela, Notable Women
in 1975. Scientists, Detroit: Gale (1999).
205
W
Wald, Florence Schorske States, in Branford, Connecticut, and led the
1917– movement for better understanding of the
issues facing those who were dying. She
Florence Wald brought the hospice move- feels hospice is not for everyone, as some
ment to the United States in 1974. She was people want to fight to the end. Others who
inspired by her visit to St. Christopher’s would have benefited have not always had
Hospice, which Cicely Saunders founded in the opportunity. “As more and more peo-
Great Britain. ple—families of hospice patients and hos-
Wald was born in New York City on April pice volunteers—are exposed to this new
19, 1917, to Theodore Alexander Schorske model of how to approach end-of-life care,
and Gertrude Goldschmidt Schorske. She we are taking what was essentially a hidden
attended Mount Holyoke College and grad- scene, death, an unknown, and making it a
uated in 1938. Wald received her master’s in reality. We are showing people that there are
nursing from Yale University in 1941. She meaningful ways to cope with this very dif-
worked for the New York Visiting Nurses ficult situation” (Friedrich 1999, 1685).
Association early in her career and also Wald differs from Saunders on the ques-
gained experience at Babies Hospital in tion of physician-assisted suicide, feeling
New York City and Children’s Hospital in that there are times when this option should
Boston. be available to patients; Saunders feels this
She spent six years in research at the Sur- approach is never justified. Wald has advo-
gical Metabolism Unit of the New York Col- cated and been supportive of better educa-
lege of Physicians and later taught psychi- tion for nurses and others involved with the
atric nursing at Rutgers State University. care of the terminally ill. Her initial push for
Following this work, she took a position at hospices in the United States has grown
the Yale University School of Nursing as an from the first hospice in Connecticut to over
assistant professor of psychiatric nursing. 2,500 nationwide. Wald lives in Westport,
This is where she has spent most of her ca- Connecticut, and is currently involved in
reer and where she still works today. She hospice care in prisons. She married in 1959
was the dean of the School of Nursing for and has two children.
nine years.
In 1963, Cicely Saunders spoke at Yale, See also: Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode
greatly impressing Wald. She felt Saunders References: American Nurses Association,
was speaking to many of the issues she and “The Hall of Fame Inductees, Florence S.
her colleagues were confronting. She made Wald” (1996), http://www.nursingworld.
a decision soon after to become involved in org/hof/waldfs.htm; Friedrich, M. J., “Hos-
the hospice movement. pice Care in the United States: A Conversa-
Wald was instrumental in the establish- tion with Florence S. Wald,” JAMA 281, no.
ment of the first hospice in the United 18 (12 May 1999): 1683–1685; Who’s Who of
207
Wald, Lillian D.
Wald, Lillian D.
1867–1940
208
Walker, Mary Edwards
of New York (1989); Daniels, Doris Groshen, rary Opinions about Mary Walker: A Shy
“Wald, Lillian D.,” American National Biogra- Pioneer of Therapeutic Neurology,” Neurol-
phy, vol. 22, New York: Oxford University ogy 51, no. 5 (November 1998): 1433–1439;
Press (1999); Duffus, Robert Luther, Lillian “Mary Broadfoot Walker,” Lancet 2, no. 7893
Wald, Neighbor and Crusader, New York: (7 December 1974): 1401–1402; Schmidt, Ja-
Macmillan (1938); Wald, Lillian D., The cob Edward, Medical Discoveries: Who and
House on Henry Street, New York: Henry When, Springfield, IL: Thomas (1959).
Holt (1915).
209
Wars and Epidemics
as a captive of the Confederate army until were accepted as healers in times of great
she was released in a prisoner exchange. need. They then were able to use their expe-
When the war ended she was the first rience to further their careers.
woman to receive a Congressional Medal of For centuries, women were seen as not ca-
Honor for her heroism. She then traveled pable of fruitful work.
abroad and lectured on various subjects.
When she returned home, she lectured and Roman men, as we have seen, were
wrote about dress reform, marriage, the perceived as ambitious, energetic, re-
war, women’s rights, health, and hygiene. sourceful, aggressive, and successful.
Walker was a colorful character with In claiming their brides they demon-
many interests who voiced her opinion strate their manhood and give evi-
whether asked or not. She aided in the dence of their ability to maintain a se-
progress of women in general and used her cure and prosperous household in the
skills as a physician to save many a soldier future. Women, on the other hand,
during the Civil War. were represented as weak, passive
Her Medal of Honor was rescinded in bearers of children whose active alle-
1917 when Congress tried to change the re- giance is evoked principally through
quirements of the medal to make it more their children, by appeal to the pas-
prestigious. Walker refused to return hers, sions (cupiditas and amor), and by their
wearing it daily until she died. President own awareness of their helpless de-
Carter reinstated her medal posthumously pendence on men. (Miles 1995, 215)
in 1977. Walker died in Oswego on February
21, 1919, just a little over a year before Women have been instrumental in coping
women gained the right to vote in the with epidemics. In the seventeenth, eigh-
United States. teenth, and nineteenth centuries in the
United States alone, there have been numer-
References: Chaff, S. L., “Walker, Mary Ed- ous regional outbreaks of influenza, ty-
wards,” Dictionary of American Medical Biog- phoid fever, cholera, yellow fever, and
raphy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press measles. The yellow fever epidemic in 1852
(1984); Snyder, Charles McCool, Dr. Mary affected the entire nation, with the most
Walker: The Little Lady in Pants, New York: concentrated fatalities in the New Orleans
Vantage Press (1962); Spiegel, Allen D., and area. In 1775 the influenza epidemic reached
Peter B. Suskind, “Mary Edwards Walker, worldwide proportions and required
M.D.: A Feminist Physician a Century ahead women to travel long distances to care for
of Her Time,” Journal of Community Health the sick outside their own communities.
21, no. 3 (June 1996): 211–235; Woodward, Women’s vital work in times of crisis did
Helen Beal, The Bold Women, New York: Far- not necessarily lead to a wholehearted belief
rar, Straus and Young (1953). in their competence as health care workers.
Even as late as the twentieth century, many
medical schools preferred male candidates.
Wars and Epidemics In Great Britain “the most comprehensible
explanation of the medical schools’ reaction
Through the ages, the most optimal time for against women students is in terms of sim-
women to exercise their right to practice ple ‘backlash,’ the reassertion of patriarchal
medicine seemed to be when countries prerogatives after the war, in the first in-
waged war or were faced with overwhelm- stance, and in the context of competition for
ing epidemics. When deaths were imminent employment during the later 1920s” (Dy-
and quickly occurring, even the most ardent house 1998, 122).
antifemale medical professionals accepted Women’s contributions in the medical
whatever help was available. Florence field were only a small part of their war ef-
Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, forts. They also took the men’s jobs while
and Clara Barton are just a few women who they served in the military. Yet whether in
210
Wars and Epidemics
the field tending to soldiers’ wounds or at tary. During the Vietnam War and the Gulf
home doing the men’s work, women still War, women served in increasing numbers.
had very little power. They continued to be By World War II, professional bodies in
less valued both by society and under the Britain were more accepting of women
law: “Employers in all nations paid women physicians. The Report of the Interdepartmen-
at standards well below wages for men with tal Committee on Medical Schools, published
equivalent skills, denying them fringe bene- in 1944, attests, “We believe that prudence
fits whenever possible” (Kolko 1994, 96). and good sense dictate that the promise of
In the medical field, women who had developing into a good doctor shall be the
served on the battlefield often lost their status overriding factor in the selection of students
during peacetime. “During the First World and that unsuitability for a medical career
War there really was nothing a woman doc- shall be the sole barrier to admission to a
tor could not do in the war zone. They treated medical school” (Goodenough 1944, 97).
virtually every kind of wound and disease, In the United States, women have contin-
they underwent the same hardships, priva- ued to enter the medical profession in both
tions and dangers as men, became prisoners the private and government sectors. From
of war, took part in devastating retreats, and 1970 to 2000, the number of women physi-
worked under shells and bombs. None of this cians tripled in proportion to men (Ameri-
valuable experience advanced their career can Medical Association 2002, 316–317).
prospects. And it took the outbreak of an- Nursing continues to be a field dominated
other world war to gain medical women by women (Scanlon 2001, 21). Despite
commissioned rank in the British army” progress, however, some feel that women
(Leneman 1994, 177). In 1943 the U.S. Con- physicians will never gain equality with
gress finally authorized the commissioning their male colleagues, particularly in the
of women physicians as officers in the mili- United States:
211
Wauneka, Annie Dodge
There is a “glass ceiling” on women Physicians Will Never Be True Equals in the
physicians’ upward mobility. They are American Medical Profession,” in Gender,
kept from top-level positions, I will ar- Work, and Medicine: Women and the Medical
gue, through the subtle process of a Division of Labor, edited by Elianna Riska
kind of colleague boycott—not keep- and Katarina Wegar, London: Sage (1993);
ing them out entirely, but not includ- “Memories of War: How Vietnam-Era
ing them in ways that allow them to Nurses Are Coping Today,” USA Today 121,
replace the senior members of the no. 2574 (March 1993): 30–31; Miles, Gary B.,
medical community. This process is Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome, Ithaca, NY:
the “Salieri phenomenon”—a combi- Cornell University Press (1995); Murray,
nation of faint praise and subtle deni- Flora, Women as Army Surgeons, London:
gration of their abilities to lead that Hodder and Stoughton (1920); Scanlon,
delegitimates women physicians’ bids William S., “Nursing Workforce: Recruit-
to compete for positions of great au- ment and Retention of Nurses and Nurse
thority. The reason men are so reluc- Aides Is a Growing Concern,” Washington,
tant to allow women into the inner cir- DC: General Accounting Office (2001); Tan-
cles, I contend, is their fear that if too nenbaum, R. J., “Earnestness, Temperance,
many women become leaders, the pro- Industry, the Definition and Uses of Profes-
fession will “tip” and become sional Character among Nineteenth-Cen-
women’s work—and men will lose tury American Physicians,” Journal of the
prestige, income and authority. (Lorber History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 49, no.
1993, 63) 2 (April 1994): 251–283.
212
Weizmann, Vera
members with her father, a strong advocate sity of Nebraska Press (2001); Suarez, Dar-
of education and of helping the Navajo peo- lene Mary, “Annie Dodge Wauneka,” in
ple, and began to realize the poverty of her Frank Magill, ed., Great Lives from History:
tribe. She pursued further education with American Women Series, vol. 5, Pasadena,
the U.S. Public Health Service. CA: Salem Press (1995).
In dealing with ailments in her tribe, she
faced shortages of medical supplies, sub-
standard living conditions, and age-old Weizmann, Vera
customs. 1879–1966
Navajos classify diseases by cause Vera Weizmann was a physician and well-
rather than by symptom, maintaining known as the first lady of Israel; her hus-
that all trouble and illness are a result band, Chaim Weizmann, became the coun-
of a state of disharmony with the sur- try’s first president in 1949. She worked to
rounding world, other people, and the improve public health in Israel. Born in
supernatural environment. When all southern Russia in Rostov-on-Don as Vera
things in the universe are in tune, peo- Chatzman, she traveled to Geneva for a med-
ple have good health. But countless ical education. “The small group of young
events can upset this harmony to women to which Vira Chatzman belonged
cause sickness: a person can have a differed in a marked way from the general
bad dream, break a taboo, or come run of Jewish girl-students in the Swiss uni-
into contact with such contaminating versities of that time. Their looks, their de-
forces as spirits of the dead, non- portment, their outlook on life, set them
Navajos, or Navajo witches. A whole apart. They were far more attractive than
range of animals, including snakes, their contemporaries from the Pale of Settle-
bears, coyotes, and porcupines, can ment; they were less absorbed in Russian
bring illness. Touching a tree struck by revolutionary politics; not that they were in-
lightning or gathering and cooking different; but they paid more attention to
with the wood from such a tree was their studies, and less to the public meetings
thought to be a cause of tuberculosis. and endless discussions which took up so
(Niethammar 2001, 87) much of the time of the average Russian stu-
dent abroad” (Weizmann 1949, 95).
She married George Wauneka in 1929, Like her husband, she was very active in
and they reared six children. She was highly Zionist causes and organizations. She also
recognized for her good works during her was instrumental in establishing health care
lifetime. and disease prevention programs in her
“A humanitarian and advocate for better country. Following her husband’s death in
health, Dr. Annie, as she was known after 1952, she carried on the work he had started
she received an honorary doctorate degree with the Weizmann Institute of Science in
from the Navajo Community College, has Rehovot, Israel.
been credited with saving thousands of She had two sons, Benjamin and Michael.
lives of tribal members when she almost Michael was killed in World War II. She
single-handedly convinced Navajos to go to died in September 1966.
doctors to get treatment for tuberculosis”
(Donovan 1997, A1). She died on November References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women
10, 1997, from Alzheimer’s disease. Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan
(1957); Weizmann, Chaim, Trial and Error: The
References: Donovan, Bill, “Life Devoted to Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann, New York:
Health Care,” Navajo Times 36, no. 44 (13 Harper (1949); “Weizmann, Vera” [obit], New
November 1997): A1; Niethammar, Carolyn York Times (25 September 1966): 85.
J., I’ll Go and Do More: Annie Dodge Wauneka,
Navajo Leader and Activist, Lincoln: Univer-
213
Western Reserve College
214
Williams, Anna Wessels
dies as she understood the use of, to the sick http://www.rki.de/GESUND/ ARCHIV/
poor around her. Many a really serious case IES/SWEDEN.HTM.
of eye disorder has been cured by her; many
a wounded or otherwise injured hand or
foot healed by her skilful hand” (Whately Williams, Anna Wessels
1890, 61). 1863–1954
In 1879, Whately established a medical
mission that served the needs of a poor Anna Williams was a bacteriologist and
community. To help with the patient load, pathologist who partnered with William
she obtained the services of a Syrian med- Hallock Park to identify the bacillus
ical missionary who had been trained at the Corynebacterium diphtheriae. This work led to
American Medical College in Beirut. She the development of an antitoxin serum for
died on March 9, 1889. the treatment of and immunization against
diphtheria, which had caused the deaths of
References: Cale, Patricia S., “A British Mis- many children. Williams’s research led to a
sionary in Egypt: Mary Louisa Whately,” Vi- greatly diminished occurrence of diphtheria
tae Scholasticae 3, no. 1 (1984): 131–143; around the world, and her findings are still
Whately, Elizabeth Jane, The Life and Work of useful to physicians today. Also important
Mary Louisa Whately, London: Religious was her work in perfecting the diagnosis of
Tract Society (1890). rabies.
Born March 17, 1863, in Hackensack,
New Jersey, she was the second of six chil-
Widerstrom, Karolina dren of William and Jane Williams. She re-
1856–1949 ceived her early education at home from
her parents before becoming a teacher at
Karolina Widerstrom was the first woman the New Jersey State Normal School in
doctor in Sweden. She paved the way for Trenton, New Jersey, in 1883. She taught for
others by becoming a successful practicing a few years and then decided to become a
gynecologist, social reformer, and writer. physician after her sister almost died from
Born in Sweden in 1856, Widerstrom be- the delivery of a stillborn child. Her parents
came a physician in 1888. She was a teacher consented, and she entered the Women’s
on sex and hygiene and wrote a book, Hy- Medical College, which had become a
giene for Women, that was widely used for branch of the New York Infirmary for
decades. Well ahead of her time, in 1897 she Women and Children.
implemented sex education for girls’ After obtaining her medical degree, she
schools in Stockholm. She lectured on the stayed at the college in various teaching po-
needs of infants, the importance of training sitions before furthering her education in
parents in childcare, and the detrimental ef- Europe at several universities and hospitals.
fects of early parenthood. Her research on diphtheria began during an
Widerstrom was also concerned about the epidemic of the disease when she worked at
harm to society of the accepted profession a new diagnostic lab for the Health Depart-
of prostitution. Her success and good repu- ment of the City of New York. She and Park
tation were inspirational to future women worked with a mild tonsillar diphtheria to
physicians in Sweden. She died in 1949. isolate a pure culture and develop an anti-
toxin to the disease.
References: Andreen, Andrea, “Women Williams was also very good at writing
Doctors in Sweden,” Journal of the American for both the scientist and the layperson. She
Medical Women’s Association 2, no. 2 (February and Park coauthored the second, 1905, edi-
1947): 44; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women tion of the eleven-edition Pathogenic Mi-
Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan croorganisms Including Bacteria and Protozoa:
(1957); Trost, Jan E., and Mai-Briht Bergstrom- A Practical Manual for Students, Physicians
Walan, “Sweden (Konungariket Sverige),” and Health Officers. In 1929, she also collabo-
215
Williams, Cicely Delphin
rated with Park on Who’s Who among the Mi- not sufficient for both the newborn and the
crobes, a book for the nonprofessional. older child. Babies who lost their mothers or
Later, Williams worked on treatments for had mothers with health problems also suf-
strep infections and pneumonia. She did re- fered from the disease. These children were
search on scarlet fever and was the first per- often passed around to female relatives who
son to fully understand that rabies began could take turns breast-feeding, but usually
with a change in brain cells. This discovery this practice did not provide enough milk to
led to diagnosis in the early stages of the keep the child healthy.
disease. Williams was nationally recognized The symptoms of kwashiorkor were slow
for her work. In 1907 she was appointed to develop. “The baby might have been per-
chair of the American Public Health Associ- fectly normal at birth, after four to twelve
ation’s Committee on the Standard Methods months of such a defective diet it would be-
for the Diagnosis of Rabies. Williams died come highly irritable, lose weight, and have
on November 20, 1954. attacks of diarrhea. Its hands and feet
would swell, and over a period of months
References: Bailey, Martha J., American its hair would gradually become pale and
Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary, scanty, and its skin would turn a dull red-
Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO (1994); Schafer, dish color. If untreated at this stage, it
Elizabeth D., “Williams, Anna Wessels,” in would almost surely die of a progressive
John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., disease characterized by a terrible rash, an
American National Biography, vol. 23, New extensive sloughing of the skin, and an en-
York: Oxford University Press (1999); larged fatty liver” (Downs 1952, 443).
Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, Williams wasn’t able to perform any au-
Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Bio- topsies until she was in Accra in 1930. When
graphical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green- children were about to die, the mothers
wood Press (1996). would take them back to their tribal
grounds. Some workers told Williams this
practice was a matter of custom, but she lis-
Williams, Cicely Delphin tened to the mothers and discovered the
1893–1992 real reason:
Cicely Williams was a British physician. She Apparently the bus companies
was the first to describe kwashiorkor, a dis- charged more to transport a corpse
ease of young children that can result in and nothing for the live baby slung on
death. its mother’s back in a shawl. So Cicely
Born on December 2, 1893, in Kew Park, offered to pay the extra fare if the
Jamaica, she was the daughter of James mother would allow her to “do a small
Rowland Williams and Margaret E. C. operation before the baby goes home.”
Williams. Her father was the director of ed- It was so simple, but no other Euro-
ucation in Jamaica. She received her early pean had thought of eavesdropping on
education at Bath High School for Girls, the natives before. The nearest labora-
later attended Somerville College at Oxford, tory was two miles away and the body
and then obtained her medical degree at had to be taken immediately. . . . It was
Kings College. extremely difficult to define the certain
She worked for the Colonial Medical Ser- cause of death because there would be
vice from 1929 to 1948, serving on the so many contributory factors—in-
African Gold Coast. It was here that she evitably worms, probably yaws, cer-
witnessed a large number of children suffer- tainly evidence of improper diet—and
ing from kwashiorkor, a disease caused by a frequently the child had died of pneu-
diet high in carbohydrates and low in pro- monia anyway. If the autopsy showed
tein. Older babies often suffered from this a lot of fat in the liver and oedema of
disease when the mother’s breast milk was the neck if not the whole of the gall-
216
Women of Color in Medicine
217
Women of Color in Medicine
Women of color in medicine have to face both gender and racial discrimination (Corbis)
rights concentrated upon race. The in- “Whenever we talked about the war and
ternational convention with the great- what the fighting was all about, someone
est number of signatories is that on would mention Hitler and his racist attitude
race. Within the United Nations, more toward blacks. We had no doubt about
resolutions deal with race than with Hitler’s prejudice because we had all heard
any other subject. And certainly one of the story about his snub of Jesse Owens dur-
the most long-standing and frustrating ing the 1936 Olympic Games. It never
problems in the United Nations is that dawned on us that there was a real irony in
of race. (Lauren 1996, 4) the fact that the United States was trying to
eradicate Nazi racism with a military
During World War I, black female nurses formed along racist principles” (Conner
made some headway in Britain. After the 1985, 29).
war, they continued to fight for equal access Mary Mahoney opened a new profession
to the profession. Having been refused by for black women by graduating from the
the Red Cross, all the armed forces, and New England Hospital for Women and
other voluntary agencies, they finally Children School of Nursing in Boston in
achieved some success when in 1945 the U.S. 1879. In the early years of the National As-
Navy accepted nurses regardless of color. sociation of Colored Graduate Nurses
During the end of World War II, Colonel (NACGN), both Mahoney and Martha
Florence A. Blanchfield, the Army Nurse Franklin worked hard to organize black
Corps superintendent, supported women of women. A major event was the dissolution
color in the ranks because more nurses were of the NACGN in 1951 when the American
desperately needed. Like black servicemen, Nurses Association (ANA) accepted blacks
they had to work in segregated units in the in the organization regardless of the policies
beginning. One black soldier commented, of state units.
218
Women of Color in Medicine
Most of the early black nurses could work Ready, and Petersdorf 1994, 472). In the
in only a few hospitals. By the 1950s not 1800s, some smaller liberal arts institutions
much had changed, but the ANA worked to had made an effort to educate blacks. The
make the public aware of discrimination. board of Oberlin College in 1835 “declared
Women of color have often found allies in that ‘the education of the people of color is
white women who have struggled to gain a matter of great interest and should be en-
credence and status in male-dominated so- couraged and sustained in this institution’”
cieties and professions, and a combined (Duffy and Goldberg 1997, 137). Policies
force of both black and white nurses helped such as Oberlin College’s remained the ex-
the cause of advancing black women ception well into the twentieth century.
nurses. In 1953, Marie Mink became an as- “Prior to 1960, no selective college or uni-
sistant professor in obstetric nursing at the versity was making determined efforts to
University of Oklahoma. She was the first seek out and admit substantial numbers of
black woman to hold that position. African Americans” (Bowen and Bok 1998,
Black women physicians had the same 4). Even in the 1960s, civil rights awareness
problems as black nurses. Many women’s in education focused on men of color.
medical schools lacked facilities for women Numerous studies show that people of
to gain clinical experience, but white women color perform as well as whites on licensing
could at least obtain a nursing position in or- exams if they are given the same educa-
der to observe doctors and surgeons. Most tional opportunities as whites. Many agree
U.S. hospitals were segregated until the mid- that the “pool size eventually can be in-
to late twentieth century, and black hospitals creased by improving the socioeconomic
were few in number. Hospitals with all- well being for all African Americans”
white staffs that allowed black women (Thomas 1999, 71). Thus the issue is social
physicians to use their facilities were rare. As and political as well as educational.
May Edward Chinn noted, “Even if a hospi- In the medical profession, ethnic diversity
tal was around the ‘bend of the road’ it was is especially lacking in the specialties:
useless to us who were denied any privi- “There is little doubt that women, African
leges whatsoever of its facilities. We man- Americans, and Hispanics, have fewer op-
aged the best we could” (Warren 1999, 27). portunities to enter, or once in, to become
Women of color in medicine still face bar- contributing members of orthopaedic pro-
riers. A noticeable problem is the lack of role grams in the United States. The expressed
models for young girls of color. The contri- reasons for this by faculty members some-
butions of blacks and other nonwhite times sound reasonable, but on analysis all
groups, male or female, in medicine are of- are spurious” (Mankin 1999, 85).
ten missing from history books. There is a Hispanics and Native Americans as well
“dearth of narratives or biographies of sci- as descendants of Oriental countries have
ence-trained Blacks, particularly Black had the same problems as blacks in addi-
women” (Warren 1999, xiii). tion to facing barriers specific to their eth-
Over the past few decades in the United nic groups. The women of these groups are
States there has been emphasis on increas- also seen, many times, as inferior to their
ing the enrollments of students from under- male counterparts as well as inferior to
represented groups, but the effort has met white females in the same occupation. Late
with limited success. People of color are still in the nineteenth century and into the
underrepresented in the medical profession. twentieth, many medical missionaries
In North America, and specifically the trained indigenous women to serve as
United States, enrollment of black students nurses and physicians.
in medical schools was only 2.2 percent in Women and even some men of color
1964, with the majority of them attending have taken advantage of the opportunity to
all-black schools: Howard University in serve minority populations. Many work-
Washington, D.C., and Meharry Medical ing-class neighborhood clinics have long
College in Nashville, Tennessee (Nickens, waiting lines, and most white male physi-
219
Wong-Staal, Flossie
cians do not choose to work in under- udice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Dis-
served communities. crimination, Boulder, CO: Westview Press
Most race research does not include fe- (1996); Mankin, Henry J., “Diversity in Or-
males. Some have realized this oversight; thopaedics,” Clinical Orthopaedics and Related
for instance, in Great Britain, “a growing Research: Issues of Minorities in Medicine and
number of studies have begun to explore Orthopaedics 363 (May 1999): 85–87; Nickens,
the interrelationship between racism and Herbert W., Timothy P. Ready, and Robert G.
sexism, racial inequality and gender in- Petersdorf, “Project 3000 by 2000: Racial and
equality and the position of African- Ethnic Diversity in U.S. Medical Schools,”
Caribbean, Asian and other migrant women New England Journal of Medicine 331, no. 7
in British society. This has helped to over- (1994): 472–476; Solomos, John, Racism and
come the gender blind approach of many Society, New York: St. Martin’s Press (1996);
studies of racial relations, though there are Staupers, Mabel Keaton, No Time for Preju-
still many aspects of the position of black dice: A Story of the Integration of Negroes in
and ethnic minority women which have re- Nursing in the United States, New York:
ceived little attention” (Solomos 1996, 13). Macmillan (1961); Thomas, Claudia L.,
More research focused on women of color “African Americans and Women in Or-
is needed to underscore empirical evidence thopaedic Residency: The Johns Hopkins
that “abilities [are] separate and unrelated to Experience,” Clinical Orthopaedics and Related
gender, color, race, creed, language, religion, Research: Issues of Minorities in Medicine and
or country of origin. A scientist is a scientist, Orthopaedics 363 (May 1999): 65–71; Warren,
not an African American person who does Wini, Black Women Scientists in the United
science. A surgeon is a surgeon, not a woman States, Bloomington: Indiana University
from Honduras who speaks the language Press (1999); Watson, Wilbur H., Against the
with an accent and also does hand surgery. Odds: Blacks in the Profession of Medicine in the
Judge them only on what they are and are in United States, New Brunswick, NJ: Transac-
fact, put on earth to do: care for patients, tion (1999).
teach, and do research” (Mankin 1999, 86).
220
Wright, Jane Cooke
221
Wright, Jane Cooke
tonigrin. During this time she published has two daughters and lives in New York
quite extensively; she has an impressive bib- City.
liography documenting the chemotherapy
research she was involved with. References: “Wright, Jane C.,” Current Biog-
She became the associate dean and pro- raphy, New York: H. W. Wilson (1968);
fessor of surgery at New York Medical Col- Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,
lege in 1967. Her duties broadened to heart Notable Women in the Life Sciences, Westport,
disease and stroke as well as cancer. She CT: Greenwood Press (1996).
Y
Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman
1921–
223
Yoshioka, Yayoi
224
Z
Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth Samuel Gregory, because she wanted to
1829–1902 further her education.
Gregory and she disagreed over the cur-
Marie Zakrzewska was an early proponent riculum. She wanted to incorporate some
of women becoming physicians and laboratory practices into the students’ work,
founded the New England Hospital for such as dissection and the use of micro-
Women and Children after working with scopes, but could not persuade him. She
Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell at also wanted to establish more rigorous
the New York Infirmary for Women and qualifications for diplomas. “But I found
Children and as a professor at the New En- very little support, and I was told that it
gland Female Medical College. would be hard to disappoint some women
Born in Berlin, Germany, on September 6, who had perseveringly labored for a
1829, Zakrzewska was the daughter of Lud- diploma. According to my ideas, which
wig Martin Zakrzewska and Caroline Fred- agree, I know, with the ideas of the profes-
ericke Wilhelmina Urban. Her father sion generally, perseverance alone does not
worked in the military and later as a civil entitle persons to receive a diploma. Even
servant. They had very little money, and her should a disappointment prove to be a
mother worked as a midwife to help sup- deathblow to the student, it is better that
port the family. She had trained at the Royal one should die rather than receive permis-
Charity Hospital in Berlin. sion to kill many” (Zakrzewska 1924, 282).
Zakrzewska many times went with her She felt compelled to leave the college and
mother on rounds and became interested in did so in 1862.
midwifery as a profession. She did well at Upon her departure, she immediately
the Royal Charity Hospital in Berlin and went to work setting up the New England
gained the position of head midwife in 1852. Hospital for Women and Children. She had
She stayed there less than a year before she helped the Blackwells set up the New York
left with her sister for New York City to be- Infirmary because she could see female
come a physician. medical students’ immediate need for clini-
After meeting Elizabeth Blackwell, she cal experience and the need for better health
was inspired to go to Western Reserve Col- care for women and children. She saw the
lege for a medical degree. She graduated in same need in Boston, and officially founded
1856, and the next year she helped the the hospital in 1862.
Blackwells establish the New York Infir- Zakrzewska had a very strong personal-
mary for Women and Children. She ity and worked hard to advance the status
worked as a resident physician for a few of women. She was an active suffragist and
years, then moved on to become a profes- reformer. She was also very compassionate
sor of obstetrics in Boston at the New En- toward those she served. “At one time she
gland Female Medical College, founded by was instrumental in having a lunch-room
225
Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth
opened for poor working-girls, where for a References: New England Hospital for
few cents a nourishing and appetizing meal Women and Children (NEHWC), Marie Eliz-
was provided” (NEHWC 1977, 19). abeth Zakrzewska: A Memoir, Boston: New
Zakrzewska effectively ran the New En- England Hospital for Women and Children
gland Hospital for Women and Children (1902), reprinted in History of Women Collec-
until 1899. She was involved in all aspects of tion, no. 5403, New Haven, CT: Research
its operation. She continually urged women Publications (1977); Tuchman, Arleen Mar-
physicians to gain as much scientific knowl- cia, “Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth,” Ameri-
edge as possible. She earned an excellent can National Biography, vol. 24, New York:
reputation as a physician, even among some Oxford University Press (1999); Zakr-
of the male physicians of her day. She died zewska, Marie E., A Woman’s Quest: The Life
in Boston on May 12, 1902. of Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D., ed. Agnes C.
Vietor, New York: D. Appleton (1924).
See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; New En-
gland Female Medical College; New En-
gland Hospital
226
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238
Index
Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, xx, 1(photo), Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218
1–3, 196 Jemison, Mae Carol, 108–109
Abby, Charlotte, 45 Jordan, Lynda, 115–116
Abolitionist movement, 171–172 Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218
Abortion, 191, 196 Manley, Audrey Forbes, 136–137
Abouchdid, Edma, 3 medical schools, black enrollment in, 219
Abraham, Karl, 121 nurses, xix, 79–80, 135–136, 217–218
Abrege de l’art des accouchements (du Coudray), 66 Remond, Sarah Parker, 171–172
Acosta Sison, Honoria, 3–4 Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney,
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 189–190
167 Wright, Jane Cooke, 221, 221(photo)
AZT developed, 70, 71 African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF),
discrimination against AIDS patients, 123 188
HIV discovered, 220 AIDS. See Acquired immune deficiency
Kubler-Ross’s work, 124 syndrome (AIDS)
Osborn’s work, 157, 158 Alcoholism, 126
Acyclovir (Zovirax), 71 Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4–5
Adami, J. G., 2 Alexander, Virginia, 61
Adamson, Sarah Read. See Dolley, Sarah Read Alexius I, 45, 46
Adamson Ali, Safieh, 5
Aetios of Amida, 14 Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5–6
Africa Ambulances, 23, 24
African Medical Research Foundation, 188 American Chemical Society. See Garvan Medal
female genital mutilation in, 76, 171 American College of Surgeons, 37, 61
kwashiorkor in, 216 American Medical Association (AMA)
medical missionaries in, xx, 133–134, 145 Dickey elected president, 23, 62, 212
tryparsamide tested on humans, 160 military commissions for women not
women in medicine from/in, 19, 22, 25, supported, 6
133–134, 136, 179, 188 Sheppard-Towner Act opposed, 186
African American women in medicine American Medical Missionary Society (AMMS),
barriers to success, 44, 79, 135, 219 (see also 144
Women of color in medicine) American Medical Women’s Association
Britton, Mary E., 37 (AMWA), 6, 140, 186, 203. See also American
Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37–38, 38(photo) Women’s Hospital Service; American
Canady, Alexa Irene, 41–42 Women’s Hospitals
Chinn, May Edward, xix, 42–43, 219 American Nurses Association (ANA), 79, 135,
Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44–45 218
Cole, Rebecca, 45, 164 American Red Cross
Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50 black nurses refused during WWI, 217
Daly, Marie Maynard, 55–56 foundation of, 25, 26
Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62 Healy as president, 94
Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153 not selected to oversee military nurses, 139
Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78 Nursing Service, 57, 58
239
Index
240
Index
241
Index
242
Index
Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of their Dickey, Nancy Wilson, xvii, 23, 62, 212
Children in Relation to Sex (Eliz. Blackwell), Diphtheria treatment and immunization, 215
32 Discrimination
Craig, Mr., 109 against AIDS patients, 123
Craighill, Margaret, xx, 6, 49, 49(photo) gender discrimination (see Barriers to success;
Craighill, Rebecca. See Lancefield, Rebecca Obstacles to medical training)
Craighill race discrimination, 44 (see also Abolitionist
Crick, Francis, 80 movement; Nursing and nurses: black
Crimean War, xvii, 150–151, 184 nurses; Women of color in medicine)
Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49–50 Dissection, 85. See also Vivisection
Cross-dressing. See Barry, James Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 31, 62–64, 63(photo), 166
Crowfoot, Dorothy Mary. See Hodgkin, Dorothy Dixon, Mary Amanda. See Jones, Mary Amanda
Mary Crowfoot Dixon
Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50 Dmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna, 64
Crystallography. See under X-rays DNA
Cupp, Janette Lorraine. See Alvord, Lori Arviso [R.] Franklin’s contributions, 80–81
Curie, Eve, 51, 112 Human Genome Project, 198
Curie, Irene. See Joliot-Curie, Irene as key to disease, 4
Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo), 112 M. E. Jones’ work, 115
Curie, Pierre, 50–53, 112 recombinant DNA, 204, 205
Cushier, Elizabeth, 32, 34 See also Genetics
Cutler, Carroll, 213–214 Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174
Cystic fibrosis, 7 Dodge, Annie. See Wauneka, Annie Dodge
Czech women physicians, 27, 47–48, 98 Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson, 65–66
Dominican Republic, women physicians from,
Dalle Donne, Maria, 55 161
Daly, Marie Maynard, 55–56 The Double Helix (Watson), 81
Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56 Drug research. See Antibiotics; Chemotherapy;
Danielsen, Karen Theodora Clementina. See Malaria; and specific drugs
Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, xvii, 66–67
Danielsen Dufferin Fund, 67
Darrow, Ruth Renter, 56 Dufferin Hospital (Calcutta), 127
Dartmouth College, 5–6, 214 Duges, Marie-Louise. See Lachapelle, Marie-
Davies, Emily, 9 Louise Duges
Davis, Dorland, 162 Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, 67–68
Dawson, Benjamin Franklin, 114 Dunning, Emily. See Barringer, Emily Dunning
Dayhoff, Margaret Oakley, 57 Durocher, Marie Josefina Mathilde, 68
Death Duse, Mohammed, 217
hospice movement, 181, 207–208 Dyer, Helen Marie, 68
Kubler-Ross’s work on, 122, 124 (see also
Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth) Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 69, 109
Dejerine, Jules, 57 Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (Jex-
Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57 Blake’s school), 21, 69, 103, 110
Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo), Edinburgh, University of, School of Medicine,
123–124 24, 103, 109–110
Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59 Education of women
Dengal, Anna Maria, xx, 59 Blackwell sisters’ education, xix, 21, 28–29, 33,
Denmark, women physicians in, 149 85
Dering, Wladyslaw, 92 in early 20th-century Prague, 47
“Description of Early Symptoms of the in Italy, 33, 55, 202. See also Bologna,
Meningeal Tumor Compressing the University of
Cerebellum” (Jacobi), 106 objections to, 20, 21
Diabetes. See Insulin physiology as appropriate area for women,
Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza, 59–60, 161 21
Dick, George, 60 women’s right to, 213–214
Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry, 60(photo), 60–61 See also Obstacles to medical training; and
Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62 specific schools and universities
243
Index
Egypt 36(photo)
female medical missionaries in, 145, 214–215 Bourgeois, Louise, 36(photo), 36–37
el Saadawi, Nawal, 177–178 Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo),
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 35 112
Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153 Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57
Electrotherapy, 198 du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, xvii,
Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70–71 66–67
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, 20, 149, Felicie, Jacoba, 76
199. See also New Hospital for Women and Hautval, Adelaide, 92
Children Joliot-Curie, Irene, 51, 52, 112–113
Emerson, Gladys Anderson, 71–72, 72(photo) Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Duges, 125
Emerson, Oliver, 72 See also France
Endocrinology, 223–224. See also Insulin Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218
England. See United Kingdom; United Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 80–81
Kingdom, women in medicine from/in Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor), 73, 202
Enzymes, 115–116, 136 Free Baptist missionaries, 17, 38. See also Baptist
Epidemics, and women in medicine, 210. See missionaries; Missionaries, medical
also specific diseases and individuals Freud, Anna, 81, 81(photo)
Epidemiology, 190 Freud, Sigmund, 81, 99, 121
Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana, 72–73 Friend, Charlotte, 82
Eskelin, Karolina, 73 Fulton, Mary Hannah, 82–83, 87, 144
Ethics, medical, 62, 208 Fussell, Edwin, 105, 164
Eugenics, 134
Evans, Alice Catherine, 73(photo), 73–74 Gallo, Robert, 220
Explosives manufacturing, 90–91, 190 Garfield, James A., 26
Garret, Mary Elizabeth, 111
Fabiola, Saint, 75 Garrett, Elizabeth. See Anderson, Elizabeth
Family planning. See Birth control Garrett
Farquhar, Marilyn Gist, 75–76 Garvan Medal winners, 68, 72, 77, 136, 161, 162,
Felicie, Jacoba, 76 187
Female genital mutilation (female circumcision), Genetics
76, 171, 177 chromosome repair following X-ray exposure,
Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. See 137
Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania early embryo development research, 153–154
Fenselau, Catherine Clarke, 76–77 ethical concerns, 101
Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78 genetic disease research, 147
Finland, women physicians from, 73, 94–95, 108 Human Genome Project, 198
Flexner, Abraham, 78 “jumping genes” theory, 137, 138
Flexner Report, 78, 148 Lyon hypothesis, 132
Flikke, Julia, 35 Macklin’s work, 134
Folger, Lydia. See Fowler, Lydia Folger Tilghman’s research, 198
Fondal, Elizabeth. See Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal See also DNA
Footbinding, 78–79 Geneva Medical College, 21, 28–29, 85, 189
Fowler, Lydia Folger, 79 Genital mutilation. See Female genital
France mutilation
AWH hospital established, 7 Germany, woman physicians and scientists
Chevandier Law (1892), 42 from/in
La Maternité (Paris), 29, 44 Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana, 72–73
licensing of women physicians, 76 Hildegard of Bingen, 96
midwives in, 35–36, 66–67, 125 Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina
Resistance (WWII), 113, 188 Danielsen, 99–100
Salpêtrière Asylum, 179–180 Hyde, Ida Henrietta, 102
University of Paris, 66, 106 Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153–154
See also France, women in medicine from/in See also Zakrzewska, Marie
France, women in medicine from/in Gerritsen, Carel Victor, 107–108
Biheron, Marie Catherine, 27 Giliani, Alessandra, 85
Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35–36, Gist, Marilyn. See Farquhar, Marilyn Gist
244
Index
245
Index
246
Index
247
Index
248
Index
Navajo people, 212–213. See also Alvord, Lori Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo),
Arviso 112
Navy, U.S., 6, 218. See also Military commissions Curie, Pierre, 50–53, 112
for women Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70–71
Nerve growth factor (NGF), 129–130 Hitchings, George, 70, 71
Nervous system, drug effects on, 117, 118 Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, 96–98
Netherlands, women physicians from, 107–108, Houssay, Bernardo Alberto, 47, 48
175–176 Joliot, Frederic, 52, 112–113
Neuberg, Carl, 136 Joliot-Curie, Irene, 51, 52, 112–113
Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal, 147 Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128–130, 129(photo)
Neurology, 57 Lewis, Edward B., 153
Neurosurgery. See Conley, Frances Krauskopf Lipman, Fritz, 115
New England Female Medical College, 147–148 McClintock, Barbara, 137–138
clinical experience, 30 Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153–154
faculty, 130, 147–148 Watson, James D., 81
graduates, 50, 185, 198 Wieschaus, Eric F., 153
standards for graduation, 225 Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223(photo), 223–224
See also New England Hospital [for Women See also Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry
and Children] North India School of Medicine for Christian
New England Hospital [for Women and Women, 38
Children], 148(photo), 148–149 Norway, women physicians from, xvii, 39–40,
establishment of, 31, 148, 225–226 188
nurses’ training course, 173, 218 Notes on Nursing (Nightingale), 151. See also
staff, 10, 19, 89–90, 148, 185, 203 Nightingale, Florence
See also New England Female Medical College Nova Scotia, first woman physician from, 10–11
New Hospital for Women and Children Novello, Antonia Coello, xvii, 152–153
(London), 9, 10, 107, 149. See also Elizabeth Nunn, T. W., 9
Garrett Anderson Hospital Nuns, 22, 58–59, 150
New York City Nurses Associated Alumnae, 135. See also
first black woman physician in, 42–43 American Nurses Association
Health Department, 19, 215 (see also Baker, Nursing and nurses
Sara Josephine) American Nurses Association (ANA), 79, 135,
Henry Street Settlement, 208 218
New York Infirmary for Women and Children, Army Nurse Corps (ANC), 34–35, 138, 139,
10, 30, 31, 32, 45, 225. See also Blackwell, 218
Elizabeth; Blackwell, Emily; Women’s Army School of Nursing, 85, 86
Medical College of the New York Infirmary Barton, Clara, 25(photo), 25–26, 64, 166, 210
for Women and Children; Zakrzewska, black nurses, xix, 79, 135, 184, 217–218
Marie Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34–35, 218
New York Medical College for Women, 189, 191 during the Crimean War, 150–151, 184
New York Psychoanalytic Institute, 49, 99–100 Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo),
New Zealand, women in medicine from, 87, 139 123–124
Newborns, 11, 12–13, 56, 66. See also Infants Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59
Newcomb, Anita. See McGee, Anita Newcomb Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174
NGF (nerve growth factor), 129–130 domestic skill needed by nurses, 174–175
Nielsen, Nielsine Mathilde, 149 early physicians relegated to nursing, xix
Nightingale, Florence, xvii, 149–152, 150(photo), education, 30, 31, 58, 152, 154–155, 173
166, 210 Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218
and other women in medicine, 29, 31, 173, 182 Goodrich, Annie Warburton, xx, 85–87,
Nightingale Home and Training School, 152 86(photo)
NIH. See National Institutes of Health Kenny, Elizabeth, 118–120, 135
NMA (National Medical Association), 79 licensing and registration, 86
Nobel Prize winners Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218
Black, Sir James, 70 McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138(photo), 138–139
Cohen, Stanley, 128, 129–130 Nightingale’s reforms, 151–152. See also
Cori, Gerty T. R. and Carl, 47–48 Nightingale, Florence
Crick, Francis, 80 predominance of women in, 211
249
Index
250
Index
Pohl, Esther Clayson. See Lovejoy, Esther Baker’s work, 18–19, 166
Clayson Pohl in China, 83
Poland, women in medicine from/in Daniel’s work, 56
Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine, 40 Dix’s work, 62–63, 166
Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo), early opportunities for women, 21, 165
112 graduate degrees in, 166
Joteyko, Josephine, 116 Hyde’s work, 102
Krajewska, Teodora, 122 Manley’s work, 136–137
Polio (infantile paralysis) Mendenhall’s work, 141
research, xx, 60, 134, 135 milk safety, 73, 74, 131
treatments, 118–120 Novello’s work, 153
Polonium, 50, 51, 112 nursing and, 65, 208 (see also Nursing and
Pool, Judith Graham, 163 nurses)
Portugal, women physicians from, 48–49 occupational health, xx, 89, 90–91
Possanner-Ehrenthal, Garbrielle, 163 [E.] Richards’ work, 172
Practice of medicine Ruys’ work, 175
barred by France’s Chevandier Law, 42 surgeons general (U.S.), xvii, 69–70, 136,
private practice difficult for women, 22, 29, 152–153
30, 165–166, 203 [L.] Wald’s work, 166, 209
without a license, 73, 76, 191 World Health Organization (WHO), 39–40,
See also specific physicians 141, 165, 185
Pregnancy See also Barton, Clara; Hygiene; and specific
Aspasia’s writings on, 14 diseases, issues, and public health departments
du Coudray’s anatomical model, 66 Public Health Service (U.S.), 4, 68, 74, 86. See also
fetal development, 178 Surgeons general
fetal heartbeat, detection of, 35 Puerto Rico, women physicians from, 152–153
lung development during, 15 Pulmonary surfactant, 14, 15
Rh factor and, 56 Putnam, Mary Corinna. See Jacobi, Mary
Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), 186 Corinna Putnam
teen pregnancy, 62, 69
thalidomide during, xx, 118, 195, 196 Quimby, Edith Hinkley, 169(photo), 169–170
X-rays during, 190
See also Childbirth; Midwives; Obstetrics and Rabies, diagnosis of, 215
gynecology Race and women in medicine, 217–220. See also
Premature infants, 14, 15 African American women in medicine;
Presbyterian missionaries, 82–83. See also Women of color in medicine
Missionaries, medical Race research, 219–220
Preston, Ann, xx, 29, 44, 105, 163–165, Radiation and radioactivity
164(photo) artificial radiation discovered, 112
Preventive medicine, 166. See also Public health dangers of, 52, 113
Princeton University, 5 prenatal X-rays, 190
Prisons, 63 radioactivity discovered, 51
Prostitution, 65, 204, 215 radioimmunoassay of peptide hormones,
Protein, 57, 161 223–224
Protestant missionaries, 144. See also Baptist safe handling of materials, 169–170
missionaries; Methodist missionaries; See also Curie, Marie Sklodowska
Presbyterian missionaries Radium, 50, 51, 169
Psychiatry and psychology Radium Institute (France), 52, 112, 113. See also
Craighill’s practice, 49 Curie, Marie Sklodowska; Joliot-Curie,
[Anna] Freud’s work, 81 Irene
Horney’s work, 99–100 Radnitz, Gerty Theresa. See Cori, Gerty Theresa
Joteyko’s work, 116 Radnitz
Klein’s work, 121–122 Ramsey, Mimi, 171
Kubler-Ross’s work, 123–124 Randall, Sir John, 80
Miller’s work on the psychology of women, Red Cross, 186. See also American Red Cross
142–143 Reed, Dorothy. See Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed
Public health, xviii, 165–167 Remond, Charles, 172
251
Index
Remond, Sarah Parker, 171–172 Schorske, Florence. See Wald, Florence Schorske
Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts Scopolamine-morphine, during childbirth, 203
(Shattuck), 165 Scotland
Research certification, 38
difficulties for women, 101 medical schools for women (see Edinburgh
drug research (see Antibiotics; Chemotherapy; School of Medicine for Women; Medical
Malaria; and specific drugs) College for Women)
early opportunities for women, 21 women physicians from, xvii, 19, 103–104, 209
husband-and-wife teams, 47 (see also (see also Jex-Blake, Sophia)
Husband-and-wife teams) See also Scottish Women’s Hospitals; United
management skills and, 94 Kingdom, women in medicine from/in
race research, 219–220 Scottish Women’s Hospitals, xvii, 103–104, 165,
See also Cancer research; and specific fields and 182
researchers Scudder, Ida Sophia, xx, 145, 183
Respiratory diseases, 115 Seacole, Mary Jane Grant, 184
Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), 14, 15 Seibert, Florence Barbara, 184–185, 185(photo)
Retroviruses, 220. See also Acquired immune Settlement houses, xvii–xviii, 65, 90, 208
deficiency syndrome (AIDS) Sewall, Lucy Ellen, 109, 185
Rh factor, 56 Sex education, xviii–xix, 69, 70, 215. See also
Ribosomes, 161 Birth control
Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow, 166, 172 Sex in Education; or A Fair Chance for the Girls
Richards, Linda, 135, 173(photo), 173 (Clarke), 20
Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo), Shaibany, Homa, 186
174–175 Shattuck, Lemuel, 165
Rockefeller Institute, research at, 127, 160 Shattuck Report, 165
Rodriguez-Dulanto, Laura Esther, 175 Sheppard-Towner Act (U.S., 1921), 186
Role models, lack of, 219 Sherrill, Mary Lura, 162, 187
Roman Catholic Church Sickle cell anemia, 77
Catholic missionaries, 59, 144 Siegemundin, Justine Dittrichin, 187
nuns as nurses, 58–59, 150 Simpson, Sir James Young, 33
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 24, 120 Sison, Antonio, 4
Roosevelt, Theodore, 26 Sklodowska, Bronia, 51
Ross, Emmanuel Robert (Manny), 123, 124 Sklodowska, Marie. See Curie, Marie
Royal College of Midwives, 159 Sklodowska
Royal College of Physicians, 199, 209 Sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), 160
Royal Free Hospital (London), 10, 110 Smith, Susan Maria. See Steward, Susan Maria
Rush Medical College, 133 Smith McKinney
students, 29, 33, 133, 198 Social activism, xvii–xix. See also Birth control;
Russell Gurney Enabling Act (Great Britain, Settlement houses; Women’s [rights]
1876), 110, 139, 175. See also Medical Act movements
Russell, William Howard, 150 Society of American Bacteriologists, 74
Russia, women in medicine from/in, 22, 64, 104, Society of Apothecaries (U.K.), 9, 191
189, 213 Solis, Manuela, 187
Ruys, A. Charlotte, 175–176 Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de, 187
Somerville College, Oxford University, 97, 216
el Saadawi, Nawal, 177–178 Songram, Luang Pibul, 204
Sabin, Florence Rena, 141, 178(photo), 178–179 South Africa, women physicians in, 25, 136, 179
Salber, Eva Juliet, xix, 179 Soviet Union. See Russia
Salerno, University of, 202 Spaangberg-Holth, Marie, 188
Salpêtrière Asylum, 179–180 Spain, first female physician in, 187
Sanger, Margaret, xviii–xix, 46, 166, 180(photo), Sparkman Act (U.S., 1943), 24
180–181 Spoerry, Anne, 188
Sanitation, 172. See also Cleanliness St. Christopher’s Hospice (England), 181, 207
Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode, 181, 207 St. Mary’s Hospital (Rochester, Minnesota),
Scarlet fever, 60 58–59
Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, 182 Standard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing
Schmideberg, Melitta, 121, 122 (Nutting), 155
252
Index
253
Index
United Kingdom, women in medicine from/in, See also American Nurses Association; Army,
continued U.S.; United States of America
Nightingale, Florence (see Nightingale, United States of America, women physicians
Florence) from/in
Paget, Mary, 159 Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, xx,
Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode, 181, 207 1(photo), 1–3, 196
Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, 182 African American women (see African
Stewart, Alice, 190 American women in medicine)
Turner-Warwick, Margaret, 199 Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4–5
Walker, Mary Broadfoot, 209 Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5–6
Whately, Mary Louisa, 145, 214–215 Apgar, Virginia, xx, 11–13, 12(photo)
Williams, Cicely Delphin, 216–217 Avery, Mary Ellen, 14–15
See also Blackwell, Elizabeth Bacheler, Mary Washington, 17–18
United States of America Baker, Sara Josephine, xviii, 18(photo), 18–19,
armed forces (see Army, U.S.; Military 166
commissions for women; Navy, U.S.) Barringer, Emily Dunning, 23–24
Civil War, 25–26, 31, 165, 209–210 Blackwell, Elizabeth (see Blackwell, Elizabeth)
Comstock Act (1873), xix, 46 Blackwell, Emily, xix, 28, 29–30, 33–34, 208,
Congressional Medal of Honor, 209–210 214
hospice movement, 207–208 Britton, Mary E., 37
mental illness, historic care for people with, Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37–38, 38(photo)
62–63 Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor, 41
National Economy Act, xviii Canady, Alexa Irene, 41–42
number of women physicians, 211 Chinn, May Edward, xix, 42–43, 219
Red Cross (see American Red Cross) Claypole, Edith Jane, 43–44
Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), 186 Cleveland, Emeline Horton, xx, 44, 164
tuberculin skin test adopted, 185 Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44–45
women in medicine (see Native American Cole, Rebecca, 45, 164
women in medicine; United States of Conley, Frances Krauskopf, 46–47
America, nurses from/in; United States of Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz, 47(photo), 47–48
America, women physicians from/in; Craighill, Margaret, xx, 6, 49, 49(photo)
United States of America, women scientists Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49–50
from/in) Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50
United States of America, nurses from/in Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56
Barton, Clara, 25(photo), 25–26, 64, 166, Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57
210 Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry, 60(photo), 60–61
black nurses, 79–80, 135–136, 217–218 Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62
Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34–35, 218 Dickey, Nancy Wilson, xvii, 23, 62, 212
Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo), Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson, 65–66
123–124 Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, 67–68
Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59 Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153
Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174 Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78
Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218 first woman physician (see Blackwell,
Goodrich, Annie Warburton, xx, 85–87, Elizabeth)
86(photo) Fowler, Lydia Folger, 79
Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218 Fulton, Mary Hannah, 82–83, 87, 144
McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138(photo), 138–139 Hamilton, Alice, xviii, xx, 89–91, 90(photo), 166
Nutting, Mary Adelaide, 154–155 Healy, Bernadine, 94
Ramsey, Mimi, 171 Hemenway, Ruth V., 95
Richards, Linda, 135, 173(photo), 173 Hispanic American women, 153–154, 219
Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo), Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina
174–175 Danielsen, 99–100
Sanger, Margaret, xviii–xix, 46, 166, Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam (Mary
180(photo), 180–181 Putnam), xix, 24, 32, 105(photo), 105–107,
Wald, Florence Schorske, 207–208 164
Wald, Lillian D., xviii, xx, 64, 65, 166, Jemison, Mae Carol, 108–109
208(photo), 208–209 Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon, 113–114
254
Index
255
Index
Watson, James D., 81 Blackwell sisters’ views on, 29, 30, 33–34
Wauneka, Annie Dodge, 212–213 and education, 213–214
Weizmann, Chaim, 213 and female medical missionaries, 144
Weizmann, Vera, 213 Remond’s activism, 171, 172
Welch, William Henry, 111, 120, 141 Walker’s support of, 209
West, Rose, 165 Wong-Staal, Flossie, 220–221
Western Pennsylvania Hospital, 99 The Work of Medical Women in India (Balfour), 19
Western Reserve College, 214 World Health Organization (WHO), 39–40, 141,
graduates, 30, 33, 225 165, 185
Wetterhahn, Karen Elizabeth, 214 World War I
Whately, Mary Louisa, 145, 214–215 American Women’s Hospital Service, 6, 7 (see
Whipple, Alan, xix, 11–12 also American Women’s Hospital Service)
White, John, 97 Barringer’s work during, 24
WHO. See World Health Organization benefits to nonwhite races anticipated, 217
Who’s Who Among the Microbes (Williams and equality of women physicians, 211
Park), 216 Jacobs’ views on, 108
Widerstrom, Karolina, 215 munitions work, 90–91, 190
Wieschaus, Eric F., 153 nurses and nursing during, 34, 57, 58, 86, 119,
Wilkins, Maurice, 80 217–218
Williams, Anna Wessels, 215–216 Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 103–104, 165, 182
Williams, Cicely Delphin, 216–217 (see also Inglis, Elsie Maude)
Willis, Dr., 9 Shaibany’s work during, 186
Wilson, Nancy. See Dickey, Nancy Wilson women health care workers overwhelmed
Winslow, Charles-Edward Amory, 166 during, 140
WMNA. See American Medical Women’s women restricted following, xviii, 165,
Association 210–211
Women of color in medicine, 217–220 Women’s Hospital Corps (France), 146
black nurses, 79, 135, 184, 217–218 World War II
See also African American women in American Women’s Hospital Service during,
medicine; and specific women of color 6
Women’s Hospital Corps (France), 146 Army Nurse Corps (ANC) during, 35
Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 44, 164 Barringer’s work during, 24
graduates and interns, 79, 125, 143, 146 concentration camps, xx, 92, 123, 188
Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Dutch Resistance, 175–176
139–140, 140(photo) French Resistance, 113, 188
clinical experience, 30, 164 Kubler-Ross’s work in post-war Poland, 123
deans, 44, 49, 163 (see also Preston, Ann) Manhattan Project, 169
faculty, 14, 146 military commissions for female
name changed, 164 nurses/physicians, 35, 49, 211 (see also
and the New England Female Medical Army, U.S.; Navy, U.S.)
College, 147–148 munitions work, 91
Pearce as president, 161 penicillin needed, 97
students and graduates, 4, 44, 82, 105, 114, Wright, Jane Cooke, 221, 221(photo)
125, 130, 143, 146, 183, 191, 192 Wright, Louis Tompkins, 221
Women’s Medical College of the New York
Infirmary for Women and Children, 30, 31, X-rays
32, 34 chromosome repair following exposure to,
closure, 148 137
curriculum and standards, 21–22, 31 Pickett’s research on, 162
faculty and staff, 31, 106 prenatal X-rays, 190
students and graduates, 17, 18–19, 24, 56, 128, X-ray crystallography, 96, 97, 162
198, 208, 215
See also Blackwell, Elizabeth; Blackwell, Yale University
Emily; Zakrzewska, Marie faculty, 86
Women’s Medical Service (India), 19, 127 graduates, 98, 115, 184, 207
Women’s [rights] movements, xviii School of Nursing, 86, 207
in the Arab world (see el Saadawi, Nawal) Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223(photo), 223–224
256
Index
257
About the Author
Laura Lynn Windsor is a health sciences reference librarian at Ohio University. She has been
a reference librarian at public and academic libraries for more than fifteen years. She is a
member of the American Library Association and the Medical Library Association.
259