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Women in Medicine

Women in MedicineAn Encyclopedia

Laura Lynn Windsor

Santa Barbara, California Denver, Colorado Oxford, England

Copyright © 2002 by Laura Lynn Windsor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Windsor, LauraWomen 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.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

For Mom

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Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, 1Abouchdid, Edma, 3Acosta Sison, Honoria, 3Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4Ali, Safieh, 5Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5American Medical Women’s Association, 6American Women’s Hospitals, 7Andersen, Dorothy Hansine, 7Anderson, Charlotte Morrison, 8Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, 8Angwin, Maria Louisa, 10Apgar Score System, 11Apgar, Virginia, 11Ashby, Winifred Mayer, 13Aspasia, 14Avery, Mary Ellen, 14

Bacheler, Mary Washington, 17Bain, Barbara, 18Baker, Sara Josephine, 18Balfour, Margaret Ida, 19Barnes, Alice Josephine, 20Barriers to Success, 20Barringer, Emily Dunning, 23Barry, James, 24Barton, Clara (Clarissa Harlowe), 25Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina, 26Bayerova, Anna, 27Biheron, Marie Catherine, 27Blackwell, Elizabeth, 27Blackwell, Emily, 33

Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34Bocchi, Dorothea, 35Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35 Bourgeois, Louise, 36Britton, Mary E., 37Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37Brown, Edith Mary, 38Brown, Rachel Fuller, 39Brundtband, Gro Harlem, 39Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine, 40

Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor, 41Canady, Alexa Irene, 41Chevandier Law of 1892, 42Chinn, May Edward, 42Claypole, Edith Jane, 43Cleveland, Emeline Horton, 44Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44Cole, Rebecca, 45Comnena, Anna, 45Comstock Act of 1873, 46Conley, Frances Krauskopf, 46Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz, 47Correia, Elisa, 48Craighill, Margaret D., 49Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50

Dalle Donne, Maria, 55Daly, Marie Maynard, 55Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56

Contents

Foreword, Nancy W. Dickey, M.D., xiPreface and Acknowledgments, xiii

Introduction, xvii

Women in Medicine

Contents

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Darrow, Ruth Renter, 56Dayhoff, Margaret Oakley, 57Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57Delano, Jane Arminda, 57Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph, 58Dengal, Anna Maria, 59Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza, 59Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry, 60Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61Dickey, Nancy Wilson, 62Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 62Dmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna, 64Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson, 65du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, 66Dufferin Fund, 67Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, 67Durocher, Marie Josefina Mathilde, 68Dyer, Helen Marie, 68

Edinburgh School of Medicine, 69Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70Emerson, Gladys Anderson, 71Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana, 72Eskelin, Karolina, 73Evans, Alice Catherine, 73

Fabiola, Saint, 75Farquhar, Marilyn Gist, 75Felicie, Jacoba, 76Female Genital Mutilation, 76Fenselau, Catherine Clarke, 76Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77Flexner Report, 78Footbinding, 78Fowler, Lydia Folger, 79Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 80Freud, Anna, 81Friend, Charlotte, 82Fulton, Mary Hannah, 82

Geneva Medical College, 85Giliani, Alessandra, 85Goodrich, Annie Warburton, 85Gordon, Doris Clifton Jolly, 87Guangzhou, China, 87

Hamilton, Alice, 89Han Suyin, 91Hautval, Adelaide, 92

Hazen, Elizabeth Lee, 92He Manqiu, 93Healy, Bernadine, 94Heikel, Rosina, 94Hemenway, Ruth V., 95Hildegard of Bingen, 96Hoby, Lady Margaret, 96Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, 96Honzakova, Anna, 98Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy, 98Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina

Danielsen, 99Hubbard, Ruth, 100Hugonay, Countess Vilma, 101Hyde, Ida Henrietta, 102

Inglis, Elsie Maude, 103

Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam, 105Jacobs, Aletta Henriette, 107Jalas, Rakel, 108Jemison, Mae Carol, 108Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa, 109Johns Hopkins University, 111Joliet-Curie, Irene, 112Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon, 113Jones, Mary Ellen, 115Jordan, Lynda, 115Joteyko, Josephine, 116

Kagan, Helena, 117Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson, 117Kelsey, Frances Oldham, 118Kenny, Elizabeth, 118Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway, 120Klein, Melanie, 121Krajewska, Teodora, 122Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, 122

Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Duges, 125LaFlesche Picotte, Susan, 125Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill, 126Lazarus, Hilda, 127L’Esperance, Elise Depew Strang, 128Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128Longshore, Hannah Myers, 130Lopez, Rita Lobato Velho, 131Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl, 131Luisi, Paulina, 132Lyon, Mary Frances, 132

Mabie, Catharine Louise Roe, 133

Contents

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Macklin, Madge Thurlow, 134Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean, 134Mahoney, Mary Eliza, 135Malahlele, Mary Susan, 136 Mandl, Ines, 136Manley, Audrey Forbes, 136McClintock, Barbara, 137McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138McKinnon, Emily H. S., 139Medical Act of 1858, 139Medical College of Pennsylvania, 139Medical Women’s International Association

(MWIA), 140Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed, 141Mendoza-Gauzon, Marie Paz, 142Mergler, Marie Josepha, 142Miller, Jean Baker, 142Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa, 143Mission Work, 144Montoya, Matilde, 146Morani, Alma Dea, 146Murray, Flora, 146

Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal, 147New England Female Medical College, 147New England Hospital, 148New Hospital for Women and Children,

149Nielsen, Nielsine Mathilde, 149Nightingale, Florence, 149Novello, Antonia Coello, 152Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153Nutting, Mary Adelaide, 154

Ockett, Molly, 157Ogino, Ginko, 157Osborn, June Elaine, 157

Paget, Mary Rosalind, 159Pak, Esther Kim, 159Parrish, Rebecca, 160Pearce, Louise, 160Perez, Ernestina, 161Perozo, Evangelina Rodriguez, 161Petermann, Mary Locke, 161Pickett, Lucy Weston, 162Pittman, Margaret, 162Pool, Judith Graham, 163Possanner-Ehrenthal, Garbrielle, 163Preston, Ann, 163Public Health and Women, 165

Quimby, Edith Hinkley, 169

Ramsey, Mimi, 171Remond, Sarah Parker, 171Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow, 172Richards, Linda (Melinda Ann Judson), 173Robb, Isabel Hampton, 174Rodriguez-Dulanto, Laura Esther, 175Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, 175Ruys, A. Charlotte, 175

el Saadawi, Nawal, 177Sabin, Florence Rena, 178Salber, Eva Juliet, 179Salpêtrière Asylum, 179Sanger, Margaret, 180Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode, 181Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, 182Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 182Scudder, Ida Sophia, 183Seacole, Mary Jane Grant, 184Seibert, Florence Barbara, 184Sewall, Lucy Ellen, 185Shaibany, Homa, 186Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, 186Sherrill, Mary Lura, 187Siegemundin, Justine Dittrichin, 187Solis, Manuela, 187Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de, 187Spaangberg-Holth, Marie, 188Spoerry, Anne, 188Stern, Lina Solomonova, 188Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney, 189Stewart, Alice, 190Stone, Emma Constance, 191Stowe, Emily, 191Sundquist, Alma, 192Swain, Clara A., 192Sylvain, Yvonne, 193

Taussig, Helen Brooke, 195Thompson, Mary Harris, 197Tilghman, Shirley Marie Caldwell, 198Trout, Jennie Kidd, 198Turner-Warwick, Margaret, 199

University of Bologna, 201University of Salerno, 202

Van Hoosen, Bertha, 203Vejjabul, Pierra Hoon, 203Villa, Amelia Chopitea, 204

Contents

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Villa-Komaroff, Lydia, 204

Wald, Florence Schorske, 207Wald, Lillian D., 208Walker, Mary Broadfoot, 209Walker, Mary Edwards, 209Wars and Epidemics, 210Wauneka, Annie Dodge, 212Weizmann, Vera, 213Western Reserve College, 214Wetterhahn, Karen Elizabeth, 214Whately, Mary Louisa, 214

Widerstrom, Karolina, 215Williams, Anna Wessels, 215Williams, Cicely Delphin, 216Women of Color in Medicine, 217Wong-Staal, Flossie, 220Wright, Jane Cooke, 221

Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223Yoshioka, Yayoi, 224

Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth, 225

Bibliography, 227Index, 239

About the Author, 259

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In any arena there is a need for compileddata to delineate milestones, identifypathfinders and leaders, and document theprogress. Laura Lynn Windsor has done justthat for the issues surrounding women inthe profession of medicine. This workshould be of assistance to those writing orspeaking on the topic of women in medicineand, while the work is comprehensive indata covered, it serves as well as a timelyupdate on recent additions.

As the material is reviewed, it is notewor-thy that while some may argue that womenhave achieved equity, a substantial numberof the entries represent the last quarter ofthe twentieth century and virtually all of theentries represent barely a century of effort.Although there is work yet to be done, per-haps there is encouragement in so much al-ready accomplished, challenged and con-quered—dreamt of, then realized.

Throughout these pages, Ms. Windsorhas done a nice job of identifying important

mentors and the impact of previous pio-neers on the subsequent generations. Al-though the primary role of this encyclope-dia may be compilation of data for historicalresearch purposes, there may well be thosewho will turn its pages and find encourage-ment for their own dreams—mentors notyet met who can bridge across time to en-courage a young lady to reach further,dream bigger, and then just do it!

Although women who aspire to a role inmedicine may be appreciative of those whocame before, clearly our patients and com-munities have much for which to be gratefulas well. From scientific discovery thatchanged lives to commitment to publichealth and well-being, women have raisedstandards, created new understanding, andtouched lives. Ms. Windsor is to be ap-plauded for creating an encyclopedia thatincludes so much humanity amidst its dataand facts.

Nancy W. Dickey, M.D.

Foreword

Preface and Acknowledgments

I hold it a noble task to rescue fromoblivion those who deserve to be eternallyremembered.

—Pliny the Younger

As a reference librarian for more than fifteenyears, I was surprised to find no one-vol-ume reference work on women in medicine.There are many out-of-print books onwomen and the medical profession, as wellas some current, more general books onwomen and science, but it is certainly timeto make room for a reference book focusedon women in medical science. Despite of-ten-hostile work environments, womenhave contributed to phenomenal progress inmany fields, especially in the last half of thetwentieth century. I know this volume willfill a void in my library, and I hope othersfind it useful as well.

This work compiles biographies of anumber of women who throughout historyhave made a significant impact on medi-cine. They have demonstrated tremendoustalent and insight in caring for the sick; inadvancing research on numerous diseasessuch as cancer and AIDS; and in establish-ing and running hospitals, colleges, andgovernment agencies. They contributed im-pressive intellectual gifts and great organi-zational skills to many medical specialties,serving as role models for women todaywho desire to become physicians in a pro-fession still dominated by men. This ency-clopedia focuses on women physicians,nurses, and researchers in particular butalso includes related entries on institutions,medical terms, and social issues relevant towomen in medicine.

The volume is arranged alphabeticallyand includes cross-references where appro-priate. Each biographical entry concentrateson the woman and her accomplishments asopposed to a long litany of discriminationshe faced in male-dominated institutions. Itseems that the hardships faced by womenalong the way are well documented and donot need to be a focal point in each entry.However, specific incidents are mentionedif they had a significant impact on thewoman’s medical career.

I attempted to include women from out-side North America and Western Europe, al-though information was often scant. Manyof these women broke new ground andshould be recognized as pioneers whoforged ahead where there were no mentorsor role models. Those who left positive lega-cies were certainly not forgotten in theirown countries.

The entries “Mission Work” and “Warsand Epidemics” examine two areas wherewomen found fewer barriers to their partici-pation in medicine. The “Barriers to Success”entry looks at women’s overall struggle toachieve in medicine, and the “Public Healthand Women” entry examines a twentieth-century window of opportunity for women.

Even societies that resisted conversion toa new faith often accepted medical helpfrom women missionaries. In some cases,cultural norms allowed only women physi-cians for female patients. During wartimeand epidemics, women advanced medicalprocedures around the globe as they re-sponded to calls for additional practitionersor served disadvantaged populations. De-spite these ostensible steps forward, when

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the crisis was past and social norms were re-instated, women were again subject to lim-ited opportunities.

Women of color have encountered evenmore obstacles in pursuing medical careers.There is a dearth of information on womenof diverse ethnic backgrounds in medicine.Some valuable references do exist, amongthem Staupers’s No Time for Prejudice: AStory of the Integration of Negroes in Nursingin the United States (1961); Morais’s History ofthe Negro in Medicine (1969); Sammons’sBlacks in Science and Medicine (1990); andHine’s Black Women in America (1993) andFacts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women inAmerica (1997). The “Women of Color inMedicine” entry explores some of the obsta-cles faced by women of color. I hope in theyears to come there will be more scholar-ship and information devoted to the histor-ical significance of contributions of men andwomen of all races and ethnicities.

This project has reaffirmed my belief thatvery little information can be found on theinternet for free, and the most abundant andreliable information still occurs in books, inmicrofilm sets that captured historical docu-ments before they disappeared, on oldopaque cards, and in print indexes that maynever be converted to electronic format.However, the internet was very useful inproviding access to a myriad of electronicdatabases upon which the scholarly worldrelies, such as ABC-CLIO’s Historical Ab-stracts and America: History and Life, the Webof Science, OCLC’s databases, variouswomen’s studies databases, numerousnewspaper databases, university catalogsaround the world, legal databases, the ERICsite, PsychInfo, MEDLINE, CINAHL, andHealth and Wellness Center, to name just a few.Other helpful reference sources were Ameri-can National Biography, Dictionary of AmericanMedical Biography, Dictionary of National Biog-raphy, and Dictionary of Scientific Biography,along with standard country-specific ency-clopedias such as Who’s Who and biographydatabases—BGMI, Biography Index, New YorkTimes Obituaries Index, and Palmer’s.

Current literature on women in medicineis limited to the broader topic of science ingeneral with selected women in medicine

included, such as Rossiter’s Women Scien-tists in America: Struggles and Strategies to1940 (1982); Kass-Simon and Farnes’sWomen of Science (1990); Sammons’s Blacksin Science and Medicine (1990); Bailey’s Amer-ican Women in Science (1994); Shearer andShearer’s Notable Women in the Life Sciences(1996); McGrayne’s Nobel Prize Women inScience (1998); Proffitt’s Notable Women Sci-entists (1999); Ogilvie and Harvey’s Bio-graphical Dictionary of Women in Science(2000); and Haines’s International Women inScience (2001).

Some standard sources that are now outof print but are nonetheless quite useful areHurd-Mead’s A History of Women in Medi-cine from the Earliest Times to the Beginning ofthe Nineteenth Century (1938), Lovejoy’sWomen Doctors of the World (1957), Morantz-Sanchez’s Sympathy and Science (1985), andAlic’s Hypatia’s Heritage (1986). Stille’s Extra-ordinary Women of Medicine (1997), Kent’sWomen in Medicine (1998), and Hunter’sLeaders in Medicine (1999) are very good ju-venile books with a select number of themore well-known women in medicine.

We do have a fair amount of material inletters written by women practitioners be-fore 1950. Gelbart’s The King’s Midwife: AHistory and Mystery of Madame du Coudray(1998); Morantz-Sanchez’s Conduct Unbe-coming a Woman: Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-the-Century Brooklyn (1999), which chroni-cles the life of Mary Amanda Dixon Jones;and Comfort’s The Tangled Field: Barbara Mc-Clintock’s Search for the Patterns of GeneticControl (2001) are three examples of excel-lent current biographies.

A number of biographies are very good,but many are out of print. There is an obvi-ous reason for the lack of biographies andautobiographies on women. Men who con-tributed to the medical field normally hadfaculty status at universities with a bit oftime to write about their accomplishmentsand personal life; these biographies havebeen very valuable to those of us interestedin the history of medicine. Most women inmedicine, however, have not had the leisureto write memoirs. With few exceptions priorto the twentieth century, many were not al-lowed to have their own laboratories or any


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academic rank, and even today mostwomen nurses, physicians, and other healthcare workers are too busy working a longday and then, in many instances, caring fora family.

AcknowledgmentsAcknowledging all of the libraries aroundthe world that assisted with this projectwould take numerous pages. Many of theentries would not have been possible with-out the help of librarians in the United Stateswho supplied interlibrary loan materialsand librarians in other countries who for-warded information from local publications.

I’d like to express my deepest apprecia-tion to these and other people who work inlibraries.

I know that many writers acknowledgethe phenomenal progress librarians havemade as a profession. As a librarian, I know

how hard it has been to achieve thisprogress. Catalogers are the heart of the li-brary system. I found things I never knewexisted by simply using the library catalog.Everyone who works to process and keepitems in order, whether they are books, mi-crofilm boxes, photos, or journals, saves pa-trons a tremendous amount of time in ac-cessing the libraries’ treasures. Subject-specialist librarians who can put their handson information without looking in any cata-log or index are invaluable. Patrons over theyears who have challenged me with hardquestions have helped make me a better li-brarian, able to find sources that didn’tcome to mind right away. I hope librarianskeep working as hard as they do to make re-sources like this one possible.

Laura Lynn Windsor

Introduction

Nature has given women so much powerthat the law has very wisely given themlittle.

—Samuel Johnson, 1892

Women as Natural HealersFrom the earliest of times, women havebeen the natural nurturers, healers, andsoothers of those in pain. Taking care of hus-bands, parents, children, or friends, theyhave been the tirelessly caring individuals,often charged by men to heal the sick in thehome. It was only natural that they eventu-ally desired more medical knowledge in or-der to do more, be more, and feel more con-fident in their endeavors.

In ancient times midwives were the norm,and for centuries distances betweenbirthing mothers and a traditional healthcare institution were far too great to evenconsider another health care provider. Thissituation changed very slowly; even today,the majority of the world’s population livein rural areas. Only in the eighteenth cen-tury, when physicians began to feel threat-ened by midwives, did laws requiring li-censes and the regulation of midwives’activities become a reality.

With these requirements came women’srealization that they could advance beyondthe restrictions with a better education.They encountered many problems with ob-taining the education they were suddenlyrequired to have, but they persevered.

Women’s Leadership AbilitiesThose of us who look at the history ofwomen in medicine see that women havealso been demonstrating leadership abilities

for centuries. King Louis XV respected An-gelique du Coudray enough to commissionher in 1759 to train midwives all overFrance, Florence Nightingale organizedmedical staff in order to treat soldiers on thebattlefields of Scutari during the CrimeanWar, and Elsie Inglis organized and ran theScottish Women’s Hospitals in World War I.

Many of the women in this volume at-tained leadership abilities through dealingwith the challenges of their profession.Nancy Dickey, the first female president ofthe AMA; Antonia Novello, who becamethe first female surgeon general of theUnited States; and Gro Harlem Brundtband,who is the first woman to head the WorldHealth Organization (WHO), are outstand-ing examples of what women have come toachieve.

Social and Economic Forces Affecting Women’s CareersFrom the earliest times to the present, forcesbesides gender have played a part inwomen’s long struggle to succeed. In rela-tively recent times, increased awareness ofsocial problems and public health—anawareness in large part brought about bywomen in the medical field—have createdopportunities for women to work in theirchosen professions.

As industrialists built factories that trans-formed working conditions, crime, poverty,pollution, and disease grew with the furtherexpansion of large urban areas. Social-set-tlement houses such as Toynbee Hall inLondon, Hull House in Chicago, and theHenry Street settlement in New York Citywere the beginnings of social activism by

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Introduction

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both men and women. Women physiciansand nurses such as Alice Hamilton and Lil-lian Wald saw the tremendous needs of thepoor and put their training, care, and con-cern into action. Wald, who founded theHenry Street Settlement, also formed theVisiting Nurses Service in New York City,which served as a model for many othercities. Both Hamilton and Wald believedthat each person had a right to adequate nu-trition, housing, and working conditions.Like many other women who had gained amedical education, they utilized their skillsto serve the poor and make cities betterplaces for the growing urban population.“Women volunteers saved the Americancity at the turn of the twentieth century byconverting religious doctrine and domesticideology into redemptive places that pro-duced social order at a critical moment inthe nation’s development” (Spain 2001, 237).

Influenced by Jane Addams, one of thefounders of Hull House in Chicago, Hamil-ton became a resident at Hull House formany years, tending to individuals as anurse, physician, baby-sitter, housekeeper,and teacher. She witnessed firsthand thehealth problems created by industry andauthored some of the first reports on the un-satisfactory working conditions for men,women, and children in factories. She lob-bied for occupational health and safety.With the sweeping social-settlement move-ment, many “educated middle-class womenwho joined the movement were given achance to move beyond the traditional con-fines of the home and to enter the workingworld in positions of leadership, achievinga level of equality with their male col-leagues” (Barbuto 1999, ix).

Even by the early twentieth century, themedical community was still hesitant to hirewomen physicians at hospitals and clinicsno matter how good their training was. Asthe government became involved in socialservices, regional and national public healthorganizations created jobs for women. Manywomen, such as Sara Josephine Baker, foundtheir calling in the public health sector.

As women moved into the workforce, theybecame empowered. They wanted the optionof working outside the home with equal pay

and the right to vote. They organized to gaina voice in a changing world. They formedclubs, societies, and regional and national or-ganizations to advance women’s status andto meet the need for social services. Religiousgroups also played a role in working to helpthe homeless and poor.

Since so many of the early female physi-cians were relegated to working with thepoor, they saw firsthand the abuse many in-dustrial workers, especially women andchildren, experienced. Their work to in-crease awareness led to labor unions thatworked for reforms in the length of theworkday, restrictions on child labor, andbetter working conditions.

Changing economies worked both forand against women in the workplace. Thedual-income family began to seem desirablein order to bring about better living condi-tions. However, many felt women were tak-ing jobs away from men, especially duringthe Depression in the United States. Thework women did during the war years asphysicians and nurses did not carry over topeacetime. They came home to their coun-tries and were not offered work.

In 1932 in the United States, the NationalEconomy Act limited federal civil service toone member of the family. Thus manywomen had to leave government jobs. InGreat Britain, the National Insurance Act re-duced women’s roles in the workplace.William Beveridge, the British economist,“was aware of the value of married women’sunpaid work, and wives and husbands weretreated differently under the National Insur-ance Act of 1946. Single women were treatedlike men, but married women were nor-mally exempted from the work related pro-visions and insured as housewives” (Siim2000, 93). Women physicians, despite theireducation and skill, had to play minimalroles when it came to working for a wage.

The birth-control movement also had alarge impact on women. As public healthnurses such as Margaret Sanger saw the tollfrequent childbirth was taking on mothers,they begin to feel that more informationabout sex education and contraception wasneeded. They fought on through numerousroadblocks in the way of legislation and so-

Introduction

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cietal resistance. The Comstock Act of 1873was a major setback for health careproviders wishing to provide birth control inthe United States, and birth control wasn’teven discussed in medical schools until1937. “In 1928, the timing of ovulation wasestablished medically, but the safe intervalfor intercourse was mistakenly understoodto include half the menstrual period” (CDC2000, 326). By 1933, however, family size haddeclined in the United States. When morewomen were able to learn about methods forlimiting childbirth, they realized a careerwas a viable option for them even if theyhad chosen to marry and have a family.

The Unrecognized Heroes—MenAn encyclopedia on women and medicinewould not be complete without a word aboutthe many men who have taken risks to men-tor women whose potential was evident andto encourage spouses, daughters, students,and colleagues to pursue what many of theirfriends felt was a waste of time. Society owesa debt to men such as Samuel Blackwell, whofelt his daughters should have the same goodeducation as his sons; Dr. William Osler, whoencouraged Maude Abbott even after shewas relegated to a museum of defectivehearts following the denial of a faculty posi-tion; and Dr. Alan Whipple, who encouragedVirginia Apgar to go into anesthesiology in-stead of surgery. Such men exercised a greatdeal of foresight and genuine concern.

Even male medical students had to adaptto situations that were uncomfortable. Un-like in many other professions infiltrated bywomen, males in medical education had todeal with sharing with women discussionsand demonstrations on topics consideredtaboo in mixed company: anatomy, repro-duction, sex. Some objected to the presenceof women in their institutions, but otherswere accepting, particularly in Europe,where many women sought additionaltraining after obtaining their degrees else-where. Emily Blackwell, Eva Salber, andMary Putnam Jacobi are just a few of thewomen who sought more clinical trainingafter their initial medical degree. They wereable to gain that experience in Europe.

Even if most men were unwilling to take

on the role of caregiver for their children, itis important to remember that manywomen did not accept men as adequate inthat role. “Not until the founding of the Na-tional Organization for Women in 1966 dida major group contend that men andwomen should share responsibility for paidwork, child rearing, and housework”(Burstein and Bricher 1997, 161). Acceptanceof men as caregivers required an adjustmentby both men and women.

More men have recognized the impor-tance of a woman’s role as wife, mother, andwage earner as living expenses have in-creased (Gabor 1995, 46). More are accept-ing of shared parental responsibilities. Inmany countries, government, educational,and corporate organizations are addressingthe importance of adequate childcare.

Women ExtraordinaireThe social, cultural, and legal problemswomen encountered in obtaining higher ed-ucation and medical training have been welldocumented over the past several decades.Many had to obtain a medical educationoutside their own country and learn in to-tally inadequate facilities and on the battle-field. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell andmany other early physicians served thepoor and homeless because no one believeda woman could do the job of a physician.Many early women physicians were rele-gated to nursing because no one would hirethem. May Edward Chinn performed biop-sies in secret in order to help diagnose tu-mors, and Mary Mahoney became a private-duty nurse because hospitals would not hireblack nurses in the 1870s.

These and other women who precededand followed them found opportunities tocontribute. Some, such as Elizabeth GarrettAnderson and Elizabeth Blackwell, workedwithin traditional arenas to further their ed-ucation and obtain their objectives. Others,such as Sophia Jex-Blake, fought the generalinjustice they accurately perceived or wentto extremes: James Barry impersonated aman for an entire lifetime in order to prac-tice her skills.

Over the years, nurses have soothed,washed, fed, visited, and cared for numer-

Introduction

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ous individual patients in a day. Today, theyare expected to have the highest standardsand certifications. From the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, they haverisen from basic helpers to well-educatedprofessionals, thanks to the work of theearly pioneers in nursing education. LillianWald and Annie Goodrich were exceptionalprofessionals who raised public awarenessand the status of nurses.

Female physicians, nurses, and researchersare like other professionals in that they teachalong the way whether or not teaching wastheir initial objective. Those who see a needwithin the profession and have the organiza-tional and administrative skills take on a pri-mary role as educator. Elizabeth Blackwellfounded a hospital and medical college sothat other women physicians could gain clin-ical experience. Ann Preston, Emeline Cleve-land, and Margaret Craighill all contributedsubstantially to women’s medical education.Women desperately needed additional op-portunities during the past two centuries be-cause it was very difficult or impossible forthem to gain admission to male colleges,nurses were subject to higher expectationsand needed more rigorous training, and,most important, women needed the collec-tive voice that could be realized only if theywere a part of higher education and relatedprofessional organizations.

Both male and female medical missionar-ies are one of the most overlooked groups ofphysicians. These missionaries were boldand dedicated. Once educated, they workedwith limited medical facilities but in manyinstances obtained great success. Ida Scud-der founded the Vellore Hospital and Med-ical College, Catharine Mabie educated na-tives in the Congo on the importance ofgood hygiene, and Anna Dengal was tire-less in treating the poor in India. Societyowes an immeasurable debt to the womennurses, researchers, educators, and physi-cians in this volume. Frances Kelsey’s re-fusal to allow thalidomide on the drug mar-ket, Alice Hamilton’s copious statistics onworkers suffering from industrial pollution,and Dame Annie Jean Macnamara’s search

for another strain of polio all led to betterhealth and a better society.

Virginia Apgar’s score system for infantshas been in use for nearly fifty years. MaudeAbbott became the leading expert on congen-ital heart disease during her lifetime. Elsie In-glis and her fellow women physicians trav-eled around war-torn Europe to mend thewounded during World War I. AdelaideHautval treated sick Jewish women in Naziconcentration camps. He Manqiu used sticksand dirt because she didn’t have pencil andpaper and found her laboratory cadaver inthe field during the Red Army’s long marchin 1935. All these women had heart, determi-nation, character, and a desire to heal the sick.

References: Barbuto, Domenica M., Ameri-can Settlement Houses and Progressive SocialReform: An Encyclopedia of the American Settle-ment Movement, Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press(1999); Burstein, Paul, and Marie Bricher,“Problem Definition and Public Policy: Con-gressional Committees Confront Work, Fam-ily, and Gender, 1945–1990,” Social Forces76:1 (September 1997): 135–168; Centers forDisease Control (CDC), “Achievements inPublic Health, 1900–1999: Family Planning,JAMA 283, no. 3 (19 January 2000): 326ff.;Gabor, Andrea, “Married, with House-husband,” Working Woman 20:11 (November1995): 46–50; Johnson, Samuel, The Letters ofSamuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale’s GenuineLetters to Him, vol. 1, no. 157, Oxford: Claren-don Press (1952); Lorber, Judith, “WhyWomen Physicians Will Never Be TrueEquals in the American Medical Profession,”in Elianne Riska and Katarina Wegar, eds.,Gender, Work, and Medicine: Women and theMedical Division of Labour, London: Sage(1993); Siim, Birte, Gender and Citizenship:Politics and Agency in France, Britain, and Den-mark, New York: Cambridge UniversityPress (2000); Spain, Daphne, How WomenSaved the City, Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press (2001); Yedidia, Michael J.,and Janet Bickel, “Why Aren’t There MoreWomen Leaders in Academic Medicine? TheViews of Clinical Department Chairs,” Acad-emic Medicine 76, no. 5 (May 2001): 453–465.

A

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Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour

1869–1940

Despite a private and public fight, MaudeAbbott was not allowed to attend McGillUniversity for medical study because of hergender. Nevertheless, she became one of theearliest experts in congenital heart disease,paving the way for future women medicalprofessionals in Canada.

She was born on March 18, 1869, at St. An-drews, near Montreal. Her father left thefamily before Maude was born, and hermother died from tuberculosis just sevenmonths after the birth. Maude’s grand-mother adopted and raised her and her sis-ter, Alice.

Her grandmother was of strong characterand had been through much grief. She hadlost all nine of her children early in theirlives, eight to tuberculosis. Her husbandalso predeceased her by several years. Sheeducated the girls at home during most oftheir early years; Maude had a great desireto attend school with other girls and a burn-ing need to learn, which was fulfilled whenshe attended high school.

Maude enrolled in McGill University on ascholarship and graduated with a B.A. in1890. By this time, she knew that she wantedto be a physician, but McGill refused to al-low a woman to enter its medical program.She fought this decision with letters to thefaculty and even in public, but to no avail.She settled on going to nearby Bishop’s Col-lege. Many students, as well as some profes-sors, resented a woman in their ranks, and

her willingness to work so hard was an irri-tation to some. Fellow students sometimeshid her case reports, and many studentseven applauded when professors an-nounced they had to attend meetings onkeeping women out of the college. However,she looked back with great appreciation onher days at Bishop, where she won the se-nior anatomy prize and the chancellor’sprize for her excellent work on the final ex-amination and where she obtained her M.D.

Upon graduation in 1894, she traveledabroad to work in various clinics in Vienna,Zurich, Edinburgh, and London, where sheworked with established physicians who

Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott (U.S. NationalLibrary of Medicine)

Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour

2

came to appreciate her work. At this time,her ambition was to return to Montreal andobtain a faculty position at McGill.

Abbott’s first duties when she returned to Montreal were in the Royal Victoria Hos-pital. It was here that she began research in cardiology and pathology with Dr.Charles Martin and Dr. J. G. Adami, respec-tively. Soon thereafter, one of the most influ-ential men in her life, Dr. William Osler, en-couraged her to reorganize the pathologymuseum at McGill. This endeavor led to im-mense advancement in the medical knowl-edge of the heart.

Much of the pathology museum wasmade up of postmortem specimens, manyof which showed signs of cardiac defects.Abbott studied the various hearts and theirdefects and wrote a piece for Osler on con-genital heart disease. In this work, she spec-ified cyanotic and acyanotic categories, thena useful distinction.

At the same time, she began to be very in-volved in the overall operation of the mu-seum and in promoting the use of cadaversin anatomy classes in medical schools. Shecreated the International Association ofMedical Museums (now called the Interna-tional Academy of Pathology), an organiza-tion she remained active in for the nextthirty years.

In 1919 Abbott underwent successful sur-gery for an ovarian tumor. While continuingher work at the museum during World WarI, she took on the responsibility of editingthe Canadian Medical Association Journal. Af-ter Osler’s death in 1919 she began the mon-umental project of compiling a memorialbulletin of the International Association ofMedical Museums. That famous work, Bul-letin No. IX, eventually became known asthe Osler Memorial Volume, a very well-received book of over 600 pages that tooksix years to complete and contributed to theknowledge of heart disease.

She was now gaining respect for her sci-entific knowledge and diligence. She wasoffered a position at the University of Texasas an acting professor of pathology duringWorld War I and as an associate professorthereafter. However, she remained in Can-ada, as her loyalty was always with McGill.

Abbott earned only a small income in herposition at the museum and still longed fora faculty position. It wasn’t to come untilshe received an honorary L.L.D. fromMcGill in 1936. In the meantime, she haddone enough research to begin her monu-mental work, the Atlas of Congenital CardiacDisease.

Abbott’s Atlas, just over sixty pages, in-cluded excellent plates labeled clearly, acomprehensive index, diagrams inter-spersed throughout the work, explanationsof various heart problems, and acknowledg-ments of all who had contributed to theproject. She had accumulated much of theknowledge for this project through diagnos-ing heart specimens at the request of clini-cians all over the continent who recognizedher as the world authority on congenitalheart disease. Although Abbott tried to re-tain her faculty position beyond retirementage, McGill forced her to retire in 1936. Sub-sequently, her reputation in the medicalcommunity now secure, she lecturedaround the country. She received numerousawards and accommodations during herlifetime, including being named a fellow ofthe New York Academy of Medicine.

Abbott’s deep interest besides pathologywas medical history. She wrote on the his-tory of nursing, the history of medicine inQuebec, and the history of the medical fac-ulty at McGill. Abbott never married. Afterher grandmother died in 1890, her only fam-ily was her sister, Alice, who depended onMaude for financial support. In 1898, Alicecame down with diphtheria and lost muchof her mental capacity. Maude, typically un-selfish in all her relationships, tried in vari-ous ways to help her sister, but despite herefforts and an operation, Alice never recov-ered. Maude continued to care for her sister,planning outings when Alice was doingwell. They both lived in St. Andrews all oftheir lives.

Maude tended to be accident-prone. Al-though she had worn glasses since she wasa young girl, many of her close friends felther accidents were due to the fact that shewas very nearsighted and tended to walkwith her head down. In Montreal, she col-lided with an automobile and two street-

Acosta Sison, Honoria

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cars. In New York City, she was hit by a taxi.None of these accidents, however, causedher serious harm. Abbott died on September2, 1940, from a cerebral hemorrhage. Shepropelled the field of cardiology from thepathology table toward actual treatment forthe living.

References: Abbott, Maude E., Atlas of Con-genital Cardiac Disease, New York: AmericanHeart Association (1936); MacDermot,Hugh Ernest, Maude Abbott: A Memoir,Toronto: Macmillan (1941); Roland, CharlesG., “Maude Abbott, MD, ‘Madonna of theHeart,’” Medical and Pediatric Oncology 35,no. 1 (July 2000): 64–65.

Abouchdid, Edma1909–1992

Edma Abouchdid was the first woman inLebanon to obtain a medical degree. Shefounded the Lebanese Medical Feminine As-sociation and was active in family planning.

Abouchdid was born in São Paulo, Brazil.She wanted to be a doctor at the age of fif-teen. Because girls at that time did not usu-ally seek higher education, she had to con-vince her father, also a school principal, thatshe should not follow the usual course ofwaiting for the appropriate suitor.

Abouchdid graduated from the AmericanUniversity in Beirut in medicine in 1931. Shewas the first Lebanese woman to do so.From 1936 to 1945 she worked at the RoyalHospital in Baghdad. From 1945 to 1948 shetraveled to the United States to do graduatework at Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Colum-bia. When she returned to her homeland,she joined the faculty of the American Uni-versity in Beirut as professor of clinical gy-necology and obstetrics.

There, she founded an infertility clinic aswell as the Lebanese Medical Feminine Asso-ciation. She received numerous awards, mostnotably the Medal of the Equestrian Order ofSaint Sepulchre of Jerusalem for chivalry,which had been reserved for male recipients.She served on many national and interna-tional committees and in 1969 founded theLebanese Family Planning Association.

Abouchdid lived during a time of tremen-dous change in Lebanon. Massive humanlosses during the Balkan Wars and WorldWar I pushed women into occupations thathad traditionally been dominated by men inAbouchdid’s region. During the two worldwars, women physicians with the AmericanWomen’s Hospital Service as well as withother Foreign Service initiatives worked inLebanon. Abouchdid attended a conferencein New York in 1953 and expressed grati-tude for the many American women physi-cians who had spent time in Lebanon work-ing and encouraging others who wanted toenter the profession. She died of heart fail-ure on October 11, 1992.

References: Jurdak, Hania, “The Late AdmaAbu Shdeed: AUB’s First Woman Doctor,”AUB Bulletin 35, no. 2 (March 1993): 12–13;Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of theWorld, New York: Macmillan (1957); Who’sWho in Lebanon 1988–89, Beirut: Publitec(1988).

Acosta Sison, Honoria1888–1970

The first female physician in the Philip-pines, Honoria Acosta Sison was a specialistin obstetrics and gynecology at the Univer-sity of the Philippines. She educated manyin pelvimetry for Filipina women and intro-duced low cesarean section to the Philip-pines.

She was born on December 30, 1888, inCalasiao, Pangasinan. Her mother’s deathwhen she was only two years old resulted inher being raised by her father and grand-parents in Dagupan. She attended Santis-simo Rosario Convent in Lingayen for abrief period before attending a normalschool run by Americans. She was one ofonly 10 students out of 375 who passed thegovernment examination upon completinghigh school. Thus she was sent to the UnitedStates for further study in 1904. She went toPhiladelphia to attend Drexel Institute andBrown Preparatory School before enteringthe Women’s Medical College of Pennsylva-nia and graduating in 1909 with her M.D.

Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth

4

There, she worked for a year in the mater-nity hospital before returning to the Philip-pines to work.

In the Philippines, she worked as an as-sistant in obstetrics at St. Paul’s Hospital be-fore obtaining a position at the University ofthe Philippines in the department of obstet-rics and gynecology. Women were not wellaccepted in the field at this time, but AcostaSison persevered and eventually, in 1942,earned the rank of professor and head of thedepartment. (Her husband, Antonio Sison,served as dean of the College of Medicineand director of the Philippine General Hos-pital.) Like many women physicians, shemanaged the duties of career, wife, andmother. Two of her three children also be-came physicians.

Acosta Sison published extensively in thefield of obstetrics and gynecology and re-ceived many honors over the years, includ-ing a presidential medal for medical re-search. Ten years after her death in 1970, thePhilippines issued a stamp in her honor.

References: Agris, Joseph, “Honoria AcostaSison: Pioneer Gynecologist and Obstetri-cian,” Journal of Dermatologic Surgery andOncology 6, no. 3 (March 1980): 178; Kyle,Robert A., et al., “Honoria Acosta-Sison,”JAMA 246, no. 11 (11 September 1981): 1191;Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of theWorld, New York: Macmillan (1957).

Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth1901–1968

Hattie Alexander was a pediatrician and mi-crobiologist who contributed to loweringthe number of infant deaths from influenzalmeningitis. She was also one of the first re-searchers to discover that bacteria can be re-sistant to antibiotics and thus contributed tothe theory that DNA held the key to manydiseases.

Alexander was born on April 5, 1901, inBaltimore, Maryland, to William BainAlexander and Elsie May Townsend. Shewas only an average student while attend-ing Western High School in Baltimore butwent on to attend Goucher College in Tow-

son, Maryland. Alexander seemed muchmore interested in sports than studies whilethere but did study bacteriology and physi-ology and graduated with an A.B. degree in1923. Her degree enabled her to obtain a jobwith the U.S. Public Health Service as a bac-teriologist. Three years later she workedwith the Maryland Public Health Service.The experience gained in these two jobsprompted her to apply for admission tomedical school at Johns Hopkins. There,more mature and focused, she was an excel-lent student, obtaining her M.D. degree in1930.

Her first internship was in pediatrics atJohns Hopkins Hospital. The second was atBabies Hospital, which was part of Colum-bia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Duringthese internships she witnessed the devas-tating effects of bacterial meningitis, whichseemed to afflict so many infants and was atthe time fatal.

In searching for a better treatment for in-fluenzal meningitis, a common form of bac-terial meningitis, Alexander began to buildon a successful antipneumonia serum de-veloped at the Rockefeller Institute by Ken-neth Goodner and Frank Horsfall Jr. By the1940s the mortality rate for bacterial menin-gitis had dropped significantly in theUnited States. She continued her work, ex-perimenting with combinations of anti-serums, sulfa drugs, and eventually antibi-otics, finding a cocktail that nearlyeliminated fatalities.

Alexander was one of the first to discoverthat some strains of bacteria seemed resis-tant to treatment. With this realization, shefocused on the genetic makeup of bacteriaand its importance in understanding resis-tance to antibiotics. Her findings alsostrengthened the theory that DNA held thekey to so many diseases. Later she turnedher attention to viruses, particularly the po-liovirus and its RNA, and assisted others atColumbia in this research.

Alexander published numerous papersand received much recognition over theyears. She was the first woman to be electedpresident of the American Pediatric Society.Her skepticism as a teacher, along with herstern, formal manner and insistence on ac-

Alvord, Lori Arviso

5

curacy, challenged residents and studentsalike. Dr. Alexander underwent a radicalmastectomy late in life and later died fromliver cancer on June 24, 1968, in New YorkCity.

References: American National Biography,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);Christy, Nicholas P., “Hattie E. Alexander1901–1968,” Journal of the College of Physiciansand Surgeons of Columbia University (onlinejournal) 17, no. 2 (Spring 1997), http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/newsjournal/archives/jour_v17n2_0002.html (accessedMay 19, 2002); McIntosh, Rustin, “HattieAlexander,” Pediatrics 42, no. 3 (September1968): 544.

Ali, Safiehca. 1900–?

Very little is known about Safieh Ali. Shewas born in Turkey, educated in Germany,and was the first female doctor in her coun-try. Although Ali was unable to receivemedical training in Turkey because womenwere not allowed in medical school at thetime she pursued her training, she appar-ently was one of the first women to benefitfrom the Turkish reforms of the 1920s and1930s to stimulate economic growth. Im-proving women’s education played a partin this program. Soon after the reforms inthe country started, the medical school atthe University of Istanbul allowed womento enter.

In 1924, Ali attended the 1924 LondonConference of the Medical Women’s Inter-national Association. As the first femalephysician from Turkey, she attracted muchattention from the press and from very well-known women physicians of the time whoalso attended the conference.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); “Medical Women’s International As-sociation,” London Times (15 July 1924): 17f.

Alvord, Lori Arviso1959–

The first Navajo female surgeon, LoriAlvord was born as Janette Lorraine Cuppin Tacoma, Washington. Her young motherand father raised her and her two youngersisters on a Navajo reservation in New Mex-ico. They lived in poverty with most in thecommunity speaking only their nativetongue. Lori felt she didn’t quite belong be-cause her mother was white and her fatherwas a full-blooded Navajo.

She did well in high school and wanted toattend college:

My college plans were modest; Iassumed I would attend a nearby stateschool. But then I happened to meetanother Navajo student who wasattending Princeton. I had heard ofPrinceton but had no idea where itwas. I asked him how many Indianswere there. He replied, “Five.” Icouldn’t even imagine a place withonly five Indians, since our town was98 percent Indian. Then he mentionedDartmouth, which had about fiftyIndians on campus, and I felt a littlebetter. Ivy League was a term I hadheard, but I had no concept of itsmeaning. No one from my high schoolhad ever attended an Ivy Leaguecollege. At my request, my high schoolcounselor gave me the applications forall the Ivy League schools, but I onlycompleted Dartmouth’s because Iknew there were fifty Indians there.(Alvord 1999, 26)

She was accepted at Dartmouth and grad-uated cum laude in 1979. After looking forwork in New Mexico, she decided to pursueher fascination with the human body. Sheattended Stanford and obtained her medicaldegree in 1985. She then went to New Mex-ico and served Native Americans as aphysician and surgeon at the Gallup IndianMedical Center.

Alvord is currently a professor of surgeryand the associate dean for student and mi-nority affairs at Dartmouth’s Medical

American Medical Women’s Association

6

School. As an educator and physician, shestrives to incorporate Navajo ways of heal-ing into Western medicine, believing thatcaring, culture, and tradition have a place inthe healing process. “As a physician,teacher, and mother, she hopes to weave to-gether two worlds that have so much to of-fer each other” (Mangan 1999, A12).

She married Jon Alvord and changed hername to her grandmother’s maiden name ofArviso, thus becoming Lori Arviso Alvord.She has two children.

References: Alvord, Lori Arviso, “NavajoSurgeon Combines Approaches,” HealthProgress 80, no. 1 (January–February 1999):26; Alvord, Lori Arviso, and Elizabeth Co-hen Van Pelt, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear,New York: Bantam Books (1999); Mangan,Katherine S., “Enlisting the Spirit in MedicalTreatment,” Chronicle of Higher Education 45,no. 42 (25 June 1999): A12.

American Medical Women’s Association

1915–

The American Medical Women’s Associa-tion (AMWA; known as the MWNA, Med-ical Women’s National Association, until1937) was founded in 1915. Even though theAmerican Medical Association seated itsfirst woman in the same year, many womenphysicians felt that a male-dominated orga-nization would not address their concerns.They established the AMWA to share thesemutual concerns and to learn from one an-other. Also, since many women physiciansof the time worked in isolation, the organi-zation would serve to draw women doctorsinto the larger medical community and togive them a voice in this community. BerthaVan Hoosen was the AMWA’s first presi-dent. The organization did not include mi-norities and medical students until after1940.

In June 1917, the AMWA formed the WarService Committee, which operated as theAmerican Women’s Hospital Service. Al-though the War Department refused the or-

ganization’s request to allow women physi-cians, the American Red Cross did acceptthe offer of assistance. Thus the AMWA’s in-volvement in caring for civilian casualties ofwar abroad became indispensable.

Women missionaries and others workingabroad in the aftermath of World War Ialerted the organization to the enormousneed for physicians in many parts of theworld. The AMWA’s physicians traveledabroad and set up clinics and hospitals,many in cooperation with U.S. agencies andwith foreign aid agencies overburdenedwith providing medical care to those inneed.

During the Great Depression in the early1930s, the AMWA helped with caring for thesick and underfed in the United States. Italso set up care units for hurricane victimsin Florida and health care, including educa-tion, for pregnant women in rural areas ofthe Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, andVirginia. Many qualified male physiciansjoined it in these efforts.

In 1940 the AMWA tried once again togain commissions for female physicians, butneither the AMA nor the army and navysurgeon general supported the change. In1943, the demand for physicians was sooverwhelming because of World War II thatobjections were withdrawn. Dr. MargaretCraighill was the first woman to receive acommission. She joined the Army MedicalCorps as a major on April 16.

Today, the AMWA focuses on varied is-sues ranging from funding for female med-ical students to public health care in ruralareas. It continues to play a major role inpromoting women as physicians world-wide.

See also: American Women’s Hospitals;Craighill, Margaret D.; Van Hoosen, BerthaReferences: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenPhysicians and Surgeons: National and Interna-tional Organizations, Livingston, NY: Liv-ingston Press (1939); More, Ellen Singer,Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians andthe Profession of Medicine, 1850–1995, Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1999).

Andersen, Dorothy Hansine

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American Women’s Hospitals1917–

Created by the American Medical Women’sAssociation in 1917, American Women’sHospitals (AWH) provided care for numer-ous wounded civilians and soldiers duringWorld War I. Women physicians concernedabout the overwhelming casualties sus-tained by the United States and its alliesnow had a way to contribute to care for thesick and wounded on the battlefront.

Despite the organization’s early financialchallenges, over 1,000 women physiciansregistered for service before the end of theyear. With help from the American Commit-tee for Devastated France, the AWH estab-lished its first hospital on July 28, 1918, inthe village of Neufmoutiers, Seine-et-Marne. The hospital treated both civiliansand soldiers. Well after the war, hospitalsand their staffs were still desperatelyneeded in some parts of the world to copewith widespread disease.

In 1923, Greece experienced a crisis asrefugees with typhus and smallpox pouredinto the country. Greece asked for help fromthe AWH, which set up a quarantine stationand delousing plant on Macronissi Islandnear the coast of Greece. There, the AWHtreated over 10,000 refugees. The organiza-tion is currently associated with the Ameri-can Medical Women’s Association and op-erates nine clinics in the United States andabroad.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenPhysicians and Surgeons: National and Interna-tional Organizations, Livingston, NY: Liv-ingston Press (1939).

Andersen, Dorothy Hansine1901–1963

Dorothy Andersen identified cystic fibrosisas a disease in 1935. After completing an in-ternship in surgery in Rochester, New York,at Strong Memorial Hospital, she was un-able to obtain a residency in her preferredfield, surgery and pathology. Thus her dis-covery was the result of being forced be-

cause of her gender to turn her attention tomedical research.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, onMay 15, 1901, Andersen was an only child.Her father, Hans Peter Andersen, workedfor the YMCA and died when she was thir-teen. Her mother, Mary Louise (Mason) An-dersen, died in 1920. By this time the familyhad moved to Johnsbury, Vermont, whereDorothy attended St. Johnsbury Academy.Dorothy worked her way through MountHolyoke College and upon graduationstarted medical school at Johns HopkinsSchool of Medicine. She received her M.D.in 1926.

Andersen taught for a year after gradua-tion at the Rochester School of Medicineand then interned in surgery at StrongMemorial Hospital. Unable to find employ-ment as a physician, she obtained a positionat Columbia University’s College of Physi-cians and Surgeons as an assistant in pathol-ogy. She later began a doctoral program andreceived her doctor of medical science de-gree in endocrinology.

In 1938 she published her research on cys-tic fibrosis, and this achievement launchedher into research related to this disease forthe next twenty-five years. In order to pur-sue this path, she obtained additional train-ing in pediatrics and chemistry, and ob-tained her doctorate in medical science fromColumbia University in 1935. Andersenserved Babies Hospital at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center as both apathologist and a pediatrician. She also con-tributed during her career to the field of car-diac abnormalities and embryology. Shewas asked to teach cardiology during WorldWar II, when physicians were becoming in-terested in open-heart surgery.

A determined and dedicated physician,Andersen sometimes irritated others by in-truding in areas where she was not an ex-pert. She was also seen as a bit sloppy in ap-pearance and was a chain smoker whorarely bothered to tap the ashes off her ciga-rettes. Her sense of humor and hard workwere, however, appreciated by many whoknew her.

Andersen never married. She underwentsurgery for lung cancer in 1962 and died

Anderson, Charlotte Morrison

8

from the disease on March 3, 1963. She isbest remembered for her work on cystic fi-brosis.

References: Damrosch, Douglas S., “Doro-thy Hansine Andersen,” Journal of Pediatrics65, no. 4 (October 1964): 477–479; McMur-ray, Emily J. Notable Twentieth-Century Scien-tists, Detroit: Gale (1995).

Anderson, Charlotte Morrison1915–

Charlotte Anderson was an Australianphysician and a pioneer in pediatric gas-troenterology. With the publication of Paedi-atric Gastroenterology in 1975, she establishedherself as a leading authority in the field.

Anderson was born on March 12, 1915.She received her early education at MontAlbert Central School and Tintern girls’grammar schools in Victoria. She worked asa resident biochemist for five years at theBaker Medical Research Institute before re-ceiving her medical degree from the Uni-versity of Melbourne in 1945. She laterworked as a resident medical officer at theRoyal Melbourne Hospital and the Birming-ham Children’s Hospital.

She was first offered a laboratory positionat the Royal Hospital for Women, where shehad worked with a rubella vaccine, but she“knew she did not wish to return to purescience and lose contact with sick people,particularly children. What she wanted wasthe opportunity to investigate disorders oflargely unknown cause in a clinical context”(Allen 1996, 40). She thus chose to work in achildren’s hospital.

Anderson served as professor of pedi-atrics and child health at the University ofBirmingham from 1968 to 1980, and from1982 until 1991 was a researcher at the Gas-troenterological Research Unit at PrincessMargaret Hospital for Children.

Her 1975 Paediatric Gastroenterology com-piled much research in the new specialty inone place in collaboration with numerousphysicians from various countries. The bookis highly informative with numerous dia-grams, photos, and extensive bibliographies.

Anderson never married. She is retiredand lives in Australia.

References: Allen, Nessy, “A Pioneer ofPaediatric Gastroenterology: The Career ofan Australian Woman Scientist,” HistoricalRecords of Australian Science 11, no. 1 (June1996): 35–50; Anderson, Charlotte M., andValerie Burke, eds., Paediatric Gastroenterol-ogy, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific (1975);Who’s Who in Australia, Melbourne: Informa-tion Australia (1998).

Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett1836–1917

Elizabeth Anderson was the first Britishwoman to become a physician. . . . She wasa pioneer in medical education for womenin England through founding a hospital,helping to found a medical school forwomen and serving as its dean, and becom-ing the first woman to be a member of theBritish Medical Association.

Born in London, Elizabeth, along with hersiblings, was soon moved to Aldeburgh,Suffolk, where her father, Newson Garrett,and mother, Louisa, raised a large family.Elizabeth was the second oldest of ten. Herolder sister was Louisa and after Elizabethcame Dunnell, who died at six months. Fol-lowing were Newson, Edmund, Alice,Agnes, Millicent, Sam, Josephine, andGeorge. Her father became a rather success-ful businessman and believed all his chil-dren should have an adequate education.

For a time their mother educated Louisaand Elizabeth; following that, according toElizabeth, was a rather boring ordeal with agoverness. By the time Elizabeth was thir-teen, her father had decided to send thegirls to the Boarding School for Ladies, runby Miss Louisa Browning.

Although Elizabeth at first preferredplaying outdoors to school, she learned tolove books and reading and became a verycapable writer.

From 1851 to 1857, she, with her sisterLouisa, helped at home and otherwise led arather carefree life. Elizabeth did continueto educate herself, focusing on arithmetic

Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett

9

and Latin and sometimes utilizing the helpof her brother Newton’s tutor. During thistime, Elizabeth became heavily influencedby other women, among them British suf-fragist Emily Davies, who felt that intelli-gent women should pursue careers. Louisamarried in 1857. Elizabeth thus took onmore responsibilities at home and becameeven more discontented.

In 1858 the Englishwoman’s Journal cameout and brought the organized women’smovement into her life. In the next year sheattended a lecture given by Dr. ElizabethBlackwell and met her later in the evening.Blackwell spoke of the needs of women andchildren; Elizabeth’s other mentor, Davies,had grown up as a clergyman’s daughter,seeing firsthand the conditions of tene-ments in industrial towns. She knewwomen were suffering because they couldnot dare ask a male physician to attend tothem. Elizabeth asked her father for finan-

cial support to study medicine, and heeventually agreed.

Since no British medical school acceptedwomen, Anderson first worked as a nurseat Middlesex Hospital to see if she was upto the task and to learn as much as possible.Her work led to an invitation to observepatients in the out-clinics of T. W. Nunn,the dean of the medical school at Univer-sity College. Some doctors, especially thehouse physician, Dr. Willis, were also will-ing to help her in private. She realized sheneeded more physics, chemistry, anatomy,and physiology and took a room to herselfat the hospital for intense reading andstudy.

During winter 1861 while making roundswith the medical students, Anderson an-swered a visiting physician’s question cor-rectly after none of the students responded.Soon thereafter, several students drew up apetition objecting to her admittance to theschool. They threatened to leave if she wasallowed to continue on with them in lecturesand rounds of the hospital. In spite of an of-fer from her parents to make an endowmentto the school for female applicants, the hos-pital decided against allowing women to at-tend hospital lectures in the future.

Feeling strongly that she should stay inEngland and open the doors of medical ed-ucation for British women, Elizabeth de-cided to study for the licentiate of the Soci-ety of Apothecaries (LSA), which did notstipulate in its charter that applicants had tobe male. After she obtained this degree, lessprestigious than the M.D., in 1865, the soci-ety changed its requirements, and Eliza-beth’s was the only woman’s name on itsmedical register for the next twelve years.

In 1866, Anderson opened a dispensaryfor women and children, filling a void inhealth care for the poverty stricken of thecity. No one really objected because acholera epidemic was spreading over thecity. Attitudes changed toward her over theyears, and when she obtained an M.D. de-gree from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1870,medical students cheered.

Elizabeth and James Skelton Andersondeveloped a strong, trusting relationshipwhile he ran her campaign for the School

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (U.S. National Libraryof Medicine)

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Board of London. She was overwhelminglyelected and married James on February 9,1871.

Elizabeth continued to practice medicine,and her husband, like her father, supportedher career. Her dispensary became the NewHospital for Women and Children in 1872.Both its reputation and staff grew. Elizabethbecame an able surgeon at this hospital, per-forming its first ovariotomy. She performedseveral other gynecological surgeries dur-ing her time at the hospital but later saidthat surgery was one of the most trying ofall medical roles for her.

Anderson had her first child, Louisa, inJuly 1873 and enjoyed being a mother. Shecontinued to work and wanted English-women to know that having children didnot eliminate the possibility of a career. Shedid, however, make the difficult decision tostep down from an honorary position atShadwell Children’s Hospital, where shehad worked so hard with Nathaniel Heck-ford to raise money. He had died at theearly age of twenty-eight; Elizabeth and hiswife, who now ran the hospital, did not getalong well.

Her second child, Margaret, was born in1874. At the same time, she added moreroom to the New Hospital for Women, andSophia Jex-Blake, now the leader for med-ical education for women, established theLondon Medical College for Women withElizabeth’s help. Elizabeth taught at the col-lege and supported it despite turbulentearly years and numerous differences ofopinion with Jex-Blake. In 1875, Andersonlost her fifteen-month-old daughter, Mar-garet, to meningitis. Another child came in1876, and Elizabeth continued to work atthe hospital and teach at the college. She be-came dean in 1883 and served for twentyyears. She died on December 17, 1917. Shewas the first woman physician in England,the first woman to obtain an M.D. degree inFrance, and the first woman dean of a med-ical school. By the time she retired, she hadhelped raise the London Medical Collegefor Women to new heights as the College ofLondon University.See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; Jex-Blake,Sophia Louisa

References: Encyclopedia of World Biography,Detroit: Gale (1999); Hume, Ruth Fox, GreatWomen of Medicine, New York: RandomHouse (1964); Manton, Jo, Elizabeth GarrettAnderson, New York: Dutton (1965).

Angwin, Maria Louisa1849–1898

Maria Angwin was the first licensed womandoctor in Nova Scotia. She was born on Sep-tember 21, 1849, in Blackhead, ConceptionBay, Newfoundland. The daughter of aMethodist minister, Thomas Angwin, andLouisa Emma Gill, Maria had four brothersand two sisters, Elizabeth and Phillippa.Both her mother and Phillippa died early ofdysentery.

Her father was transferred to Nova Scotiain the 1850s and settled at Dartmouth in1865. The next year she attended the Wes-leyan Ladies Academy, which was part ofMount Allison College in Sackville, NewBrunswick. Maria graduated in 1869 with aliberal arts degree and decided on medicalschool, having been greatly influenced byreading about the Blackwell sisters. Noschools in Canada accepted women, how-ever, and she had four brothers who alsoneeded financial support for an education.

Angwin began teaching in Dartmouth af-ter attending the Normal School at Truro.She didn’t like teaching, but by living athome with her family she was able to saveenough money for medical school. In 1879she entered the Women’s Medical College atthe New York Infirmary for Women andChildren, which had been established bythe Blackwell sisters in 1868.

Upon graduation she served as an internassistant physician for a year in Boston atthe New England Hospital for Women andChildren. She then left for London to attendclinics at the Royal Free Hospital.

After returning to Nova Scotia, in 1884she obtained her license to practice medi-cine there. She practiced in Halifax, focusingon the urban poor. Angwin was a very ac-tive member in the Woman’s Christian Tem-perance Union. She also was a proponent ofequal education for women and spoke at

Apgar, Virginia

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any opportunity on women’s health, chil-dren’s well-being, and the rights of womento seek a career instead of, or in addition to,carrying out the duties of marriage andchild rearing. She traveled to New York Citylate in 1897 for postgraduate work. Al-though she was ill when she returned toHalifax, she expected to resume her prac-tice. She underwent minor surgery whilevisiting in Ashland, Massachusetts, anddied suddenly afterward.

See also: Blackwell, ElizabethReferences: Johnston, Penelop, “Look Back Doctor: Nova Scotia’s Amazing Dr.Maria Angwin,” Medical Post 35, no. 15 (20April 1999), http://www.medicalpost.com/mdlink/; Kernaghan, Lois, “Angwin,Maria Louisa,” Dictionary of Canadian Biog-raphy, vol. 12, 1891–1900, Toronto: Univer-sity of Toronto Press (1990).

Apgar Score System1952

The Apgar score system became widelyused to evaluate the health of newborns af-ter Virginia Apgar published her proposedtest in 1953. APGAR is the acronym for thetest’s measurements: A = appearance, P =pulse, G = grimace, A = activity, and R =respiration. Two points are given for each ofthese five areas, with a score of seven mean-ing the newborn is healthy. If the infantscores below seven, the test is repeatedevery five minutes until a score of seven isattained. An extremely low score alerts theattending physician that something iswrong.

Virginia Apgar, who was an anesthesiolo-gist and worried that infants were notpromptly examined after birth, developedthe score. More attention in her day wasgiven to the mother. She felt that if therewere a quick test available, infant deathsand problems that developed soon afterbirth could be avoided. The test is stillwidely used around the world.

See also: Apgar, Virginia

References: Encyclopedia Britannica Online2000, http://www.britannica.com.

Apgar, Virginia1909–1974

Virginia Apgar is best known for develop-ing the Apgar score system, which helps de-termine the health of infants immediatelyafter birth. This method, developed in 1952,became widely accepted and put into prac-tice and medical school textbooks veryquickly after it was published in 1953. It isstill used around the world.

Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield,New Jersey, on June 7, 1909, to CharlesEmory and Helen May Clarke Apgar. Shehad two brothers, Charles, who died of tu-berculosis in 1903, and Lawrence. Her fatherwas an automobile salesman. He had a loveof science, devoting his spare time to as-tronomy and electrical experiments. Therest of the family was also interested in sci-ence, and in music. Virginia played the vio-lin and was involved in symphonies and or-chestra events all her life, even making herown instruments.

She graduated from Westfield HighSchool in 1925 and then attended MountHolyoke College, supplementing her schol-arships by waiting tables and working inthe library. She was also very athletic andenjoyed sports, especially tennis, as well asbeing in the college orchestra and reportingfor the college newspaper.

In 1929, she earned her B.A. with a majorin zoology and a minor in chemistry. Hav-ing always wanted to be a physician, shewent on to medical school at Columbia Uni-versity’s College of Physicians and Sur-geons. In 1933 she obtained her medical de-gree and proceeded to a surgical internshipat Presbyterian Hospital. Following advicethat she should consider the relatively newfield of anesthesiology, she attended theUniversity of Wisconsin and then went toBellevue Hospital in New York City to be-come certified as an anesthesiologist.

Apgar had always intended to be a sur-geon, but Dr. Alan Whipple advised that itwould be difficult for a woman to support

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herself as a surgeon, especially during thedepression. He encouraged her to specializein anesthesiology because there was a greatneed for better methods, and at the time,few physicians were specializing in thefield.

In 1938 and for the following elevenyears, Apgar worked at Columbia-Presby-terian Medical Center as head of the divi-sion of anesthesiology. She taught, did re-search, and continued as a practitioner.During her time there, her workload in-creased dramatically because so many menleft to join the armed forces before and dur-ing World War II, and she fought very hardfor adequate compensation for her work,even threatening to resign her position atone point. She remained adamant aboutequal pay for women until her death. In1949 she became the first female at Colum-

bia to hold the rank of full professor. Sheheld that position until 1959.

It was as a practitioner that Apgar becameconcerned about quickly ascertaining new-borns’ physical status. Having seen manyheart and lung disorders that she felt couldhave been prevented with immediate exam-ination, she wanted a simple test that even adelivery-room nurse could administer.

Apgar developed her score system by de-termining what needed to be checked im-mediately following the birth of an infant.Her system has been invaluable in prevent-ing further damage from birth abnormali-ties. She first presented her method in 1952at the Annual Congress of Anesthetists.

The Apgar score system did more thanjust help the infants. It also better preparednew physicians and interns to handle a situ-ation in which the infant needed immediate

Virginia Apgar (U.S. National Library of Medicine)

Ashby, Winifred Mayer

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resuscitation or other emergency care. Shealso researched anesthesia agents, believingthat local anesthesia rather than generalanesthesia was always preferable for in-fants. She quit using one of her favorites, cy-clopropane, after research fellows under herfound that the agent suppressed their im-mune system.

Honesty about mistakes, without whichthere could be no learning, was of utmostimportance to her, and she emphasizedhonesty to her students. During her surgi-cal residency, when few admitted anywrongdoing if an infant died, she secretlyentered the morgue to check a dead infantafter being unable to obtain an autopsy per-mit. She discovered that a small artery hadbeen clamped and that she had done it. Sheimmediately admitted her mistake to thesurgeon.

In 1959 Apgar went to Johns HopkinsUniversity to work on a master’s degree inpublic health. She had become increasinglyinterested in doing research on birth defects.While she was there, the National Founda-tion–March of Dimes asked her to head itsnew division of congenital malformations.Although she felt she was not yet qualified,she determined to learn on the job. She alsofelt she could go no further in anesthesiol-ogy at Columbia. She had become inter-ested in genetics as well, so she finished hermaster’s degree and took the position in1960. She stayed with the March of Dimesfor the rest of her career, becoming vice-president and director of basic research in1967 and senior vice-president of medicalaffairs in 1973.

Apgar was also extremely dedicated to al-leviating deformities and ailments beforebirth. She was very concerned about prena-tal care, the effects of radiation on the fetus,and nutrition for pregnant women. Shecoauthored a book in 1972 with Joan Beckcalled Is My Baby Alright?

She was a much sought-after speaker andwas invited frequently to speak at confer-ences and meetings. Although she eventu-ally won international recognition, she re-mained an unassuming and modestwoman.

She walked and talked very fast, loved

challenges, and felt women were liberatedthe day they were born; they just had to bebetter at what they did to succeed in a man’sworld or profession. She was unbiased re-garding gender, race, and religion.

Apgar died on August 7, 1974, at Colum-bia-Presbyterian Medical Center in NewYork City, where she had trained andworked for so many years. She was in-ducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame in1995.

References: Apgar, Virginia, “A Proposalfor a New Method of Evaluation of theNewborn Infant,” Current Researches inAnesthesia and Analgesia 32 (July–August1953): 260– 267; Calmes, Selma Harrison,“Virginia Apgar: A Woman Physician’s Ca-reer in a Developing Specialty,” Journal of theAmerican Medical Women’s Association 39, no.6 (November–December 1984): 184–188;Duffin, Jacalyn, “Apgar, Virginia,” AmericanNational Biography, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1999); James, L. Stanley,“Fond Memories of Virginia Apgar,” Pedi-atrics 55, no. 1 (1975): 1–4; Ogilvie, MarilynB., Biographical Dictionary of Women in Sci-ence: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century. New York: Routledge(2000); Wyly, M. Virginia, “Apgar, Virginia,”Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement9, 1971–1975, New York: Scribner’s (1994).

Ashby, Winifred Mayer1879–1975

Winifred Ashby was the first person to de-termine the life span of erythrocytes (redblood cells). Her “Ashby method” is in-cluded in many hematology books. Thetechnique involves mixing different types ofred blood cells in patients and followingthose cells over time to observe the disap-pearance of different cell types. She con-cluded that human red blood cells can circu-late in the body for up to 110 days. Prior toher work, it was thought that they survivedonly two to three weeks. Many disputed herfindings initially, but over time her conclu-sions were found to be accurate. Her workwent largely unnoticed until the 1930s.

Aspasia

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Ashby was born in London, England, onOctober 13, 1879. She was the daughter ofGeorge Mayer and Mary-Ann Brock Ashby.She moved with her family to Chicagowhen she was fourteen years old. She at-tended Northwestern University and alsothe University of Chicago, obtaining a B.S.in 1903. She earned an M.S. two years laterat Washington University in St. Louis andfrom there went to the Philippines to studymalnutrition.

When she returned to the Midwest, shetaught physics and chemistry in Berwyn,Illinois, and Maryville, Missouri. From 1914to 1916 she carried out laboratory work atRush Medical College and Illinois CentralHospital in Chicago. In 1917 she began a fel-lowship in immunology and pathology atthe Mayo Clinic, during which time she de-veloped her method for determining the lifeof erythrocytes.

She attended the University of Minnesotaand received her Ph.D. in 1921. She re-mained at the Mayo Clinic until 1924, thentook a job at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital inWashington, D.C., where she worked in thebacteriology and serology laboratories andsupervised numerous activities. She retiredin 1949 to Lorton, Virginia.

Ashby died from a cerebrovascular acci-dent on July 19, 1975, at the age of ninety-five.

References: Fairbanks, Virgil F., “In Memo-riam: Winifred M. Ashby, 1879–1975,” Blood46, no. 6 (December 1975): 977–978; Kass-Simon, G., and Patricia Farnes, Women of Sci-ence: Righting the Record, Bloomington: Indi-ana University Press (1990); Parry, Melanie,ed., Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Edin-burgh: Chambers (1997); Who Was Who inAmerica with World Notables: Volume VI, 1974–1976, Chicago: Marquis Who’s Who (1976);Wintrobe, Maxwell M., Blood, Pure and Elo-quent: A Story of Discovery, of People, and ofIdeas, New York: McGraw-Hill (1980).

AspasiaA.D. 200

Aspasia was a Greco-Roman whose writ-ings on obstetrics and gynecology were con-

sidered a major contribution to medicalpractice in the Greco-Roman world. Herwritings survived over 1,000 years until Tro-tula’s works became widely used.

Because Aetios of Amida wrote about herin the sixth century B.C. and quoted from herextensively in his Tetrabiblon, she is consid-ered to be one of the most knowledgeable ofthe time on female diseases. Aetios was aphysician who attended to Justinian I, theByzantine emperor.

Most of her writings concern pregnancy,the determination of fetal positions beforebirth, and herbal treatments for some condi-tions. She also performed surgery and madethe early observation that the mental healthof the mother plays a part in a healthy birthand the health of the child.

References: Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sci-ences: A Biographical Dictionary, Westport,CT: Greenwood Press (1996).

Avery, Mary Ellen1927–

Mary Ellen Avery discovered the reason be-hind respiratory distress syndrome (RDS)and helped develop a treatment for the con-dition. Infants with RDS cannot developenough pulmonary surfactant to coat theirlungs in order for them to breathe easily. Inmany instances, this condition is fatal. Av-ery’s work has saved thousands of prema-ture infants around the world.

Avery was born on May 6, 1927, in Cam-den, New Jersey, to William Clarence Averyand Mary Catherine Miller Avery. She hasone sister.

Avery was influenced early by a neighbor,Emily Bacon, who was a doctor and a pro-fessor at the Women’s Medical College ofPennsylvania and took Avery on rounds atthe hospital. Avery’s parents both encour-aged her to pursue the career of her choice.

She attended Wheaton College, where shemajored in chemistry and graduated summacum laude in 1948. She then went to JohnsHopkins University School of Medicine toobtain her M.D. degree. Soon after receiving

Avery, Mary Ellen

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her M.D. in 1952, Avery developed tubercu-losis. She was sent to Trudeau Sanitarium fora year but left after just a few days becauseshe didn’t think bed rest for a year couldpossibly help. She recovered at home and,during her illness, began to read more abouttuberculosis and other lung ailments.

During her days at Harvard on a researchfellowship, she discovered RDS firsthand inthe autopsy room. She spent a lot of timethere studying newborn infants who haddied of RDS, a condition no one then under-stood. In order to learn more about lungfunction, she began work with Dr. JereMead at Harvard.

Together they discovered that a foamysubstance called pulmonary surfactantwas lacking in newborns who had died ofRDS. Avery realized that this substancewas of great importance for newborns tobreathe normally. She also discovered thatglucocorticoid hormones assisted withlung development; they are now given topregnant women who are at risk for pre-mature delivery.

Avery feels that research findings must bedisseminated to a wide audience as quickly

as possible. She is a strong advocate for ba-sic medical service to children of economi-cally depressed countries, evidenced by herinvolvement in UNICEF.

Avery has served in various faculty rolesover the years. She worked at Johns Hop-kins until 1969, then took a position atMcGill University in Quebec as professor ofpediatrics at Children’s Hospital. In 1974she began work as the physician in chief atBoston’s Children’s Hospital while servingas professor of pediatrics at Harvard. Shehas written extensively on newborns, re-ceived numerous awards, and been a verybusy speaker abroad. She has left a perma-nent mark on the field of pediatrics.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: 1950 to the Present, SantaBarbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1998); Contempo-rary Authors Online, Detroit: Gale (2000); No-table Twentieth-Century Scientists Supplement,Detroit: Gale (1998); Shearer, Benjamin F.,and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in theLife Sciences, Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress (1996).

B

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Bacheler, Mary Washington1860–1939

The degradation of women in India in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth cen-turies motivated the Free Baptists to moveinto the mission field there. Mary Bacheler,an active medical missionary in India, car-ried out their work for decades.

Bacheler was born in New Hampton,New Hampshire, on February 22, 1860. Herfather was a medical missionary and had re-turned with his wife for the birth of Mary,the ninth of ten children. In 1866, leavingthe other children in the United States,Mary’s mother took Mary to India for thefirst time. There she got an early look at herfather’s work in treating the Indians in andaround Midnapore.

In the late nineteenth century in India,many women were not allowed to permit aman to examine them if they had an ailment,and thus many of them suffered from poorhealth. Medical missionary women likeBacheler often were able not only to cure thewomen of their ailments but also to therebyestablish trust and win converts to the faith.

An earlier development had given theFree Baptist missionaries access to Indianwomen. In February 1866, the Hindus be-gan to allow outside women into thezenanas, the female part of the household.Missionary women of the time were al-lowed in some instances to gather withHindu women and teach various domesticpractices as well as crafts. Some Free Baptistsupporters were disappointed that this typeof outreach did not bring about many con-versions, but Mary was certain that the

younger ones might eventually benefit fromthe missionaries’ religious teachings. In themeantime, they were helping to educateyoung women, a practice that initiated anexpectation in Indian society.

In 1883 Mary returned to the UnitedStates for seven years, much of that time be-ing spent at the Women’s Medical Collegeof the New York Infirmary for Women andChildren, where she graduated with herM.D. degree in 1890. She returned to Mid-napore and the Brown Dispensary to workwith her father. At one point they were see-ing over 3,000 patients a year. Mary traveledoften to homes, as many women were nowwilling to let a female physician see to theirneeds. Her popularity grew so fast that afterher parents left in 1892, she became totallyimmersed in health care and ministering tothe people. After several years, she suffereda complete breakdown and had to return tothe United States. Her parents both diedsoon thereafter. Her health regained, Maryreturned to India and her work in 1903.

During the next three decades she workedin various roles as assigned by the Free Bap-tists. She oversaw an orphanage, tended toadministrative duties, and was tough onnew missionaries, insisting they be betteracquainted with the Bible. She herself en-joyed telling Bible stories while she tendedto the ill. She also was a tireless advocate ofwomen’s and children’s health care.

She retired in 1933, left India for the lasttime in 1936, and died in the United Stateson November 5, 1939. Her friends and pa-tients in India were still receiving Christmaspresents from her when they learned of herdeath.

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References: Bickers, Robert A., and Rose-mary Seton, eds., Missionary Encounters:Sources and Issues, Richmond, Surrey: Cur-zon Press (1996); Congdon-Martin, Eliza-beth W., “Mary Washington Bacheler, M.D.:Enlisted for Life,” American Baptist Quarterly12, no. 3 (1993): 271–282.

Bain, Barbara1932–

Barbara Bain developed the mixed leuko-cyte culture (MLC), which is essential in de-termining bone marrow and organ compat-ibility for transplants. She discovered thatcombining the blood lymphocytes of twodifferent people results in the activation ofthe lymphocytes. The amount of in vitro ac-tivation is an indication of how compatibleone set of cells is with the other. Researchersdetermine the degree of activation from theamount of DNA synthesis that has occurredover five or six days.

Bain was born in Montreal, Quebec, onMay 8, 1932. She attended McGill Univer-sity and received B.S. and M.S. degrees in1953 and 1957, respectively. In 1965 she ob-tained her Ph.D. in experimental medicine.She developed MLC while at the Royal Vic-toria Hospital as a graduate student. Shecurrently is a professor at St. Mary’s Hospi-tal Medical School, Department of Haema-tology, London.

Her current research focuses on sickle celldisease, leukemia, genetics, and the role ofethnicity in blood-related health issues.

References: American Men and Women ofScience 1998–99, New Providence, NJ:Bowker (1999); Kass-Simon, G., and PatriciaFarnes, Women of Science: Righting the Record,Bloomington: Indiana University Press(1990).

Baker, Sara Josephine1873–1945

Sara Baker was a physician and publichealth administrator in the early twentiethcentury. She became an authority on the

welfare of poor women and children andserved in various government and organi-zational roles to assist those who neededcare the most. She was one of the firstwomen to become involved in social medi-cine and the first woman to obtain a Ph.D.in public health from New York Univer-sity’s Bellevue Hospital Medical School.

Baker was born November 15, 1873, inPoughkeepsie, New York. Her father, Or-lando Daniel Mosher Baker, was a lawyer,and her mother, Jenny Harwood Brown,was one of the first to graduate from VassarCollege. Baker had intended to go to Vassaras well, but her father and brother died un-expectedly when she was sixteen. She de-cided not to accept a scholarship to Vassar,as her mother wanted; instead she set hersights on a medical career.

Her mother was not very encouragingbut still supportive. In 1894 Baker began herstudies at the Women’s Medical College ofthe New York Infirmary for Women andChildren, which had been founded by Eliz-abeth and Emily Blackwell. It was the onlymedical school in New York that accepted

Sara Josephine Baker (Underwood & Underwood/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

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women. She then turned down an opportu-nity to intern at the New York Infirmary be-cause she wanted to work in a large generalhospital. However, since none of them tookwomen interns, she settled on Boston’s NewEngland Hospital for Women and Children,whose staff included many very well-trained women physicians.

In Boston, Baker also cared for outpa-tients of the hospital who lived in the slums,in time realizing that she had found her life-work. She took a practical view of her mis-sion, concluding that someone had to dealwith the effects of an unjust society.

She attempted private practice among thepoor but realized she could not make a liv-ing. Then, after she had worked briefly as amedical examiner for an insurance com-pany, New York City’s Health Departmenthired her in 1907 to head the Bureau ofChild Hygiene. It was here that she beganher contributions to public health. She couldsee that giving the poor medical treatmentwas not enough; legislation, regulations,and staff adequately trained to work withthe population would be necessary. Becauseof her efforts in training midwives, NewYork City achieved the lowest infant mortal-ity rate of any large city.

Baker was a feminist, a lesbian, and an ac-tive suffragist. She associated with many in-fluential and unconventional womenthroughout her life; most of these womenwere members of the Heterodoxy Club,founded in 1912. Members met to discussmutual concerns, women’s rights, and howto handle the inequality women were facingprofessionally.

Baker felt it was important to have thepublic image of an exceptional professionalin order to make improvements in publichealth. By continually focusing, withoutracial prejudice, on the plight of mothers andchildren, she was able to influence politicalleaders on their behalf; it was difficult for apolitician to be against mothers and children.

She authored many books and articlesand retired to Bellemead, New Jersey, whereshe had a farm and lived with her partner,Ida Wylie, the novelist, and Louise Pearce, aphysician. She died of cancer on February22, 1945, in New York City.

References: Baker, Sara Josephine, Fight-ing for Life, New York: Macmillan (1939);Morantz-Sanchez, Regina, “Baker, SaraJosephine,” American National Biography,vol. 2, New York: Oxford University Press(1999); Notable Twentieth-Century Scientists,Detroit: Gale (1995).

Balfour, Margaret Ida18?–1949

Margaret Balfour was a physician very ac-tive in organizing activities in connectionwith the Medical Women’s InternationalAssociation and the Women’s Medical Ser-vice in India. She was a leader in foreignmedical services and became an expert onIndian medical care and facilities as well asworked in many African countries. Herprolific correspondence and other writingsduring the early twentieth century alertedmany in the world to the unhealthy envi-ronments in many countries, particularly tothe needs of women and children in Indiaand Africa. She also was indispensable inorganizing medical education for women inIndia and Africa. Her book The Work of Med-ical Women in India was a source on manyaspects of Indian social and cultural life. Italso documents the progress that had beenmade to date and has good statistics on fe-male practitioners.

Balfour was born in Edinburgh, thedaughter of Robert Balfour. Little is knownabout her early life and education exceptthat she did attend Edinburgh University.Her interests in medicine focused on thehealth of women, particularly when preg-nant, and of children in Asia.

References: Balfour, Margaret I., and RuthYoung, The Work of Medical Women in India,London: Oxford University Press (1929);Lovejoy, Esther P., Women Doctors of theWorld, New York: Macmillan (1957); WhoWas Who, 1941–50, “Balfour, Margaret Ida,”London: A & C Black (1951); Who Was Whoamong English and European Authors,1931–1949, “Balfour, Margaret Ida,” Detroit:Gale (1978).

Barnes, Alice Josephine

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Barnes, Alice Josephine1912–1999

The first woman to become president of theBritish Medical Association, Barnes spenther life as a gynecologist and obstetriciantrying to improve the health of women andinfants.

Born in Sheringham, Norfolk, England, onAugust 18, 1912, to a minister and a giftedpianist, she determined early in her life thatshe wanted to become a doctor. She went toOxford High School and later won a schol-arship to Lady Margaret Hall, a women’scollege at the University of Oxford, whereshe earned her master’s degree in 1937.

After World War II began, many malephysicians were called into the military andtheir absence enabled her to obtain a posi-tion at the Samaritan Hospital in 1939. Sheworked delivering babies and caring forpeople injured in the Nazi bombings of Lon-don, and earned her M.D. at University Col-lege Hospital Medical School in 1941.

She married Dr. Brian Warren in 1942 andthey started a family, eventually havingthree children. She continued working as aphysician at various hospitals in Londonand managing a private practice while rais-ing her children. She became a well-knowngynecologist and obstetrician, and as herreputation grew, so did requests for her toserve on various governmental and organi-zational committees.

She investigated the effectiveness of theAbortion Act (1967), concluding that it didmore good than harm. She also worked todetermine the appropriate conditions forconducting experiments on embryos. Oneof the most memorable things Barnes didwas to save the Elizabeth Garrett AndersonHospital from closure during the 1970s. Sheearned the position of president of theBritish Medical Association in 1979 becauseher colleagues, most of them male, felt shewas a tremendously productive and ethicalphysician.

Barnes retired from private practice in1995 but continued to be interested in med-ical affairs. She became a Dame Comman-der of the Order of the British Empire (DBE)

in 1974. Outside of work she enjoyed travel-ing, cooking, and music. She died on De-cember 28, 1999.

References: “Dame Josephine Barnes,”Times (29 December 1999): 19; Haines,Catharine M. C., and Helen Stevens, Inter-national Women in Science: A Biographical Dic-tionary to 1950, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (2001).

Barriers to Success

Many obstacles hindered women from suc-cess in the medical field. Key areas of diffi-culty were cultural and societal expectations,education, and laws and religion. Despitehaving the desire and intelligence needed,many women had to fight for the educationrequired and the acceptance of society.

Until the late twentieth century, it was ex-ceptional for a woman to be encouraged tostudy a science discipline such as medicine.Most societies had a traditional view ofwomen as homemakers and childbearers,and most women were raised from an earlyage with these expectations in mind. Veryfew were bold enough to set out to becomephysicians. Many who did so had physicianfathers or relatives that piqued their interestin medicine or a related discipline.

The notion that women were not up tothe same tasks as men was put forth bymany men during the women’s rightsstruggles of the late nineteenth century,when women were pressing for more op-tions than just domestic careers. In his con-troversial book Sex in Education; or A FairChance for the Girls, Edward H. Clarke,M.D., a former Harvard University profes-sor, proposed that women should not be al-lowed to study with men. “Identical educa-tion of the two sexes is a crime before Godand humanity, that physiology protestsagainst, and that experience weeps over”(Clarke 1873, 127). He also felt that womenwould do themselves harm by exertingundo energy during menstruation andcould permanently damage their reproduc-tive organs. This view was shared by many.

Throughout history, the gender issue has

Barriers to Success

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been problematic. Even in the late 1600s and1700s, when wet nurses and governesses in-creasingly served the upper classes of Eu-rope, women did not find encouragement.“Women’s desires to engage like men inproductive lives free of the cares of parent-ing came into conflict with growing beliefsthat those nations were strongest which hadthe largest population” (Schiebinger 1989,218–219). Governments believed that thehigh infant mortality rate could be loweredonly by educating women on infant careand having them take care of their ownyoung.

Margaret Cavendish spoke for many inthe seventeenth century when she wrotethat “women’s brains are simply too ‘cold’and ‘soft’ to sustain rigorous thought”(Schiebinger 1989, 2). This view has contin-ued to evolve and wear different faces.

“The alleged defect in women’s mindshas changed over time: in the late eigh-teenth century, the female cranial cavity wassupposed to be too small to hold powerfulbrains; in the nineteenth century, the exer-cise of women’s brains was said to shriveltheir ovaries. In our own century peculiari-ties in the right hemisphere supposedlymake women unable to visualize spatial re-lations” (Schiebinger 1989, 2). Over the cen-turies, many educated men and womenhave held such views.

Many colleges and universities constantlyturned females away simply because theywere women. A few women were able togain admission to appropriate medical col-leges, but such admissions were rare evenafter Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted toGeneva College in 1847 in the United States.Many women were able to find the educa-tion they wanted only when new occupa-tions materialized. Physiology, for example,was considered an appropriate area forwomen because it involved public hygieneand required work in the cities and publicschools. Since such work was not seen as inmen’s domain, physiology became part ofthe curriculum in many women’s collegesin the late nineteenth century in the UnitedStates.

Many women were able to do researchand publish during the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries even if they heldno academic position. This was possible indisciplines that required no laboratorywork. Few women that managed to achievean appropriate education were equally suc-cessful in acquiring the academic positionthat would have given them access to ade-quate facilities for research in certain clinicalareas. They were nevertheless productive inwriting about others’ findings, researchingthe literature of their fields, and using theirown observations and practices, particu-larly in Russia, the United States, and GreatBritain. The major focus of their studies dur-ing this time was pathology, neurology,physiology, and anatomy.

There appeared to be only four U.S.schools—“Michigan, Chicago, and Cornell,and Bryn Mawr College” (Creese 1998, 135)—that trained a meaningful number ofwomen for medical careers in the late nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries. Also ofnote is Johns Hopkins University, which ac-cepted an endowment for its medical schoolin 1889 on the condition that it admitwomen as well as men. In other countries,educational institutions changed even moreslowly.

Many people were against coeducation ofany kind, particularly in medicine. Othersfelt women were not physically up to thetask. Still others argued that women shouldbe educated as physicians only if they at-tended women’s colleges. Women felt thatthe public needed to be assured they werebeing trained as well as men and that somewomen’s schools would produce—in factthey sometimes did produce—substandardphysicians. The Blackwells’ New York Infir-mary for Women and Children and Jex-Blake’s Edinburgh School of Medicine forWomen accomplished the task of providingexemplary training for women physicians.

Based on the premise that a woman hadto achieve extraordinary training in order toenter a man’s domain, the Blackwells strovefor standards higher than those required bythe traditional medical schools of the time.The curriculum that evolved at the NewYork Infirmary provided more clinical expe-rience than was available in the traditionalschools. Women trained there were also

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much more likely to be more experiencedwith female difficulties during pregnancyand early-birth difficulties than their malecounterparts.

Women who wished to be physicians hadanother problem besides education. Even ifthey could find a school willing to admitand train them, who would want a womanphysician, and where would they practice?This concern still applies today for manywomen physicians around the world. Mostwomen who were pioneers in education, in-cluding Elizabeth Blackwell, had a hardtime winning patients in private practice,and many hospitals did not accept womenphysicians. Numerous women eventuallydied in debt or poverty because their prac-tice was limited to those who couldn’t af-ford medical care or they provided care intheir own homes for donations. Thus awoman physician’s qualifications becamemeaningless because no one in the tradi-tional establishment wanted women in theprofession.

Countless women died because they didnot feel it was appropriate to allow males toexamine their bodies. Nuns would not al-low an examination by a male. Perhaps thisattitude led to so many women becominginterested in obstetrics and gynecology.Even some men saw that women might bebetter than men in this field, as well as bet-ter at dealing with children’s ailments.

Laws and regulations in many countrieswere restrictive regarding who could obtainmedical degrees or certification. In manycountries the legal system and the church orreligious beliefs were intertwined, as in sev-enteenth-century England. Women were notrestricted from being licensed as surgeons,for example, but from the few records thatexist, it would appear that women had toprove quite superior to their male counter-parts in order to be approved by the church.Records show documentation of extraordi-nary detail for the few women who man-aged to gain a license. In seventeenth-cen-tury England, licensing “was a barrier whichprevented women from standing on anequal footing with their male counterparts”(Evenden 1998, 212).

In Eastern Europe, more women were

able to enter the profession, particularly inRussia. There, most men entered other areasof study, and a degree in medicine did notcarry the prestige it did in other countries.Except for Chile and Brazil, Latin Americancountries were slow to let women enter theprofession. A decree by the Chilean govern-ment in 1877 allowed women to take exam-inations for a profession as long as theywere trained just like men. Chile was wellahead of many countries.

In Asia circumstances varied greatly bycountry. In Japan a long and strong traditionof women as housekeepers and mothers wascrucial. Medical schools for women now ex-ist, but change came about very slowly.China, in contrast, has been very supportiveof women seeking a career in medicine. In-dia has a high number of women physicians,and a huge percentage in obstetrics and gy-necological care. Many Indian women willallow only a female to examine them, andthis attitude is well accepted.

In the Islamic world, change for womenhas been slower due to cultural and reli-gious beliefs and laws. However, since theend of World War II a few women have beenable to enter the medical profession. WithinAfrica, poverty rather than restrictionsagainst women is the problem. There arefew facilities for training and working aswell as a lack of skilled teachers for basicscience courses. Australian universities ac-cept women, but medical degrees have typ-ically taken six years to attain and thussome females are discouraged early on bytheir parents.

The effects of two world wars—widowsneeded to find a way to support their fami-lies, and countries needed women physi-cians to fill in for male medical doctors thatwent to war or to replace those who werekilled—led some people to see the advan-tages of preparing women for careers. Soci-eties also began to see the benefit of a dual-income household, especially whendomestic help became more readily avail-able and affordable in many countries.

Despite progress, however, there are stillthose who feel women physicians will neverhave equality with men, particularly in theUnited States.

Barringer, Emily Dunning

23

There is a “glass ceiling” on womenphysicians’ upward mobility. They arekept from top-level positions, I willargue, through the subtle process of a kind of colleague boycott—notkeeping them out entirely, but notincluding them in ways that allowthem to replace the senior members of the medical community. Thisprocess is the “Salieri phenomenon”—a combination of faint praise andsubtle denigration of their abilities to lead which delegitimates womenphysicians’ bids to compete forpositions of great authority. The reasonmen are so reluctant to allow womeninto the inner circles, I contend, is theirfear that if too many women becomeleaders, the profession will “tip” andbecome women’s work—and men willlose prestige, income and authority.(Lorber 1993, 63)

Others disagree and feel economics willdictate the need for more women physiciansbecause of the growth in the field of healthcare.

Research has revealed what obstacles aremost troublesome for women in the medicalfield, including in academia. “The chairs weinterviewed painted a broad tableau of fac-tors constraining women’s advancement toleadership positions in academic medicine,and they identified three sources of barriers:historical developments (e.g., shortage ofwomen in the pipeline), broad social forces(e.g., gender roles and socialization patternsaffecting 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 effectivementors for women)” (Yedidia 2001). Thefact that the male-dominated AmericanMedical Association elected a woman,Nancy Dickey, as its president in 1997 sug-gests that more women can achieve leader-ship roles with administrative power.

See also: Wars and Epidemics; Women ofColor in MedicineReferences: Bowers, John Z., “Women inMedicine,” New England Journal of Medicine

275, no. 7 (18 August 1966); Burstein, Paul,and Marie Bricher, “Problem Definition andPublic Policy: Congressional CommitteesConfront Work, Family, and Gender, 1945–1990,” Social Forces 76, no. 1 (September1997): 135–168; Clarke, Edward H., Sex in Ed-ucation; or A Fair Chance for the Girls, Boston:J. R. Osgood (1873); Creese, Mary R. S.,Ladies in the Laboratory? American and BritishWomen in Science, 1800–1900, Lanham, MD:Scarecrow Press (1998); Evenden, Doreen A.,“Gender Differences in the Licensing andPractice of Female and Male Surgeons inEarly Modern England,” Medical History 42(1998); Gabor, Andrea, “Married, withHousehusband,” Working Woman 20, no. 11(November 1995): 46–50ff.; Lorber, Judith,“Why Women Physicians Will Never BeTrue Equals in the American Medical Profes-sion,” in Gender, Work, and Medicine: Womenand the Medical Division of Labor, edited byElianne Riska and Katarina Wegar, London:Sage (1993); Rossiter, Margaret W., WomenScientists in America: Struggles and Strategiesto 1940, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Press (1982); Schiebinger, Londa, TheMind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins ofModern Science, Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press (1989); Walsh, Mary Roth,Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply: Sex-ual Barriers in the Medical Profession,1835–1975, New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress (1977); Yedidia, Michael J., and JanetBickel, “Why Aren’t There More WomenLeaders in Academic Medicine? The Viewsof Clinical Department Chairs,” AcademicMedicine 76:5 (May 2001): 453–465.

Barringer, Emily Dunning1876–1961

Emily Barringer was the first female ambu-lance surgeon in New York City and the firstfemale physician to work as an intern at aNew York City hospital. She was born Sep-tember 27, 1876, in Scarsdale, New York, toEdwin James Dunning and Frances GoreLang. At eight she found her calling whenshe helped her mother after the birth of hersixth child. “I truly believe that it was at this

Barry, James

24

time that the great desire was born in me tohelp the sick and suffering which later was tolead me into medicine” (Barringer 1950, 28).

Emily’s family suffered financial reverseswhen she was still a child, and her motherfelt her daughters needed an education sothat they could support themselves. Emilythought about becoming a nurse, but afterlistening to a lecture by Mary Putnam Ja-cobi, she realized a medical profession waspossible. She graduated from Cornell Uni-versity in New York and proceeded to theMedical College of the New York Infirmaryfor Women and Children. She received hermedical degree in 1904 and married a fellowmedical student, Benjamin Stockwell Bar-ringer.

Before receiving her medical degree, shewanted to intern at a large hospital, butwomen physicians were not allowed inthese facilities. She took hospital exams anddid well but was refused any appointmentuntil 1903, when she went to work at Gou-verneur Hospital in New York City. She hadworked to lobby the mayor, who was in sup-port of women holding physician positionsif they did well on standard examinations.

Several male physicians tried to force herto resign, but because of her good and effi-cient work, she had support from the rest ofthe hospital staff and eventually from theresidents of New York City.

She worked at other hospitals, specializ-ing in gynecological surgery and later invenereal diseases. She was also active invarious organizations involved in provid-ing medical services during World War I,particularly those that worked to provideambulances in Europe. During World War IIshe had a large hand in promoting women’srights, particularly their right to commis-sions in the military. Barringer lobbied boththe president and Congress for over a yearon the legislation that made it possible forwomen to be commissioned into the mili-tary and receive the same benefits as men.In 1943, President Franklin D. Rooseveltsigned into law the Sparkman Act, whichwas supported by U.S. senator John JacksonSparkman of Alabama.

Barringer answered thousands of ambu-lance calls and encountered birth and death:

Between these two irrevocable mark-ers, the beginning and the end, I wasto see every phase of human activityand human emotion, the full gamut oflife. I was to see heroism, devotion,loyalty, hard work and honest labor,illness in every form, poverty, hunger,cold; pitiless cold in winter, unbear-able heat in summer, in the old tene-ments reeking with overcrowded hu-manity; crime in every form, robbery,murder, rape; insanity, alcoholism inall stages; I was to meet the buddinggangster, the prostitute and to visitdives where the underworld held outand one reeled under the nauseousopium-laden air. Industrial accidentslittle understood in those days camemy way; men suffering “the bends” orstrange deaths from monoxide poison-ing, before preventive measures wereestablished. (Barringer 1950, 149)

Barringer did much to set an example notonly for women who wanted to be medicalpractitioners but also for women who hadto fight in order to use their skills and tal-ents in the service of others. She died onApril 8, 1961, in New Milford, Connecticut.

References: Barringer, Emily Dunning,Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of New York’sFirst Woman Ambulance Surgeon, New York:W. W. Norton (1950); German, Lisa Broehl,“Barringer, Emily Dunning,” American Na-tional Biography, vol. 2, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999).

Barry, James1795–1865

James Barry’s story is incredible in that shemasqueraded as a man all her life, her gen-der revealed only at her death. She enteredthe British army disguised as a man in 1813after being educated at the EdinburghSchool of Medicine. She shied away fromher classmates for obvious reasons. As awoman, she would not have been allowedto study at the university, let alone to prac-tice as a physician. During her forty-year ca-

Barton, Clara

25

reer, she rose to the rank of inspector-gen-eral in the Army Medical Department.

Little is known about her early life exceptthat she intended early on to become aphysician and made excellent marks inschool. As an army surgeon she was well re-spected. She served at Malta and the Capeof Good Hope beginning in 1816. She spentunusually long hours with lepers andblacks, to the consternation of some col-leagues who felt such work was unimpor-tant. She is known to have dueled, had avery hot temper, and been sent home occa-sionally due to various breeches of militaryconduct. She was five feet tall with a slightframe and a high-pitched voice

Unsubstantiated rumors circulated afterher death—that she was possibly a her-maphrodite, that she was in love with an-other army surgeon. It was discovered thatshe had borne a child, about whom nothingis known. She is remembered in SouthAfrica, where she served the destitute andpracticed preventive medicine decades be-fore such work was regarded as important.

References: Harrison, Robert, “Barry,James,” Dictionary of National Biography, Vol-ume I, London: Oxford University Press(1973); Notable Women Scientists, Detroit:Gale (2000); Rose, June, The Perfect Gentle-man, London: Hutchinson (1977).

Barton, Clara (Clarissa Harlowe)

1821–1912

Clara Barton is well-known for her nursingabilities during the American Civil War. Herleadership abilities and organizational skillsenabled her to bring disaster nursing to theforefront of her profession, found the Amer-ican Red Cross, and lead that growing orga-nization into public-relief efforts all over hercountry.

Born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on De-cember 25, 1821, she was the youngest offive children of Steven and Sarah Stone Bar-ton. Both humanitarian and patriotic, herparents were a great influence on her. She

enjoyed learning and problem solving andearly on studied math, chemistry, Latin, phi-losophy, and history.

When she was eighteen she began teach-ing, an occupation she enjoyed. When shewas thirty, she enrolled in the Liberal Insti-tute of Clinton, New York. She completedher studies and returned to teaching in NewJersey. She later moved to Washington, D.C.,and obtained a position in the patent office.

When the Civil War broke out, Bartonstarted helping on her own with just a fewpeople donating money or supplies. It waseasier during the beginning of the war, be-fore other organizations had a handle on thetasks, to get to battle victims, and she be-came a dependable and indispensable reliefworker in the early going.

Once the war was over, she took on thehuge job of identifying for the governmentmissing soldiers and those who had died.She also saw to properly marking theirgraves. President Lincoln was very support-

Clara Barton (National Archives/U.S. NationalLibrary of Medicine)

Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina

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ive of this effort. Her biggest job during thistime was marking the graves at the infa-mous Anderson Prison in Georgia, officiallyCamp Sumter. It was one of the largest pris-ons during the Civil War, and Union sol-diers died daily due to lack of food andhealth care and overcrowding.

Dorence Atwater wrote to Clara Barton atthe end of the war when he learned that shewanted to find missing soldiers and markgraves appropriately. He had been a pris-oner at Andersonville whose job it was torecord the deaths of Union soldiers for Con-federate records. He secretly made his owncopy of the record, fearing that the originalmight be lost. He took his copy with himupon discharge and with the information heobtained Clara Barton’s help in identifyingthousands of graves and marking themproperly.

Most of Barton’s work during this periodwas in Annapolis and Washington, D.C.,but she also traveled extensively, speakingto audiences about her work. She consid-ered writing a book about all she had seenduring the war but decided instead to givelectures in order to earn a living. She at-tended lectures given by other women inorder to observe and hone her skills. Audi-ences responded positively, and she foundthe income sufficient to travel and supportherself. She lectured throughout the Mid-west and New England until her voicefailed from exhaustion and nervous pros-tration. She was advised to go to Europe forrest and went to Switzerland in 1869. Asshe recovered, she became very interestedin the International Red Cross and its treatyof humanitarian assistance to all whoneeded it in times of war. Barton was as-tonished that the United States had notsigned this treaty.

She worked in Europe with some of theRed Cross volunteers during the Franco-Prussian War. After returning to the UnitedStates, she worked for years to persuadegovernment officials that the United Statesshould join the International Red Cross. TheAmerican Red Cross finally became a realityon May 20, 1881.

Barton urged President James Garfield tobecome president of the American Red

Cross because in other countries, presidentsserved as leaders of the organization. Presi-dent Garfield instead nominated Clara Bar-ton. She took office and served for the nexttwenty-three years, leading the organiza-tion to relief efforts in many areas.

Barton was praised during the early yearsof the American Red Cross, and she main-tained a small, efficient organization. Herleadership was vital because she had gainedthe respect of thousands of people whoknew of her humanitarian nature and work.However, the organization grew far toolarge for a single woman to lead. After theSpanish-American War many saw the needfor reorganization. Barton, now nearingeighty years of age and feeling the proposala personal insult, disagreed.

President Roosevelt told her he could nolonger be an officer of the Red Cross withsuch unrest surrounding the idea of reor-ganization, and a disheartened Barton re-signed on June 16, 1904. She refused themove to make her honorary president forlife with an adequate salary. She retired toGlen Echo, Maryland, outside of Washing-ton, D.C., which was her home. She contin-ued to be interested in some of the women’sissues of the time and continued correspon-dence with friends and writing in her diary.She died on April 12, 1912, and was buriedin Oxford, Massachusetts.

References: Barton, William E., Life of ClaraBarton, Founder of the American Red Cross,Boston: Houghton Mifflin (1922); Bullough,Vern L., Olga Maranjian Church, and AliceStein, American Nursing: A Biographical Dic-tionary, New York: Garland (1988); Snod-grass, Mary Jane, Historical Encyclopedia ofNursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO(1999).

Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina1711–1778

An Italian anatomist, Bassi was an unusu-ally talented woman from a family that af-forded her a university education, an edu-cational opportunity rare for women of thetime period.

Blackwell, Elizabeth

27

Born October 29, 1711, in Bologna toGiuseppe Bassi and Rosa Cesari Bassi, shewas educated early in the home and tutoredby the family physician. One of the familyfriends was Cardinal Lambertini (becamePope Benedict XIV in 1740), who felt Bassihad a gift that should be demonstrated tothe public. After she had impressed manyprofessors with her intellectual giftedness inthe arts and sciences, Cardinal Lambertinitold her she would be allowed to pursue auniversity education.

She earned a Ph.D. around 1732 from theUniversity of Bologna and then lectured as aprofessor. Her main areas of study wereanatomy and physics. She marriedGiuseppe Verati on February 6, 1738, andthey had several children. She continuedteaching at the university and at home.Bassi serves as an exception to traditionalroles of women of her day. She died in 1778in Bologna.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science, New York: Routledge(2000).

Bayerova, Anna1852–1924

Anna Bayerova was the first Czech womanphysician. She attended college in Switzer-land, as no Czechoslovakian college al-lowed women to enroll for a medical de-gree. She graduated in 1881 from theUniversity of Bern. She also completedstudies in Dresden and Paris. She practicedin Baden and at a children’s hospital in Bernand served as a state physician beginning in1892 in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

While serving in Bosnia-Herzegovina as astate physician, she dealt with inadequatefacilities and her own poor health. Prior to1892, very little had been accomplished inthe field of health care. Her duties includedattending to the many needs of Muslimwomen and children. From 1900 to 1909 sheworked in several sanatoriums in Switzer-land and Prague. She authored a book in1923 on women as physicians.

References: Ceskoslovensky Biograficky Slov-nik. Prague: Academia (1992); Navratil,Michal, Almanach Ceskych Lekaru, Prague:Náklaem Spisovatelovym (1913); Necas,Ctibor, “Prvni Uredni Lekarka V Bosnen,”Casopis Matice Moravske [Czechoslovakia]102, nos. 3–4 (1983).

Biheron, Marie Catherine1719–1786

Marie Biheron was a talented anatomist inFrance. She gained considerable recognitionduring her lifetime for her wax models,which she made to overcome the lack of ca-davers for use in studying the human body.Her anatomically correct models were useda great deal to teach both male and femalestudents who had an interest in medicine ormidwifery.

What we know about Biheron comesfrom writings of her contemporaries. Shewas born in Paris, and her father was anapothecary. Madeleine Basseport, a talentedillustrator, was her teacher. Biheron neverdivulged her secrets in making the modelsshe sold; some didn’t believe they were waxbecause they didn’t melt when heated. Shewas invited by royalty on more than one oc-casion to display her models or to lecture,and she was a well-respected anatomyteacher.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000); Schiebinger, Londa,The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Originsof Modern Science, Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press (1989).

Blackwell, Elizabeth1821–1910

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman toattend medical school and become a physi-cian in the United States. She was a pioneerin opening doors that had been closed towomen for centuries. She championed med-


28

ical education for women, helped found theNew York Infirmary for Women and Chil-dren, and served the medical professionwith high ethical standards.

She was born February 3, 1821, in Coun-terslip near Bristol, England, to SamuelBlackwell and Hannah Lane. Her father hada very heavy influence on his family. Hesupported women’s rights, was againstslavery, and encouraged all his children tobe active in society. He was also very reli-gious, and Elizabeth participated in Biblestudy and daily prayers. She had eight sur-viving siblings: Anna, Marianne, SamuelCharles, Henry Browne, Emily, Ellen, JohnHoward, and George Washington. Threechildren died in infancy.

Illiteracy was at an all-time high in Eng-land. Samuel Blackwell was a Dissenter, andas such his children were barred from theChurch of England schools, which weremuch better than any of the others. An ex-cellent tutor, Samuel brought his childrenup to study the same subjects together andhad high expectations, making no distinc-tions in this regard between his sons and his

daughters. Elizabeth would always concurwith her father’s view on educating bothmen and women.

The Blackwell family left for the UnitedStates in 1832 after the local sugar refineryburned down and their financial situationbecame bleak. Samuel was determined tointroduce the vacuum-pan sugar-refiningprocess, showing that it would alleviate theneed for slavery. Thus they sailed for NewYork and a new start. They were met with acholera epidemic that had left the city de-serted. Once it was over, he acquired a placefor a refinery.

In the United States, the family associatedwith the Quakers, but Samuel was still veryopen about most social events. While Han-nah worried about preparing her daughtersfor marriage, Elizabeth thought about ca-reer plans. Samuel suffered financially dur-ing the Great Panic of 1837 and the depres-sion that followed. He sold the sugarrefinery and shortly thereafter took Eliza-beth and her younger siblings to Cincinnatifor a fresh start.

Samuel bought a mill near the Ohio Riverbut realized quickly that the depression hadaffected the entire country. He did littlebusiness. Soon thereafter, his health de-clined, and he died of bilious fever in Au-gust 1838. Many of the children began towork to support the family; Elizabeth beganto teach. She was moved by the more liberalthinkers of the time, such as CatherineBeecher and Horace Mann. She was restlessbut continued to teach until a dying friendtold her she would be a good physician. Af-ter studying on her own with a physician inCharleston and later Philadelphia, she de-cided to apply to medical school. She wasturned down by twenty-eight colleges andfinally accepted by Geneva College in NewYork. The faculty there had put the matter tothe male students; they decided to allow herentrance, although many agreed as a joke,feeling that a female would alleviate anyboredom. In the beginning few months atGeneva College, Blackwell was ostracizedand stared at as she walked to and from herclasses, but students and staff soon adjustedto her presence. She became absorbed in herstudies and looked forward to being a sur-

Elizabeth Blackwell (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)


29

geon. She graduated in 1849 with outstand-ing grades and became the first femalephysician in the United States.

For practical medical experience, Black-well set her sights on Paris. She was able tostudy at clinics in England and eventually inParis at La Maternité. She was not acceptedas a physician, however, but only as an aide.She observed the French physicians as theydelivered babies in all kinds of circum-stances, and learned equally from hertwelve-hour days in the wards and from thelectures on midwifery. It was at La Mater-nité that she let her feelings be known aboutusing animals for experiments. Throughouther life, she fought vivisection at every turn,a stance that at this time was in the minority.

On November 4, 1849, she contractedophthalmia, from a baby she had helped op-erate on that morning. After losing sight inher left eye, she tried several cures. Eventu-ally, however, an infection set in and shehad the left eye removed and a glass eye in-serted. Her right eye remained unaffected,and she resigned herself to giving up sur-gery and pursuing general medicine or re-search. She consulted with family membersconcerned about her outlook and her futureand worked to be able to read and writewell again. Two of her sisters, Marianne andEllen, wrote to Elizabeth at this time in sup-port of the women’s rights movement. Eliz-abeth, who had managed to garner somesupport and encouragement in a man’sworld, felt her sisters were in an antimanmovement and didn’t support their views.She saw no common thread betweenwomen’s rights and education.

During her two years in Europe, Black-well had met Florence Nightingale, whoseviews on the importance of sanitation hadprofoundly influenced her. In her later lifeshe worked to educate people on proper hy-giene for good health.

Blackwell returned to the United Statesready to practice medicine. She and her sis-ters had won a writing contest, and sheused the $100 to set up an office, furnishingit herself. Society wasn’t ready for a femalephysician, however, and Elizabeth sufferedfrom loneliness and depression.

She resorted to giving physical education

lectures to girls, and eventually lectured onseveral subjects for a fee. She also met AnnPreston, who later founded the Women’sHospital of Philadelphia (1861). They en-couraged each other in their prospective en-deavors. Many Quaker women came tohear her, and even some men. They wereimpressed at her knowledge and convincedthat her views on the importance of hygienewere not to be taken lightly. This work even-tually led to her being accepted in the med-ical community. Quaker women and chil-dren also began to come to her office fortreatment. Her practice grew as she workedboth day and night.

She continued to keep in touch with herfamily and to prepare public lectures. Someprominent New Yorkers eventually came tosupport her, such as Horace Greeley andmany Quaker men of the day. Elizabeth’ssister Emily was at the same time enduringthe frustrations Elizabeth had experiencedearlier. Medical schools were rejecting herbecause she was a woman and she verymuch wanted Elizabeth’s support, whichshe received through correspondence. Theygrew much closer when Emily visited NewYork in 1852.

It was not long before Rush College inChicago accepted Emily as a medical stu-dent. She completed her studies while Eliz-abeth continued to expand her medicalpractice. Elizabeth tried again to work at adispensary in New York but was told a ladydoctor would not do. In 1853, she openedher own dispensary in a poor section oftown in order to attend to poor women andchildren.

It was here, in the slums and unsanitarytenement buildings near Tompkins Square,that she saw the effects of unsanitary condi-tions. She began lecturing mothers aboutcleanliness and seeing that their childrenspend more time outdoors to benefit fromfresh air. When she later moved into a house,she was still receiving abusive, anonymousletters for approaching the subject of hy-giene with anyone who would listen.

Emily visited over a few summers to getpractical experience at Bellevue Hospital aswell as help Elizabeth with her patients.They worked well together and learned


30

from each other, and Elizabeth sometimesdespaired as to her future when Emily wasaway. In October 1854, she decided to adopta daughter. Katharine Barry, a seven-year-old Irish child, became her daughter andtreasured lifelong companion. Over theyears, Katharine was Elizabeth’s accoun-tant, secretary, and housekeeper as well.

In that same year, Emily obtained hermedical degree from Western Reserve Col-lege. Elizabeth was still in New York andmet Marie Zakrzewska, a Pole who hadbeen working as a midwife in Germany. Shehad been told to see Elizabeth Blackwell ifshe was interested in getting a medical de-gree. The timing was good, as Blackwellwas in need of an assistant and at the sametime could help Zakrzewska qualify for en-trance into Western Reserve College.

At this time, Blackwell already had hersights set on opening her own hospital.With Marie’s arrival, she felt she couldcount on three women in her endeavor: her-self; Emily, who was getting very good clin-ical experience in Europe; and Marie whenshe graduated from medical school. Her pri-vate practice was still yielding a small in-come. She had moved her dispensary to abetter location, and she obtained a charter tooperate a hospital. Setbacks postponed herplans. In 1855 she had to close the dispen-sary for a time in order to transform it intothe hospital she wanted, and she had diffi-culty raising the needed funds. She contin-ued lecturing the public on sanitation andinforming those who would listen of herplans. She continued to receive informationon medical advances from Emily, informa-tion that she incorporated into her publiclectures.

The first to help in her campaign for a hos-pital were her fellow Quakers, who raisedmoney through their sewing skills. Themoney came very slowly at first, but whenMarie got out of medical school with herdiploma, she traveled in support of the causeand was also successful in raising moneyfrom some influential New Yorkers. Eliza-beth and Marie bought a house to turn into ahospital. Emily went to England to furtherher studies, and when she returned, thethree were ready to embark on their project.

On May 12, 1857, in honor of FlorenceNightingale’s birthday, the New York Infir-mary for Women and Children officiallyopened with Dr. Marie as the residentphysician, Dr. Emily as the surgeon, and Dr.Elizabeth as director. Within a month thebeds were filled with patients from allbackgrounds and speaking many differentlanguages.

Troubles still lay ahead. Elizabeth contin-ued her lectures for the money they contin-ued to bring in. The infirmary was savedfrom burning down when the wind hap-pened to change direction. A patient died ofpuerperal fever, and the relatives formed amob outside, threatening the physiciansand claiming the death was their fault. Asimilar incident occurred when a patientdied from a ruptured appendix. This time amale physician who had been consulted onthe case quieted the mob. Over time, peoplebegan to trust these women doctors.

One of Elizabeth’s noble causes was togive female physicians fresh out of medicalschool a chance for some clinical practice,an opportunity that was rare in the UnitedStates when she had graduated from med-ical school. The infirmary thus became thegreat opportunity for many women physi-cians who had graduated from the New En-gland Female Medical College in Bostonand the Women’s Medical College of Penn-sylvania in Philadelphia, respectively. Eliz-abeth, Emily, and Marie held clinics forthese new graduates, and later began train-ing nurses. Blackwell was very particularabout qualifications for the nurses’ trainingprogram.

Although other members of their familywere firmly behind the women’s move-ment, Elizabeth and Emily remained distantfrom the cause, refusing to become a havenfor the movement. They focused on estab-lishing sound medical practices to provethemselves to the public. As the infirmarybecame well grounded and funded after ayear of doubts, Blackwell looked to En-gland, where she’d been asked to speak onwomen’s progress in the medical field in theUnited States. She decided she could con-tribute to the cause of medical education forwomen in England, a contentious issue


31

there. In 1859, she became the first womanin Great Britain accredited as a physician.Several prominent people, including LadyByron, wanted Blackwell to stay in Englandand begin a teaching hospital there. Black-well thought the idea was premature andwanted to go back to the United States andcontinue her work as a medical-educationreformer.

She visited France and some of the men-tal institutions to which Dorothea Dix haddrawn so much attention. She also visitedFlorence Nightingale, now ill but workingtoward her plans for the future Nightin-gale Training School for Nurses at St.Thomas’s Hospital. Blackwell became amuch-requested speaker on women’s med-ical care and medical education. She waswell respected also among poor motherswho needed her guidance.

On her return to New York, Blackwellfound that Zakrzewska had left the infir-mary to take a position in Boston only tofind it didn’t meet her expectations. Shethus eventually founded the New EnglandHospital for Women and Children in 1862and did very well in private practice.

The infirmary was still successful. Eliza-beth and Emily obtained new quarters forthe hospital and began making some head-way financially. Elizabeth was not as inter-ested in practicing medicine as in lecturingand educating the masses about hygiene.She also was ready to plan for adding amedical college for women to the hospital.The trustees of the infirmary were stronglysupportive of this effort.

The plans for a medical college had to bepostponed when the Civil War broke out.Elizabeth and Emily had both opposed slav-ery since their early days with their fatherand offered their infirmary in support of theUnion’s cause. They set about to prepare asmany women as possible for the nursingfield. They sent women who seemed suitedfor training to their infirmary, Bellevue, orNew York Hospital. They would then go toWashington, where Dorothea Dix was thesuperintendent of nurses.

Elizabeth followed the progress of thewar with great interest. Mary E. Walker, asurgeon, impressed her by managing to get

to the front because of her rank of lieutenantin the army. Walker was captured at onepoint but was exchanged for a man fairlyquickly. Both Blackwell sisters were work-ing long hours at the infirmary as well asbeing involved with the Women’s CentralRelief Association, which met frequently atCooper Union.

The Union Conscription Act of 1863,which made it possible for rich draftees tobuy their way out of the federal army for$300 (leaving the burden of service to freedslaves and immigrants), caused riots inNew York. The Blackwells were shocked bywhite patients’ demands that black patientsbe excluded from the infirmary. Their infir-mary, like orphanages and churches, servedas a place for blacks to hide from the tortureinflicted by some whites. The infirmarysomehow survived the threats of destruc-tion during the four-day period of the DraftRiots, which also were fueled by Northern-ers’ fears that blacks who had been freedwould take their jobs.

Elizabeth corresponded a little duringthis time with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,who had received her apothecary license inEngland. Blackwell had inspired Andersonwhen she lectured in England, and Black-well was gratified that progress was takingplace in that country.

With the end of the Civil War, Blackwellrealized that women had earned somerecognition for their contributions in themedical field. Women still found it difficult,however, to find schools and hospitals thatwould accept them. She also felt that evenlong-established medical schools did not of-fer adequate academic and clinical training.She devised an educational curriculum forher infirmary that was extremely regi-mented with three years of medical school-ing as the minimum in addition to rigorousclinical training. The trustees asked for acollege charter and the college officiallyopened its doors in 1868.

Medical advances at the time included in-oculations for some diseases. In oppositionto most of her colleagues, however, Black-well refused to support some kinds of inoc-ulation. She was influenced in this view bythe fact that a baby she had vaccinated had


32

died. As she noted, “Although I have al-ways continued to vaccinate when desired,I am strongly opposed to every form of in-oculation of attenuated virus, as an unfortu-nate though well-meaning fallacy of med-ical prejudice” (Blackwell 1895, 240).

The infirmary began to be held in high re-gard as graduates obtained positions atprestigious colleges. The women’s move-ment was also beginning to open new doorsfor women. At the same time, the strugglewas continuing in England, and it was herethat Elizabeth felt she could contribute tothe cause. Upon arriving in England in 1869,she became very involved in social andmoral reforms. She became very disturbedabout the disparity between the wealthyand the poor, which drove her to continueeducation in public hygiene and the preven-tion of disease. She was well ahead of hertime in seeing the worth of prevention asopposed to cure, her battle cry for the rest ofher life.

While she continued her lectures, sheformed the National Health Society in Eng-land, which began promoting public healthand hygiene issues. Blackwell also took aninterest in three other women who were inher field: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,Sophia Jex-Blake, and Mary Putnam, whohad taken her medical degree and was cur-rently working at the infirmary in NewYork. Blackwell encouraged them all, corre-sponding all her life with women whoneeded her support.

Elizabeth’s mother died in 1870, and al-though most of her remaining family wasstill in the United States, Elizabeth felt shewas beginning to put down roots in En-gland. She heard from Emily that the infir-mary was doing very well and growing. Shebecame an advocate of Christian Socialismbecause she believed the practice of medi-cine could cure many social ills. At thispoint, she considered health issues politicalin terms of benefitting the whole humanrace. She also believed that physical ail-ments could stem from mental distress.

She herself had health problems for sev-eral years, particularly in the 1870s. Shestruggled with this and finding the best cli-mate in which to live was difficult, so she

led a rather nomadic life. During this time,though, she felt she could reform throughwriting. Her book Counsel to Parents on theMoral Education of Their Children in Relationto Sex at first did not find a publisher, butshe persisted. The book was eventuallypublished and went through several edi-tions. Blackwell also was appointed profes-sor of gynecology at the London School ofMedicine for Women in 1875. She continuedto teach off and on there until 1907.

In 1878 she and her daughter traveled toFrance, and on return to England, theyfound a suitable house on the English Chan-nel at Hastings. Her health improved, andshe continued to campaign for public hy-giene and moral reform. Numerous familymembers, friends, and physicians, as well asmany male and female medical school stu-dents in England and graduates of her infir-mary in New York, were guests in her newhome.

Two of Blackwell’s sisters, Marianne andAnna, came to live near her in England.They were both suffering from failinghealth. At this time, Elizabeth set out to freethe local government of corruption, an ef-fort that on occasion stirred up both Toriesand Liberals. She also tried to have thebrothels closed because of unsanitary condi-tions.

During the 1880s and 1890s, she was un-wavering in fighting for her causes, and shewrote extensively from her lectures as wellas kept up her correspondence. In the 1890s,some of her friends died. Then in 1900, hersister Anna died, followed in 1901 bySamuel and Ellen.

She did visit the United States again andsaw that Cornell had absorbed her collegein 1899; the infirmary was still growing andthriving. She was very pleased at theprogress women had made in the medicalfield. As Dr. Cushier wrote of both Black-wells late in life, “What we should neverforget is that the dignity, the culture, and thehigh moral standards which formed theircharacter, finally prevailed in overcomingthe existing prejudice, both within and out-side the profession. By their standards, thestatus of women in medicine was deter-mined” (Ross 1949, 291).

Blackwell, Emily

33

Blackwell returned to England knowingshe would probably never see her friends orfamily in the United States again. In 1907she fell down some stairs and became an in-valid shortly thereafter. Her daughter waswith her most of the time in her final days.She died on May 31, 1910, in Hastings.

See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Black-well, Emily; Jex-Blake, Sophia; Nightingale,Florence; Zakrzewska, Marie ElizabethReferences: Blackwell, Elizabeth, PioneerWork in Opening the Medical Profession toWomen: Autobiographical Sketches, London:Longmans, Green (1895); Ross, Ishbel,Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the FirstWoman Doctor, New York: Harper (1949);Snodgrass, Mary, Historical Encyclopedia ofNursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO(1999).

Blackwell, Emily1826–1910

Emily Blackwell obtained her M.D. fromWestern Reserve College in 1854 andfounded the New York Infirmary forWomen and Children with her sister, Eliza-beth Blackwell. Often overshadowed by herolder sister, Emily nevertheless was an ex-cellent surgeon, physician, and educator ofmedical students. She enjoyed practicingmedicine much more than Elizabeth; thetwo worked well together.

Emily was born February 3, 1826, inCounterslip near Bristol, England, toSamuel Blackwell and Hannah Lane. Herfather had an important influence on her.He supported women’s rights, was againstslavery, and encouraged all his children tobe active in society. He was also religious,studying the Bible and participating in dailyprayers.

Being a Dissenter meant that SamuelBlackwell’s children were not allowed to at-tend the Church of England schools, whichwere considered the best in the country.Aware of the high illiteracy rate and want-ing all his children to have a good educa-tion, he decided to tutor them himself.Emily and her eight siblings were brought

up by their father to study the same subjectstogether. He expected the same high stan-dards from both the boys and the girls.Emily, like Elizabeth, felt the way her fatherdid.

The Blackwell family left for the UnitedStates in 1832 when Emily was only fiveyears old. Samuel suffered financial lossesin New York, and in 1844, the family movedto Cincinnati, Ohio. There, the family asso-ciated with the Quakers, but Samuel wasstill very open about most social events.While Hannah worried about preparing herdaughters for marriage, Emily, again likeElizabeth, thought about a career.

Emily was shy and timid but was verymuch influenced by her older sister andwanted to follow in her footsteps. She ap-plied to several medical schools and wasturned down by eleven before Rush Med-ical College in Chicago accepted her. Shewas unable to complete her degree there be-cause the state medical board did not agreewith Rush’s decision to admit a woman tothe school. Emily finished her studies atWestern Reserve College in Cleveland; thisschool had just begun allowing women intoits medical program.

She traveled to Europe to train with SirJames Young Simpson, who saw no reasonthat women should not practice medicine.From him, she gained invaluable experiencein gynecology and obstetrics. He was alsoimpressed with Emily’s talent as a surgeon.She then attended clinics elsewhere in Eu-rope to gain more experience.

When she returned to New York in 1856,she was ready to help Elizabeth and Dr.Marie Zakrzewska with the New York Infir-mary for Women and Children, where sheworked as a surgeon. The three collaboratedwell, and the beds filled quickly with pa-tients.

After initial financial and other chal-lenges, the infirmary thrived. Many femalephysicians just out of medical school cameto gain clinical experience. Elizabeth, Marie,and Emily arranged clinics for the new stu-dents and later started training nurses.

Emily, like her sister, did not want the in-firmary to become a center for the women’srights movement. Their most important ob-

Blanchfield, Florence Aby

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jective was to establish sound medical prac-tice and prove themselves to the public. Inthis stance, they were sometimes challengedby family members supportive of the move-ment. For example, two of her brothers werevery active in the women’s movement.Henry had married the feminist Lucy Stone,and Samuel was married to AntoinetteLouisa Brown, the first ordained minister inthe United States.

The infirmary survived the Civil War, andthe three doctors obtained a college charter,their ultimate goal, in 1868. Elizabeth, whosaw herself as a reformer and speaker onpublic hygiene, left for England in 1869, andEmily took the initiative in the infirmary.

Emily threw herself into her work for thenext thirty years. She served as a teacherand administrator as well as a surgeon. Sheran the infirmary and the medical school,strengthening the curriculum, until theschool merged with Cornell in 1899.

Emily realized that the obstacles forwomen in medicine were not all within theeducation community: “Their troubles be-gin when they graduate. The walls are ashigh as ever when it comes to internships orhospital posts. Much as we have gained, itwill take more than one generation todemonstrate to the full our scientific and so-cial value” (Ross 1949, 281).

She retired in 1900, spending most of herretirement time going back and forth be-tween her home in New Jersey and hersummer cottage in Maine. She shared ahouse with her longtime partner, Dr. Eliza-beth Cushier, who had been trained at theinfirmary. Blackwell developed enterocolitisand passed away on September 7, 1910,shortly after her sister Elizabeth died.

See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; Zakrzewska,Marie ElizabethReferences: Blackwell, Elizabeth, PioneerWork in Opening the Medical Profession toWomen: Autobiographical Sketches, New York:Source Book Press (1970); Ross, Ishbel, Childof Destiny, the Life Story of the First WomanDoctor, New York: Harper (1949).

Blanchfield, Florence Aby1882–1971

Florence Blanchfield served as superinten-dent of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) dur-ing both world wars and became the firstwoman to be regularly commissioned intothe U.S. Regular Army in 1947. She workeddiligently over the years to gain for womenmilitary nurses’ status and recognitionequal to that of male nurses.

Born in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, onApril 1, 1882, she was one of eight childrenof Joseph Plunkett Blanchfield, a stonema-son, and Mary Louvenia Anderson Blanch-field, a nurse. She wanted to be a nurseearly in life. She was educated in both pub-lic and private schools in Walnut Springsand Oranda, Virginia. She attended theSouthside Hospital Training School forNurses in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, andgraduated in 1906.

She then went to Baltimore and workedas a private-duty nurse while attending Dr.Howard Kelly’s Sanitarium and Johns Hop-kins University. In 1907 she supervised theoperating room at Southside Hospital andthe next year at Montefiore Hospital. Shealso worked at Suburban General Hospitalin Bellevue, Pennsylvania, and later was thesupervisor of nurses. In this capacity shewas a leader in getting an approved schoolof nursing.

She took leave from the hospital duringWorld War I to answer the call for armynurses. After serving in France, she re-turned briefly to Bellevue and then wentback into the ANC in January 1920. At thetime, nurses could gain in rank but did notreceive the same pay as or have equal au-thority with males.

Blanchfield served in numerous locationsthroughout the United States and abroad. In1935, after a tour of duty in China, she set-tled in Washington, D.C., and held a numberof positions at the ANC over the next twelveyears. Nurses in the corps usually entered asa second lieutenant and remained at thatrank their entire career. Blanchfield, how-ever, received a promotion in 1939 and heldthe rank of captain when she worked in the

Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain

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capacity of assistant to the superintendent,at that time Julia Flikke. Both women sawthe need to expand the ANC, particularlywith the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Blanchfield also wanted to gain perma-nent status for the ANC within the army.The best way to do this was to gain com-missions in the regular army for women. Af-ter a sustained effort, in 1942 both Flikkeand Blanchfield received temporary com-missions as colonel and lieutenant colonel,respectively. It took ten years and a congres-sional bill, however, before they receivedadequate pay.

Blanchfield was appointed superinten-dent of the ANC upon Flikke’s retirement in1943. She concentrated on strengthening theANC and providing adequate clinical expe-riences for nurses who would serve inwartime. She also moved nurses closer tosoldiers on the battlefield to make sure theyreceived immediate care after being injuredand changed the nursing uniforms to com-bat fatigues when appropriate.

Blanchfield continued to fight for full mil-itary rank during the war, and in 1947 theArmy-Navy Nurse Act gave women nursesequal status in the military with equal payand promotion possibilities. It also createdthe ANC within the regular army. On July18, 1947, General Dwight D. Eisenhowercommissioned Blanchfield as a lieutenantcolonel in the army.

She communicated over the years withnurses in the field in order to learn abouttheir experiences and thus improve trainingfor army nurses. Partly due to her efforts,special training programs grew in anesthe-sia, neuropsychiatric nursing, air evacua-tion, obstetrics, and pediatrics, among oth-ers. Blanchfield retired from active duty in1947 after twenty-nine years of service. Shenever married and in her later years lived inArlington, Virginia, with a sister andbrother-in-law. She died at Walter ReedMedical Center on May 12, 1971, from ath-erosclerotic cardiac disease and was buriedwith full honors at Arlington NationalCemetery in Virginia.

References: Bullough, Vern L., Olga Maran-jian Church, and Alice Stein, American Nurs-

ing: A Biographical Dictionary, New York:Garland (1988); Sherrow, Victoria, Womenand the Military: An Encyclopedia, Santa Bar-bara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1996).

Bocchi, Dorothea1390–1436

Dorothea Bocchi was a well-respected pro-fessor of medicine and philosophy at theUniversity of Bologna. Appointed to suc-ceed her father, she taught at a time in Italywhen women were afforded the same edu-cational opportunities as men. In the four-teenth century, Italy led the world in thefield of medicine.

References: Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell, AHistory of Women in Medicine from the EarliestTimes to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Cen-tury, Haddam, CT: Haddam Press (1938).

Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain

1773–1841

Marie Anne Boivin was a French midwifewhose publications on childbirth and preg-nancy became very popular textbooks inFrance and Germany. She invented a newpelvimeter and a vaginal speculum and wasthe first to listen to a fetal heart using astethoscope.

Born in Montreuil and educated by nuns,she married Louis Boivin in 1797. After herhusband died early in the marriage, leavingher with one daughter, she continued hermedical training with Madame Lachapelleuntil she earned her degree and then wentto Versailles. When her daughter was killed,she returned to work at the Hospice de laMaternité in Bordeaux with Lachapelle, hergood friend and teacher. She and Lachapellestressed that midwives should be trainedand licensed and know how to handle diffi-cult pregnancies.

In 1827 Boivin received an honorary M.D.from the University of Marburg, Germany.Her goal had been to obtain a French med-

Bourgeois, Louise

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ical degree, but she could not obtain admis-sion to the Academy of Medicine in Paris.She died in poverty.

References: Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell, AHistory of Women in Medicine from the EarliestTimes to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Cen-tury, Haddam, CT: Haddam Press (1938);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science:Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge (2000).

Bourgeois, Louise1563–1636

Louise Bourgeois was an obstetrician andgynecologist as well as a surgeon in France.Her work Observations, published in 1610,was a landmark contribution to the knowl-edge of childbirth.

Born in Hainault at Mons of well-to-doparents, she married an army surgeon andhad three children. She stayed with her par-

ents in Paris when her husband served dur-ing wartime. When Paris was devastated bytroops of Henry of Navarre (later KingHenry IV), her family’s property was totallydestroyed, and Louise had to take work as aseamstress. Disliking the work, she decidedto become a midwife, training with Am-broise Pare, a gifted surgeon and veryknowledgeable in the field of obstetrics.

At this time in France, prospective mid-wives had to pass a licensing examination.Bourgeois passed her exams and obtainedher diploma on November 12, 1598. Sheachieved early success, with members of thearistocracy becoming some of her patients.Eventually she achieved the title of RoyalMidwife after attending to three births ofQueen Marie de Medici. The first baby, in1601, later became King Louis XIII.

(Initially King Henry IV had wanted an-other midwife, but the Queen rejected herbecause she had delivered for his mis-tresses.)

After King Henry IV was murdered andQueen Marie de Medici no longer neededmidwife services, Bourgeois continued topractice her profession among the aristoc-racy. She lost some credibility when a fever

Louise Bourgeois (Leclos/U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

Marie Anne Victoire Gillain Boivin (de Fonrouge/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

Brown, Dorothy Lavinia

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took the life of the Duchesse de Montpen-sier. Following this event, her practice de-clined and she spent much of the rest of herlife writing her book Observations. She diedin 1636.

References: Hatcher, John, “Mme LouiseBourgeois—Royal Midwife and Remark-able Character,” Midwives Chronicle andNursing Notes (January 1971); Hurd-Mead,Kate Campbell, A History of Women in Medi-cine from the Earliest Times to the Beginning ofthe Nineteenth Century, Haddam, CT: Had-dam Press (1938); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and JoyHarvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000).

Britton, Mary E.1858–1925

Mary Britton was the first black femalephysician in Kentucky, serving both blacksand whites in the Lexington area. She at-tended Berea College and taught for a whilein Lexington. She was better known for herwriting in newspapers throughout the east-ern United States.

Britton was born to Henry and Laura Brit-ton in 1858. Her father was half-Spanish andhalf-Indian; her mother was born of a whiteslave owner and a slave mistress. She wasone of the first free blacks to graduate fromcollege and pursue a career after the Ameri-can Civil War of 1861–1865. Her older sister,Julia, was a gifted teacher and musicianwho became the first black teacher in Berea.

Britton taught school for a while beforedeciding on a medical career. She trained atBattle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, whichhad been established as a health-reform in-stitute by the Seventh Day Adventists. Shealso studied at the American MissionaryMedical College in Chicago, graduating in1903. She became a proponent of alternativemedicine, vegetarianism, hydrotherapy,massage, metaphysics, and phrenology. Shewas an effective speaker on women’s rightsand a prominent and respected blackwoman leader of the times. She died in 1925.

References: Lucas, Marion Brunson, A His-tory of Blacks in Kentucky, vol. 1, Frankfort:Kentucky Historical Society (1992); Wade-Gayles, Gloria, “Britton, Mary E.,” BlackWomen in America: An Historical Encyclope-dia, vol. 1, Brooklyn, NY: Carlson (1993).

Brown, Dorothy Lavinia1919–

Dorothy Brown is the first black female inthe American South to become a surgeon.Her work in general surgery and educationhas forged a path for future generations ofblack female physicians and surgeons.

Born in Philadelphia on January 7, 1919,she was taken by her mother to an orphan-age in Troy, New York. She stayed there forthe next twelve years. During this time, hermother tried several times to take her back,but Dorothy ran away each time to return tothe Troy orphanage. After her tonsils wereremoved when she was five, she decided tobecome a doctor. She attended school in Troyand, when she was fifteen, went to live withfoster parents Samuel and Lola Redmon.

She graduated at the top of her highschool class and went on to earn her A.B.degree in 1941 from Bennett College inGreensboro, North Carolina. Her time therewas difficult because even though she had ascholarship from the Women’s Division ofthe Methodist Church, college administra-tors didn’t feel she was a suitable candidatefor their school. They discouraged her fromtaking science courses and from going tomedical school, believing teaching wouldsuit her better. After graduation she workedat the Rochester Army Ordinance Depart-ment during World War II and then enteredmedical school at Meharry Medical Collegein Nashville, Tennessee.

She obtained her M.D. degree in 1948 andthen served a one-year internship at HarlemHospital. In order to become a surgeon, shewent back to Nashville to complete a five-year residency at Meharry and HubbardHospitals. She became an assistant profes-sor of surgery in 1955 and in 1959 becamethe first black female surgeon to become afellow of the American College of Surgeons.

Brown, Edith Mary

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In 1956, a young pregnant girl offeredBrown her baby, and Brown became the firstsingle woman to adopt a child (Lola Denise)in Tennessee.

Brown served as chief of surgery at River-side Hospital in Nashville from 1960 to1983. She also built up her own privatepractice despite skepticism about black fe-male physicians. In 1966, Brown served inthe Tennessee legislature for a two-yearterm, becoming the first black woman toearn such an honor in Tennessee.

She has received many awards and hon-orary degrees and is a fellow of the Ameri-can College of Surgeons. She is also a lifemember of the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP).

References: “Bachelor Mother,” Ebony (Sep-tember 1958); Notable Black American Scien-tists, Detroit: Gale Research (1998); Organ,Claude H., and Margaret M. Kosiba, Cen-tury of Black Surgeons: The U.S.A. Experience,Norman, OK: Transcript Press (1987); Sam-

mons, Vivian Ovelton, Blacks in Science andMedicine, New York: Hemisphere (1990).

Brown, Edith Mary1864–1956

Born on March 24, 1864, in Whitehaven,Cumbria, England, Brown became a physi-cian who helped found the North IndiaSchool of Medicine for Christian Women inLudhiana.

Edith developed an interest in medicineand missions because her older sister was amissionary. She earned a degree at Cam-bridge University and taught science in or-der to earn money to further her educationwith a medical degree. She studied medi-cine in London and gained her certificationin Scotland in 1891, as women could not becertified in England at the time.

She immediately went to India and wasshocked at the condition of health care inthat country. She worked to educate andheal women and children, and became in-creasingly interested in educating mid-wives. Eventually she saw a need for a med-ical school for Indian women and set aboutorganizing one with several cooperating so-cieties, including the Baptist Zenana mis-sion. The North India School of Medicinefor Christian Women opened in 1894.

After only two years, the government rec-ognized the college and its importance tothe country. In 1931 Brown was made DameCommander of the Order of the British Em-pire (DBE) for her meritorious work. Brownretired to Kashmir in 1941 and died in Sri-nagar on December 6, 1956. The school con-tinued to thrive, beginning to train men in1951, and awarding medical degrees by1953.

References: Haines, Catharine M. C., andHelen Stevens, International Women in Sci-ence: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950, SantaBarbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (2001); Murray,Jocelyn, “Brown, Edith Mary,” BiographicalDictionary of Christian Missions, New York:Macmillan (1998).

Dorothy Lavinia Brown (Meharry MedicalCollege/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

Brundtband, Gro Harlem

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Brown, Rachel Fuller1898–1980

Along with Elizabeth Hazen, Rachel Brownwas responsible for discovering the first an-tifungal antibiotic that could be used safelyon humans. This biomedical discovery wasconsidered by most to be the most impor-tant since Sir Alexander Fleming discoveredpenicillin in 1928. She and Hazen subse-quently donated all their royalties from thepatent to scientific research, making a hugefinancial contribution to science.

Brown was born on November 23, 1898,in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her father,George Hamilton Brown, worked in real es-tate and insurance. Her mother was AnnieFuller. When she was very young, the fam-ily moved to Webster Groves, Missouri, justoutside of St. Louis. She had one youngerbrother, Sumner Jerome, and when her fa-ther left the family in 1912, her mother re-turned to Springfield and worked to sup-port them. Brown graduated from highschool and went on to attend MountHolyoke College, where her education wasfunded by Henrietta Dexter, a close friendof her grandmother’s. Brown later paidDexter back for the loan.

Her primary interest had been history, butshe developed an interest in chemistry atHolyoke and double-majored in history andchemistry, receiving her degree in 1920. Shethen obtained a master’s degree in organicchemistry from the University of Chicago.After graduating, she worked for threeyears at the Frances Shimer School nearChicago, teaching physics and chemistry.

Unsatisfied with teaching, she returned tothe University of Chicago to work on herPh.D. in organic chemistry with a minor inbacteriology. She completed her studiesshort of her oral exams in 1926 and went towork for the New York Department ofHealth’s Division of Laboratories and Re-search in Albany, New York. It was in Al-bany that she met Dorothy Wakerley, herlifetime companion. Brown did not obtainher degree until seven years later.

Brown’s work at first focused on the bac-teria that cause pneumonia; this work

helped lead to a vaccine for the disease.Later she worked on the causes of syphilis.Her long-distance collaboration with Hazen(Brown was in Albany and Hazen in NewYork City), an expert on fungus, began in1948. Penicillin had been discovered andwas able to cure many infections, but fungalinfections were a serious problem.

In 1950 Brown and Hazen discovered thefirst antifungal agent that could be usedsafely on humans. E. R. Squibb and Sons de-veloped the method for mass production ofthe agent, called Nystatin, and it becameavailable to the public in 1954.

Nystatin proved to have many uses. It canbe used to treat Dutch elm disease and fightmolds in foods and was used after a flood inItaly to save priceless artworks.

Brown received numerous awards in herlifetime. She was also a sought-after speakerwho lectured on antibiotics and cautionedagainst their unnecessary use. When she re-tired in 1968, she had served the state ofNew York for forty-two years and had takenonly two sick days. She died on January 14,1980, at her home in Albany.

See also: Hazen, Elizabeth LeeReferences: Baldwin, Richard S., The FungusFighters, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress (1981); Notable Twentieth-Century Sci-entists, Detroit: Gale Research (1995); Vare,Ethlie Ann, and Greg Ptacek, Mothers of In-vention: From the Bra to the Bomb: ForgottenWomen and Their Unforgettable Ideas, NewYork: Morrow (1988).

Brundtband, Gro Harlem1939–

Known more as a politician and environ-mentalist, Gro Harlem Brundtband is thefirst woman to head the World Health Or-ganization (WHO), based in Geneva, whereshe is concerned with raising public aware-ness of international health issues andbringing the alleviation of poverty to theforefront of WHO’s goals.

In 1998 she was elected to the WorldHealth Assembly after being nominated bythe executive board of WHO.

Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine

40

She was born in Oslo, Norway, April 20,1939. Her father, Gudmund Harlem, was aphysician, political activist, and major influ-ence in her life. She married Arne Olav andhad four children. She earned her medicaldegree in 1963 from the University of Osloand in 1965 added a master of public healthdegree from Harvard University.

Brundtband was a physician for ten yearsin the Norway Public Health System. Sheserved as a medical officer at the NorwegianDirectorate of Health and later with Oslo’sBoard of Health. Her work included cancerprevention and childhood diseases. She be-came the director of health services forOslo’s schoolchildren while raising a familyof her own.

At age forty-one, Brundtband becameprime minister of Norway, a position sheheld for over ten years. She is the first fe-male to hold the post and the youngest inNorway’s history. In her memoirs, DramaticYears, she criticizes the Norwegian healthservice for being too slow to import drugsthat could help alleviate psychological ill-nesses like that of her manic-depressive son,Joergen, who committed suicide in 1992.

References: Borchert, Thomas, “Norway’sFormer Premier Puts Son’s Suicide at Centerof Memoirs,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur (24November 1998); Kaiser, Jocelyn, “WHOGets New Head,” Science 279, no. 5351 (30January 1998); WHO home page, http://www.who.int/.

Budzinski-Tylicka, JustineLate nineteenth century

Justine Budzinski-Tylicka became one of thefirst female physicians in Poland. She re-ceived her medical training at the Univer-sity of Paris and returned to Poland to workin her country’s clinics and hospitals. Sheadvocated birth control and was against le-galized prostitution. She was a strong sup-porter of women’s rights.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957).

C

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Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor1887–1968

Eleanor Calverley was the first womanphysician to work in Kuwait. A medicalmissionary, she gained the trust of Arabwomen who were forbidden to see malephysicians.

Calverley was born in Woodstock, NewJersey, on March 24, 1887; her parents wereWilliam Lewis and Jane Long Hillman Tay-lor. She was educated in the public schoolsof New Haven, Connecticut, and later at-tended the Women’s Medical College ofPennsylvania, obtaining her medical degreein 1908.

She married Edwin E. Calverley, a mis-sionary and preacher, on September 6, 1909,and together they trained for work in Ara-bia. They traveled to Kuwait in 1911, andshe opened a small dispensary connected toher home so that Kuwaiti women, amongothers, could seek medical care. “We sawboth wealth and poverty among the Araband Persian populations of Kuwait. SomePersian families were rich; but there wereothers, recently immigrated from Persia,who had no homes except the sand beside aboat drawn up on the shore. Their only pro-tection was a curtain of sacking, fastenedabove them to the side of the boat andpegged down into the sand. Freed Africanslaves, deprived of their former masters’support, were also often destitute. Of suchwe could not require any fee for medicalservice” (Calverley 1958, 74).

She and her husband spent many years inKuwait. In 1919 a women’s hospital openedthere under her leadership. She had three

daughters: Grace, Elisabeth, and Eleanor.Calverley died on December 22, 1968, inHartford, Connecticut.

References: Calverley, Eleanor T., My ArabianDays and Nights, New York: Crowell (1958);National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol.57, Clifton, NJ: James T. White (1977).

Canady, Alexa Irene1950–

Alexa Canady is the first female AfricanAmerican in the United States to become aneurosurgeon. She has held various teach-ing positions over the years and is currentlythe director of neurosurgery at Children’sHospital of Michigan.

Born in Lansing, Michigan, on November7, 1950, Canady was the second oldest in afamily of four and the only girl. Her father,Clinton Canady, was a dentist, and hermother, Elizabeth Hortense Golden, workedin various educational occupations and wasthe first black elected to the Lansing Boardof Education. She was a Fisk Universitygraduate and fostered a love for learning inAlexa and her three brothers.

Alexa did well in school and graduatedfrom high school with honors. She thenwent on to the University of Michigan tomajor in mathematics. She soon discoveredshe did not have a commitment to the sub-ject despite good grades. She participated ina minority health-careers program at Michi-gan and worked with Art Bloom, a pediatri-cian and geneticist, and decided to pursue acareer in medicine.

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She graduated with a B.S. in 1971 and en-tered medical school at the University ofMichigan with the initial intention of be-coming an internist. She earned her M.D. in1975 and proceeded to the Yale New HavenHospital for an internship in 1975–1976. Shewas later admitted to the Department ofNeurosurgery at the University of Min-nesota and became the first black femaleresident there.

In 1981 she continued her resident train-ing under Luis Schut at the University ofPennsylvania and the Children’s Hospitalof Philadelphia.

She returned to Michigan in 1982 to take aposition with the Henry Ford Hospital inDetroit as both a teacher and a neurosur-geon. In 1987 she became the director ofneurosurgery at Children’s Hospital ofMichigan and has received much credit formaking the hospital’s neurosurgery depart-ment one of the best. She married GeorgeDavis in 1988. Canady credits affirmativeaction and other programs emanating fromthe civil rights era in helping her to achieveher goals. She mentors young people ofcolor in following the profession of theirchoice.

References: Lanker, Brian, I Dream a World:Portraits of Black Women Who Changed theWorld, New York: Stewart, Tabori, andChang (1989); Notable Twentieth-Century Sci-entists, Detroit: Gale Research (1995); Rich,Mari, “Canady, Alexa,” Current Biography 61no. 8 (August 2000): 11–15.

Chevandier Law of 1892

Passed in France, the Chevandier Law of1892 was intended to keep unlicensedphysicians from practicing medicine. It gaveexception to mothers of families as long asthey practiced medicine in the home. Publicschools were also allowed to teach womenbasic hygiene and first aid techniques. As aresult of the law, conflicts arose over “do-mestic” and “professional” medicine. Somemale physicians of the day objected that thelaw would encourage women to practicemedicine without a license outside of the

home. The French Republic, however, wasconcerned about depopulation and thehealth of its citizens. The government deter-mined that better health care from birth wasmore advantageous than stimulating an in-crease in births and set out to define in anamended law which aspects of health carewomen could legally practice in the home.

References: Lacy, Cherilyn, “Science orSavoir-Faire? Domestic Hygiene and Medi-cine in Girls’ Public Education during theEarly Third French Republic, 1882–1914,”Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the West-ern Society for French History 24 (1997): 25–37.

Chinn, May Edward1896–1980

May Chinn was one of the first black femalephysicians in New York City. Her work inearly cancer detection helped in the devel-opment of the Pap smear. She was the firstblack female to graduate from BellevueHospital Medical College and the first blackfemale physician to intern at Harlem Hospi-tal. After her internship, she was deniedprivileges at all hospitals until 1940. Shepersisted on her own and by the time of herdeath was a well-respected physician.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts,on April 15, 1896, Chinn was the only childof William Lafayette Chinn and Lulu AnnEvans. Her father had escaped from slaveryon a Virginia plantation when he was elevenyears old, and her mother was born on anIndian reservation near Norfolk. She grewup in New York City, where her mother senther to boarding school.

After developing osteomyelitis, Chinnhad to leave school and lived with hermother on the estate of a wealthy whitefamily, where her mother worked. While be-ing treated for the disease, she studied anddeveloped an interest in music through at-tending concerts with the white children ofthe family. She later gave piano lessons toyoungsters.

Chinn attended Morris High School butdropped out in order to help her family bytaking a factory job. Later, with her

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mother’s encouragement, she took a highschool equivalency test. She did well andentered Columbia University Teachers’ Col-lege in 1917. After a year there, she changedher major from music to science. She gradu-ated in 1921 and entered Bellevue HospitalMedical College, where she graduated in1926. She interned at Harlem Hospital.

After being denied work in hospitals, sheopened her own practice near the Edge-combe Sanitarium. In exchange for livingand office space, she answered the all-nightemergency calls for the group of blackphysicians who owned her space and thesanitarium. Because she saw so many pa-tients in the advanced stages of cancer, shebecame interested in cancer research. Shealso continued her studies, receiving a mas-ter’s degree in public health from Columbiain 1933. During this time she gained per-mission to do biopsies at Memorial Hospitalunder George Papanicolaou, who later de-veloped the Pap smear. Eventually, blackphysicians who found out about her accessto Memorial Hospital began to send biopsyspecimens directly to her. Without an offi-cial affiliation with Memorial Hospital, shehad the work done in secret.

In 1944 she joined the staff of StrangClinic, a cancer-detection center affiliatedwith Memorial Hospital and New York In-firmary Hospital. She stayed there twenty-nine years. She became a legend in Harlemas a woman who overcame many racial andgender barriers in order to provide healthcare to the poor.

References: Clark, Darlene, Elsa BarkleyBrown, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, BlackWomen in America: An Historical Encyclope-dia, Brooklyn, NY: Carlson (1993); Hayden,Robert C., American National Biography, NewYork: Oxford University Press (1999); “MayEdward Chinn,” http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/chinn.html.

Claypole, Edith Jane1870–1915

Edith Claypole did early research in infec-tious diseases in order to distinguish be-

tween tuberculosis and infections that re-sembled it. Her work in histology andhematology aided future researchers intheir explorations.

Claypole was born along with a twin sis-ter, Agnes, on January 1, 1870, in Bristol,England. Their mother died a short time af-ter the births. When her father remarried, hetook his new wife and daughters to Akron,Ohio, where he had a teaching job. He had alove of science, and he and his second wifetaught the girls at home.

Edith majored in biology and graduatedfrom Buchtel College in Akron in 1892. Shewent on to Cornell to study for an advanceddegree. She taught physiology and histol-ogy at Wellesley College in Massachusettsupon graduation and later became inter-ested in pathology and medicine. While inmedical school at the University of Califor-nia (UC) at Los Angeles, she worked for agroup of physicians as a pathologist. As aresult, by the time she received her M.D. shewas knowledgeable about vaccines and bac-terial cultures.

She continued her pathology work aftergraduation, volunteering at the Universityof California, Berkeley, because she couldnot find an academic position for pay in1904. The university offered her a researchassociate position in 1912, and she was ableto use the laboratory facilities there for herresearch.

She began to study tuberculosis and thebacteria associated with it. The bacteria alsocaused other infections, and Claypole de-veloped a test that was helpful in determin-ing the differences in infections that afflictedhumans.

When World War I broke out, she andothers began working on a vaccine for ty-phoid fever for the British and Frenchtroops in Europe. Although she was vacci-nated against typhoid, over the course of afew years the exposures to it were so greatthat she died from it in 1915 at the early ageof forty-five.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S.

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Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sciences: ABiographical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1996).

Cleveland, Emeline Horton1829–1878

A respected physician and educator, Eme-line Cleveland was one of the first femalesurgeons to remove ovarian tumors. Shewas the second female dean of the Women’sMedical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP)and created new educational opportunitiesfor women while strengthening the curricu-lum at her college.

Born in Ashford, Connecticut, on Septem-ber 22, 1829, Cleveland grew up in MadisonCounty, New York. Her parents wereChauncey Horton and Amanda ChaffeeHorton. Her father set up a school on theirfarm, and she received her early educationfrom tutors. Her father died early, and shetaught in order to earn money sufficient fora college education.

In 1850 she enrolled at Oberlin College inOhio and graduated in 1853. Interested inbecoming a missionary and a physician, shewent to the Female Medical College ofPennsylvania (renamed the Women’s Med-ical College of Pennsylvania in 1867), grad-uating in 1855. She had married the Rev-erend Giles Butler Cleveland in 1854; theyhad both intended a life of missionary work,but his poor health changed their course.

She started a small medical practice nearher home in New York and the next yearwas asked to teach at WMCP. Before long,she became the chair of anatomy and phys-iology. In 1860 she went to Paris for spe-cialty training at the School of Obstetrics atLa Maternité. Because WMCP needed a bet-ter setting for its students to gain clinical ex-perience, she also visited various hospitalsto learn more about hospital administration.Once Cleveland returned, she became thechief resident of Women’s Hospital, whichcollaborated with the Women’s MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania to provide clinicaltraining for medical students. Clevelandalso served the college as a professor of ob-stetrics and gynecology.

Cleveland had a son in 1865. In 1872 shesucceeded Ann Preston as dean of WMCP.She resigned two years later due to poorhealth. She suffered from tuberculosis anddied in Philadelphia on December 8, 1878.At the time she was working for the De-partment of the Insane at PhiladelphiaHospital.

See also: Medical College of Pennsylvania;Preston, AnnReferences: DeFiore, Jayne Crumpler,“Cleveland, Emeline Horton,” American Na-tional Biography, vol. 5, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999); Peitzman, Steven J.,A New and Untried Course: Women’s MedicalCollege and Medical College of Pennsylvania,1850–1998, New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press (2000).

Cobb, Jewel Plummer1924–

Jewel Cobb has contributed to the field ofcell biology in her research on how drugs af-fect cancer and on the skin pigment melaninand the cause of melanoma, an increasingskin cancer. Cobb has also supported nu-merous programs throughout her career toencourage young students, especially mi-norities, to enter the science field.

Cobb was born on January 17, 1924, theonly child of Frank Plummer, a physicianand graduate of Rush College, and Car-riebel Plummer, who taught in the publicschools. Cobb came into contact with otherprofessionals through her parents, whomshe admired. Like her father, she enjoyedscience, and she did well in school, oftenfacing racism.

While at the University of Michigan, sheencountered more racism in the dormitoriesand local businesses and transferred to Tal-ladega College in Alabama, where she grad-uated in 1944. She went on to New YorkUniversity on a fellowship that lasted sixyears. There in 1947, she earned a master’sdegree in cell physiology and in 1950, aPh.D. She obtained a fellowship from theNational Cancer Institute and began her cell

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research at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Re-search Foundation.

She held several university positions fol-lowing her time at the research foundation,first at the University of Illinois MedicalSchool. In 1954 she married Roy Raul Cobband returned to the Harlem Hospital CancerResearch Foundation. She had a son, RoyJohnathan Cobb, in 1957. She then workedat New York University, Hunter College,and Sarah Lawrence College. During thistime she continued in her research onmelanoma and in 1960 published a five-yearcytological study.

She then went to Connecticut College tobecome dean and professor of zoology. In1976 she became dean and professor of biol-ogy at Douglass College of Rutgers Univer-sity. From 1981 until 1990 she served aspresident of California State University atFullerton. In all positions she held, she as-sisted with program development for un-derrepresented ethnic groups.

References: Notable Black American Scien-tists, Detroit: Gale Research (1998); Shearer,Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, NotableWomen in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic-tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996).

Cole, Rebecca1846–1922

The second black woman in the UnitedStates to graduate from medical school andbecome a physician, Rebecca Cole devotedover fifty years to the health care of womenand children during a time when women ofany color were not well accepted as physi-cians. She worked in patients’ homes, in thesparsely furnished clinics of the post–CivilWar era, and into the twentieth century.

Born on March 16, 1846, in Philadelphia,she had four siblings. She taught school aftergraduating from the Institute for ColoredYouth (currently known as Cheyney Univer-sity). A year later she entered the Women’sMedical College of Pennsylvania, where in1867 she was the first black to graduate.

She went to work as a visiting practi-

tioner with Elizabeth Blackwell at the NewYork Infirmary for Women and Children.She had a great interest in helping poorwomen and children, so Blackwell assignedher to the slum areas of New York City. Coleworked in harsh conditions, teachingwomen and children proper hygiene andbasic medical care, and teaching mothershow to better care for their infants.

After several years she ventured to Co-lumbia, South Carolina, and opened a pri-vate practice, later moving to Washington,D.C., to work as the superintendent for theGovernment House for Children and OldWomen. Later she moved back to her birth-place of Philadelphia and opened a practicewhile coordinating a medical and legal di-rectory for the poor with Charlotte Abby,another physician in Philadelphia. She diedon August 14, 1922.

See Also: Crumpler, Rebecca LeeReferences: Krapp, Kristine M., ed., NotableBlack American Scientists, Detroit: Gale Re-search (1999); Sterling, Dorothy, ed., We AreYour Sisters: Black Women in the NineteenthCentury, New York: W. W. Norton (1984).

Comnena, Anna1083–1148

Anna Comnena ran the huge hospital herfather built in Constantinople. He was Alex-ius I, emperor of the Romans, and thus shewas a Byzantine princess and well edu-cated. She taught various aspects of medi-cine in his hospital as well as practiced med-icine in other hospitals and in orphanasylums and attended her father during hislast illness. She was an expert on gout.

She is better known for her historicalwriting, a massive fifteen-volume workabout her father’s reign titled the Alexiad.The work provides insight into the period inwhich she lived, although some of thechronology is incorrect.

She married Nicephorus Bryennius and,along with her mother, tried to persuade herfather, even on his deathbed, to disinherither brother, John II, in favor of Nicephorus.Her father refused, so after John ascended

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to the throne, she plotted against him. Shefailed and had to retire to a convent. This iswhere she spent the rest of her days andwrote the Alexiad.

References: Buckler, Georgina, Anna Com-nena: A Study, London: Oxford UniversityPress (1929); Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell,History of Women in Medicine from the EarliestTimes to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Cen-tury, Haddam, CT: Haddam Press (1938);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science:Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge (2000).

Comstock Act of 1873

Passed by the U.S. Congress, the ComstockAct of 1873 banned the distribution of liter-ature on birth control. It has been usedwidely over the years to censor the mails,limit contraceptive information, and prose-cute publishers, physicians, social reform-ers, and women’s rights advocates who vio-late it. The major architect behind the lawwas Anthony Comstock, a well-known cru-sader against obscenity, pornography, andliterature or personal conduct considered byhim to be immoral.

The interpretations of the act have beenbroad over the years, violating humanrights and personal liberties in many in-stances. Officially called the Act for the Sup-pression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Ob-scene Literature and Articles of ImmoralUse, it was meant to punish those who

shall sell, or lend or give away, or inany manner exhibit, or shall offer tosell, or to lend, or to give away, or inany manner to exhibit, or shall other-wise publish or offer to publish in anymanner, or shall have in his posses-sion, for any such purpose or pur-poses, any obscene book, pamphlet,paper, writing, advertisement, circular,print, picture, drawing or other repre-sentation, figure, or image on or of pa-per or other material, or any cast, in-strument, or other article of an

immoral nature, or any drug or medi-cine, or any article whatever, for theprevention of conception, or for caus-ing unlawful abortion, or shall adver-tise the same for sale, or shall write orprint, or cause to be written or printed,any card, circular, book pamphlet, ad-vertisement, or notice of any kind,stating when, where, how, or ofwhom, or by what means, any of thearticles in this section hereinbeforementioned, can be purchased or ob-tained, or shall manufacture, draw, orprint, or in any wise make any of sucharticles. (U.S. Statutes 1873, 598–599)

Violation of the act was a misdemeanor.Comstock was appointed a special agent

of the U.S. Postal Service in order to enforcethe law. His methods were extreme, con-stantly entrapping criminals, prosecutingwithout mercy, and writing vociferously onthe vices of society. He intended to rid soci-ety of everything and all pieces of informa-tion that could corrupt youth. He abhorredthe feminists and women’s rights advocatessuch as Margaret Sanger and persecutedthem. Many influential New Englanders,such as Morris Jesup and William E. Dodge,supported him. The law and his efforts in-hibited the distribution of birth-control in-formation for women who desired it. It alsoprevented physicians from distributingcontraceptive devices and information. Theact is still on the books and continues to becontroversial.

References: Foer, Albert A., “Heroes of theFirst Amendment,” Washington Post, sec. 10(16 November 1997): 4; U.S. Statutes at Largeand Proclamations of the United States of Amer-ica, vol. 17, 1871–1873, Boston: Little, Brown:(1873): 598–600.

Conley, Frances Krauskopf1940–

Frances Conley became the first tenuredneurosurgeon in the United States andbrought international attention to the gen-der discrimination she faced for thirty years

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at Stanford when she resigned her positionfor several months in 1991. She continues tofight for gender equity in education.

Born on August 12, 1940, in Palo Alto,California, to Konrad Bates and KathrynMcCune Krauskopf, Conley attended BrynMawr College for two years and then trans-ferred to Stanford University. She received aB.A. in 1962, an M.D. in 1966, and an M.S. in1986, all from Stanford. She married PhillipR. Conley in 1963.

A gifted neurosurgeon, Conley rose in theranks at Stanford and became a tenured as-sociate professor of neurosurgery in 1988.Unwilling to stay after a male colleague sheconsidered sexist was appointed depart-ment head, she resigned and charged theuniversity with sexual harassment. OtherStanford women who had been reticent tospeak up before Conley went public cameforward with similar complaints. Stanfordhad to seriously study the issues she raised,but never ruled on the matter. In her 1998book Walking Out on the Boys, Conley detailsthe conduct of some of her male colleaguesthat she considered unethical. She feelswomen have made very little progress sincethe 1960s with the exception that morewomen are in the field.

References: Barinaga, Marcia, “SexismCharged by Stanford Physician,” Science252, no. 5012 (14 June 1991): 1484; Conley,Frances K., Walking Out on the Boys, NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998);Leslie, Connie, and Barbara Kantrowitz,“Showing Its Age,” Newsweek 118, no. 15 (7October 1991): 54–58.

Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz1896–1957

Gerty Cori, along with her husband and an-other researcher, won the Nobel Prize in1947 in physiology or medicine for theirwork on sugar and the enzymes that con-vert glycogen to sugar. The Coris shared theNobel Prize with Bernardo Alberto Hous-say.

Born in Prague on August 15, 1896, Coriwas the daughter of Otto Radnitz, a fairly

well-to-do Jewish chemist and businessmanwho managed sugar refineries. The oldestof three girls, Cori was educated at homebefore going to a school for girls, graduatingin 1912. She studied on her own the subjectsrequired to get into medical school becauseat that time, although women were allowedto enter a university in Prague, few femaleschools taught the science and Latin re-quired for entrance.

Her uncle was a pediatrician and encour-aged her to go to medical school. She passedthe entrance examination in 1914 and re-ceived her doctorate in medicine in 1920, thesame year she married Carl Cori. Despitethe fact that Gerty converted to Catholicism,Carl’s parents felt that Gerty’s Jewish back-ground would harm Carl’s career.

It wasn’t long after graduation that bothCoris realized the need to go elsewhere todo research. Eastern Europe was still recov-ering from World War I, and research facili-ties were not a priority there. EventuallyCarl was offered a position at a cancer re-

Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori (U.S. National Libraryof Medicine)

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search institute in Buffalo, New York. Gertywas hired as an assistant pathologist.

Gerty Cori was troubled throughout herprofessional life by the fact that she was notrecognized for her work with her husband.Husband-and-wife teams were becomingmore common in the United States, but thehusband had the secure, tenured position,whereas the wife held a lower-level posi-tion. A female researcher in this situationwas secure in her position only as long asshe stayed married.

After several years in Buffalo, Carl ac-cepted a position in St. Louis at the Wash-ington University School of Medicine. TheCoris moved there in 1931, with Gerty Corihired as a research associate and Carl as aprofessor. They had become naturalizedAmerican citizens in 1928.

In 1936, the Coris discovered the com-pound glucose-l-phosphate, also known asthe Cori ester. This compound occurs as oneof the three steps in the breakdown ofglycogen into sugar. They also found thatenzymes played a role in the sugar break-down, and before long they discoveredphosphorylase, an enzyme that breaksdown glycogen into the Cori ester.

When World War II broke out, most of themen in research had to turn to defense proj-ects, and women scientists were in demandin the universities. Thus in 1944, Gerty Coriattained the rank of associate professor atWashington University. She continued thework on enzymes. When the war was wind-ing down and in response to offers the Corishad received from Harvard and the Rocke-feller Institute, Washington University of-fered Carl a larger biochemistry departmentto chair with Gerty as a professor. Many sci-entists were pursuing enzyme research atthe time, and by 1947 their department hadbecome the world’s foremost center for en-zyme study, drawing researchers fromaround the globe.

Women who came to work with Corifound her both exacting and supportive, es-pecially the latter with women who werewives and mothers like her. She had had ason, Tom Carl, in 1936.

Both she and her husband cared littleabout who was credited for discoveries as

long as the work was based on sound sci-ence. Their lab was also unusual in that theydid not discriminate when hiring againstwomen, Jews, or other minorities.

On October 24, 1947, the Coris learned oftheir Nobel Prize, won for their earlier workon synthesizing glycogen in a test tube.“Physiologists had been told for years thatlarge molecules could only be made withinliving cells. Yet the Coris had executed thefirst bioengineering of a large biological mol-ecule in a test tube” (McGrayne 1998, 106).

The Coris shared the Nobel Prize withtheir friend Bernardo Alberto Houssay ofArgentina.

Before the couple traveled to Stockholmto receive the award, Gerty found she wassuffering from agnogenic myeloid dyspla-sia, a severe anemia wherein the body doesnot produce red blood cells and fibrous tis-sue slowly replaces the bone marrow. Forthe rest of her life she relied on blood trans-fusions to live.

The Coris shared their prize money withcoworkers. They each gave part of the Nobellecture, sharing the recognition as they haddone their research. Over the next ten yearsCori suffered from her illness but continuedto do research when she could. She becameinterested in glycogen-storage diseases inchildren and identified four that werecaused by a missing or defective enzyme.

As time went on she became weaker, andin 1957 she published her last paper. Shedied at home on October 26, 1957.

References: McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, No-bel Prize Women in Science, New York: Carol(1998); Nobel Foundation, Official Web Siteof the Nobel Foundation, 2000, http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1947/cori-gt-bio.html.

Correia, Elisa1866–?

Elisa Correia was the first female physicianin Portugal. She graduated in 1889 from theUniversity of Coimbra in Portugal.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women

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Doctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957).

Craighill, Margaret D.1898–1977

Margaret Craighill was the first womanphysician to be commissioned into the U.S.Army Medical Corps (1943). Craighill alsoserved as dean of the Women’s Medical Col-lege of Pennsylvania from 1940 to 1946.

Craighill was born on October 16, 1898, inSouthport, North Carolina. She attended theUniversity of Wisconsin and obtained anA.B. degree in 1920 and an M.S. in 1921. Sheearned her M.D. degree at Johns HopkinsUniversity in 1924. She also graduated fromthe New York Psychoanalytic Institute in1952.

During World War II she took a leave ofabsence from her position as dean of theWomen’s Medical College of Pennsylvaniato serve with the preventive-medicine divi-sion of the Army Medical Corps. She sur-veyed war conditions and reported on thewelfare of nurses and other members of thecorps. She also worked in the office of thesurgeon general as chief of the Women’sHealth and Welfare Unit. After the war shebecame a consultant to the Veterans’ Ad-ministration on the care of women veterans,the first position of its kind.

Craighill eventually turned her attentionto psychiatry and attended the MenningerSchool of Psychiatry as part of its first class,transferring from there to the New YorkPsychoanalytic Institute. She started herown private practice in Greenwich andNew Haven, Connecticut, as well as servingat the Connecticut College for Women inNew London as its chief psychiatrist.

She never had children and was widowedtwice. Her husbands were Dr. James Vickersand Alexander S. Wotherspoon. She died inher home in Connecticut in July 1977 at theage of seventy-eight.

References: “Dr. Margaret D. Craighill, at78, Former Dean of Medical College,” NewYork Times (26 July 1977): 32; Lovejoy, EstherPohl, Women Doctors of the World, New York:

Macmillan (1957); Who’s Who of AmericanWomen, 5th ed., Chicago: Marquis Who’sWho (1968).

Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline1888–1983

Elizabeth Crosby was recognized in her dayas one of the most learned experts on neu-roanatomy. She worked well past retirementage and was a prolific writer and researcher.She was the first female full professor at theUniversity of Michigan’s Medical School.

Born in Petersburg, Michigan, to LewisFrederick Crosby and Frances Kreps on Oc-tober 25, 1888, Elizabeth had a rather nor-mal and happy childhood. She attendedpublic schools and received very goodgrades. She continued her studies at AdrianCollege in Michigan, where she obtainedher B.S. in 1910. Interested in anatomy, shecontinued her studies at the University ofChicago, earning a master’s degree in 1912and a Ph.D. in 1915.

She returned to Petersburg to teach, but

Margaret D. Craighill (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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after her mother died in 1918 she applied tothe University of Michigan in order to pur-sue her research interests. She gained an in-structor position in 1920 and rose throughthe ranks to become the first female profes-sor in the university’s medical school in1936. While there, she kept to a rigorousschedule of teaching and research. Shestayed until 1958.

With the publication in 1936 of the two-volume Comparative Anatomy of the NervousSystem of Vertebrates, Including Man, she be-came known as an authority on brain mor-phology. She had collaborated on the workwith C. U. Ariens Kappers and G. Carl Hu-ber before he died in 1934. The book re-ceived international recognition.

Although Crosby never married, in 1940she adopted a daughter, Kathleen, who wasfrom Scotland. Crosby received numerousawards and continued her research wellinto her later years. She died on July 28,1983, at her daughter’s home in Michigan.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994);Haines, Duane E., “Crosby, Elizabeth Caro-line,” American National Biography, vol. 5,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Bio-graphical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1996).

Crumpler, Rebecca Lee1833–?

Rebecca Crumpler was the first blackwoman to become a physician in the UnitedStates. She practiced in Boston after gradu-ating from the New England Female Med-ical College and later moved to Richmond,Virginia, to treat newly freed slaves follow-ing the American Civil War.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1833, shewas raised by an aunt in Pennsylvania whoworked as a doctor. She worked as a nursein Massachusetts and then entered the NewEngland Female Medical College to becomea doctor. She graduated in 1864.

She wrote a book in 1883 on the care ofwomen and children.

References: Crumpler, Rebecca, A Book ofMedical Discourses, Boston: Cashman, Keat-ing (1883); Jolly, Allison, “Crumpler, Re-becca Lee,” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Factson File Encyclopedia of Black Women in Amer-ica, vol. 11, New York: Facts on File (1997);Sammons, Vivian Ovelton, Blacks in Scienceand Medicine, New York: Hemisphere (1990).

Curie, Marie Sklodowska1867–1934

Marie Curie, probably the world’s best-known woman scientist, was a pioneer inthe field of radiation and chemotherapy. Shewas the first woman awarded a Nobel Prize,in 1903, for her research on radioactivity.Sharing the prize were her husband, PierreCurie, and Henri Becquerel, who had dis-covered radioactivity in uranium. She wasalso awarded a Nobel Prize in 1911 for theprevious discovery of polonium and ra-dium and for the isolation of pure radium.She went beyond the study of the elementradium to discover a few of its medical uses.It is still widely used for cancer treatment.

Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, onNovember 7, 1867, and was the youngest offive children. Her parents were Wladyslawand Bronislava Boguska Sklodowska, bothintellectuals. She did exceptionally well inher schoolwork but suffered from depres-sion during much of her early life. At a veryyoung age, she and her siblings were sub-jected to Russian oppression: Officials de-nied students access to the literature ofsome countries and demanded that stu-dents recite their Catholic prayers in Rus-sian and be familiar with certain aspects ofRussian history.

When she was nine, she watched as heroldest sister, Sophia, died from typhus.When she was eleven, her mother died fromtuberculosis. Curie turned to her father andhis books for comfort and encouragement,and after completing school in 1883, shespent time in the country with her uncleSklodowski. When she returned to Warsaw,

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she began tutoring, since girls were not al-lowed to enter universities in Poland.

Curie supported the Polish movement forindependence and was active in the under-ground, or “floating,” university, wheremany youths found fellowship and learnedtogether, having been denied a higher edu-cation for one reason or another. Both sheand her sister Bronia dreamed of attendinga university in France. Because her father’sbad investments had left him with little tosupport the higher education of his chil-dren, Curie began working as a governessto finance the move.

Bronia went to Paris first and enteredmedical school, passing all the required ex-ams by 1890. She encouraged Marie to joinher and her husband, Casimir Dluski. Al-though Marie was reticent to leave her fa-ther, she went to France in 1891 and en-rolled in physics at the Sorbonne inNovember of that year. She passed her ex-amination in physics in 1893, then in math-ematics a year later. By now she desper-ately needed an adequate laboratory tocontinue working and was told to seePierre Curie, a well-established physicist.Before long they were married and work-ing together. In September 1897 their firstdaughter, Irene, was born.

Henri Becquerel had discovered radioac-tivity, a term coined by Marie, and theCuries worked on researching this phenom-enon. The world had not taken great noticeof Becquerel’s discovery because of excite-ment over Roentgen’s discovery of X rays in1895. By 1898, however, Marie and Pierrehad discovered two unknown radioactiveelements in uranium—polonium and ra-dium. To prove their discovery, they wouldneed a huge amount of an expensive crudematerial, specifically pitchblende, and aplace to work with it. The Austrian govern-ment gave the Curies a ton of pitchblende,and they used an old shed, a dissectingroom the faculty of medicine had aban-doned, to carry out their four-year attemptto isolate polonium and radium.

Marie had a miscarriage during this pe-riod but had a very healthy second daugh-ter, Eve, in 1904. After winning the NobelPrize in 1903, Pierre assumed a professor

position at the Sorbonne, and she was man-ager of the Ecole Supérieur de Physique etde Chimie, her husband’s laboratory.

On April 19, 1906, Pierre was run over bya large horse-drawn carriage and was killedimmediately. Marie was asked to take overher husband’s position and lead the workon radioactivity at the Sorbonne. She wasthe first woman professor there. During thesame year, Lord William Thomson Kelvinannounced that radium was not an elementafter all, just a compound of lead and he-lium. He was mistaken, but Marie Curiecould not prove it. She would have to keepworking on isolating radium; she accom-plished this in 1910.

During this time, a scandal erupted be-cause Curie and a former student of PierreCurie’s, Paul Langevin, also a gifted Frenchphysicist and married, had begun seeingeach other frequently. The press got wind oftheir meetings and claimed a foreigner hadstolen a French woman’s husband. They im-

Marie Sklodowska Curie (Library of Congress)


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mediately ended the relationship, Curie re-alizing she could not have any kind of rela-tionship with a married man.

Also during this time, she received wordof her second Nobel Prize, this time inchemistry for the isolation of pure radium.With this award, she became the first to re-ceive two Nobel Prizes.

After World War I broke out, Curie spentmuch of her time during the following fouryears organizing an X-ray service to assistin treating wounded soldiers on the frontlines and in hospitals. By the time the warwas over, 1 million soldiers had been ex-amined. She also began bottling the radongas from radium into small tubes and sentthese to doctors around the world for the treatment of cancerous tumors. By this time, she was experiencing frequentexhaustion.

Although Curie was aware of the benefitsof radiation for people with cancerous tu-mors, it is clear that she was not aware of itsharmful effects. She was an avid outdoors-woman who felt that if people were strongand got enough fresh air, they would befine. She continued in this belief even whenlab assistants later died from anemia andleukemia due to overexposure. It wasn’tuntil the 1920s that the public becameaware of the damaging effects of exposureto radiation.

After the war, Curie was determined tobuild a research institute in France. Her Ra-dium Institute at the University of Parisopened after the war but had little in theway of resources because of the depressedpostwar economy. She came to change hermind about patenting scientific discoveries,realizing the income could finance furtherresearch.

In 1920, she met Missy Meloney, a jour-nalist from the United States with whomshe would form a lifelong friendship. Me-loney was impressed by Curie’s work, andwhen she learned that Curie’s RadiumInstitute had little to work with, includingvery little radium, she vowed to help raisefunds in the United States. Shortly there-after, when Curie traveled to the UnitedStates with her two daughters, Meloneywelcomed her with $100,000 for the Ra-

dium Institute. Also, at a White Houseceremony, President Harding presentedCurie with the key to a metal box contain-ing radium.

During the 1920s, Curie had numeroussymptoms of radiation exposure. She hadcataracts and numbness in her fingers fromhandling radium and suffered fatigue.Marie Curie had trained Irene in radium re-search and had worked side by side withher during World War I. Irene and her hus-band, Frederic Joliot, discovered artificialradioactivity, work for which Irene receiveda Nobel Prize in 1935. Frederic would muchlater realize that it was dangerous to handleMarie and Pierre’s papers, which were stillcontaminated with radioactivity decades af-ter they died.

Curie tried to burn much of her personalpapers before she died in order to gain moreprivacy. She kept only the love letters fromPierre and a diary. She also tried to organizeand prepare for a transition at the RadiumInstitute, wanting an aide and then Irene totake over.

She was never recognized in France forher work during World War I becausemany still considered her a foreigner. Shewas loyal to her native Poland, teachingher daughters Polish at an early age andhelping Poland establish its own radiuminstitute.

Curie’s health was in continual decline af-ter suffering a broken wrist in 1932 thatnever healed properly. In May 1934, she wasmisdiagnosed with tuberculosis. At thispoint even Curie saw that radiation couldbe harmful. Eve cared for her almost con-stantly until Curie died from leukemia onJuly 4, 1934. She was buried with Pierre in asmall cemetery in Sceaux. Many years later,on April 20, 1995, both their remains weremoved to the Pantheon, France’s memorialto the nation’s great men. Marie Curie is thefirst woman to be buried there based on herown merits.

Today some still question whether Curiedeserves so much credit for what her hus-band may have discovered. It is obviousfrom her writings and what she said onrecord that both she and Pierre were verycareful to take credit together for the work


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they shared and give credit to each other asappropriate.

References: Curie, Eve, Madame Curie: A Bi-ography, New York: Doubleday (1938); Dic-tionary of Scientific Biography, New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons (1971); Encyclopedia

of World Biography, Detroit: Gale Research(1998); McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, NobelPrize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles,and Momentous Discoveries, Secaucus, NJ:Carol (1998); Pflaum, Rosalynd, Grand Ob-session: Madame Curie and Her World, NewYork: Doubleday (1989).

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Dalle Donne, Maria1778–1842

Exceptionally talented and intelligent,Maria Dalle Donne was dedicated to eradi-cating barbaric methods of medical treat-ment for women. She educated numerousmidwives at the University of Bologna; thiswork was critical because there were fewdoctors in that day to attend to the ruralpopulation, and thus gynecological and ob-stetric patients depended upon midwivesfor all necessary care. Dalle Donne did notturn away women who sought educationeven if they could not afford it. Her uncle,recognizing her extraordinary talent, tookher in and educated her. Her tutors wereeventually so impressed that they encour-aged, and arranged, a demonstration of herskills so that she could obtain a medical de-gree and earn her own living. She im-pressed the University of Bologna officialsand was admitted to the university, obtain-ing her degree in philosophy and medicinein 1799.

She became the director of midwives atthe university and was highly regarded forher teaching abilities.

See also: University of BolognaReferences: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

Daly, Marie Maynard1921–

Marie Daly was the first African Americanto earn a Ph.D. degree in chemistry. Her re-search focused on the physiological levels ofcreatine, hypertension, protein synthesis,and atherosclerosis.

Daly was born in New York City on April16, 1921, to Ivan C. Daly and Helen PageDaly. She had younger brothers who weretwins. Her education started in the publicschools of Queens, and she then attendedHunter College High School in Manhattan.She did very well in school and had muchsupport from her family, teachers, andfriends.

She went on to Queens College and ob-tained her B.S. in chemistry in 1942. Shegraduated magna cum laude and was ambi-tious for a research career. After obtaining alab assistant position at Queens College, shebegan the master’s program at New YorkUniversity. She received her master’s a yearlater and remained at Queens College,teaching in the lab and tutoring.

She later entered Columbia University towork on her Ph.D. in chemistry, which sheobtained in 1947. She then went to HowardUniversity and taught in the physical sci-ences, afterward moving on to the Rocke-feller Institute for seven years. During thistime she was learning a great deal andmeeting well-established researchers suchas Leonor Michaelis and Francis PeytonRous.

In 1955 she returned to Columbia Univer-sity and in 1960, she went to Albert Einstein

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College of Medicine. She published manyarticles on her research involving the syn-thesis of protein, the relationship betweenhypertension and cholesterol, and the ef-fects of cigarette smoking. She became anassociate professor in 1971 and held that po-sition until she retired in 1986. She marriedVincent Clark in 1961.

References: Grinstein, Louise S., Rose K.Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich, Women inChemistry and Physics: A BiobibliographicSourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1993).

Daniel, Annie Sturges1858–1944

A physician and public health crusader whoworked in numerous settlement houses,Annie Daniel set early standards in properhygiene and sanitation as well as empha-sized adequate nutrition and space for fam-ilies in substandard living conditions. Herpractical handling of destitute individualsand patients was a model for students re-quired to visit patients in run-down tene-ment buildings, crowded shelters, and un-sanitary homes.

Born on September 21, 1858, in Buffalo,New York, she was the daughter of John M.Daniel and Marinda Sturges Daniel. Herparents died when she was still a child, andrelatives in Monticello, New York, raisedher. She had an early interest in biology andentered the Women’s Medical College of theNew York Infirmary, where she obtainedher M.D. in 1879. Elizabeth Blackwellplaced Daniel in the Out-Practice Depart-ment, which gave her leadership responsi-bility for persons living in the tenements ofNew York City.

She would find ensuring better healthand circumstances for the poor to be herlife’s work. Many who lived in tenementbuildings during her time were immigrantsliving in extended families. They earnedmeager wages and did not always have theeducation needed for basic health care and anutritious diet.

By 1889 she was teaching many medical

students at the Women’s Medical Collegeabout the circumstances of the poor.

Eventually health officials came to her foradvice, and in 1884 she was appointed toserve with the New York State TenementHouse Commission. She investigated childlabor in homes and sweatshops and also ad-vocated prison reform.

Daniel never married and died on August10, 1944, in New York City.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000); Perry, Marilyn Eliz-abeth, “Daniel, Annie Sturges,” AmericanNational Biography, vol. 6, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999).

Darrow, Ruth Renter1895–1956

Little is known about Ruth Darrow exceptthat she published various research articleson erythroblastosis foetalis, a hemolytic dis-ease of newborns (HDN), and concludedthat an unknown fetal antigen caused thedisease. She herself was “a mother of sev-eral Rh-HDN-afflicted newborns” and “wasfirst to suggest a relationship between ma-ternal sensitization to a fetal blood antigenand subsequent fetal pathology” (Lloyd1987, 299). She worked in Chicago for a timewith the Women and Children’s Hospital.Her research led the way for the discoveryof the Rh factor and its importance for preg-nant women and fetuses.

References: Darrow, Ruth Renter, “IcterusGravis (Erythroblastosis) Neonatorum,”Archives of Pathology 25 (1938): 378–417;Kass-Simon, G., and Patricia Farnes, Womenof Science: Righting the Record, Bloomington:Indiana University Press (1990); Lloyd,Thomas, “Rh-Factor Incompatibility: APrimer for Prevention,” Journal of Nurse-Midwifery 32, no. 5 (September–October1987): 297–307.

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Dayhoff, Margaret Oakley1925–1983

Margaret Dayhoff was an early pioneer inmolecular biology. She initiated develop-ment of the protein sequence database(PSDB), which led her to a great under-standing of the evolution of proteins. Thisdatabase also led to the use of computers inthe life sciences. Her series of books, begin-ning with the 1965 Atlas of Protein Sequenceand Structure, would prove invaluable to re-searchers in the field of molecular biology.

Born on March 11, 1925, in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of Ken-neth W. Oakley and Ruth P. Clark. Theymoved to New York City when Margaretwas ten, and she attended public schools,graduating from high school as a valedicto-rian. She went on to major in mathematicsat Washington Square College, part of theUniversity of New York, and graduatedmagna cum laude in 1945. In 1948 she re-ceived a Ph.D. from Columbia University inquantum chemistry.

Following school, she worked at the Rock-efeller Institute and the University of Mary-land. In 1959 she took a position at the Na-tional Biomedical Foundation, where herinterests were in the origins of life and the re-lationship between protein sequences as wellas the role they played in the evolutionaryprocess. Her protein sequence database con-sisted of sixty-five sequences. She also devel-oped an amino acid similarity-scoring ma-trix, which was one of the first tools fordatabase searching, comparing protein se-quences, and building evolutionary trees. Allthis work is helpful to scientists researchingmacromolecules and their structure.

She married Edward S. Dayhoff, a physi-cist, in 1948, and they had two daughters whobecame physicians. Dayhoff died on Febru-ary 5, 1983, in Silver Springs, Maryland, of aheart attack at the age of fifty-seven.

References: Ledley, Robert S., “Dayhoff,Margaret Oakley,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 2, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999); Proffitt, Pamela, ed., NotableWomen Scientists, Detroit: Gale Research(1999).

Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta1859–1927

Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke was an out-standing neurologist who was an early pio-neer in treating patients with nervous dis-eases. She was also the first woman tobecome a member of the Societé de Neu-rologie in 1914.

Born in San Francisco on October 15,1859, Augusta was the daughter of JohnGerard Klumpke and Dorothea MatildaTolle. She received an early education in SanFrancisco before the family moved toFrance. She attended the University of Parisand obtained her medical degree in 1889.She worked at La Laribosiére Hospitalalong with her husband, Jules Dejerine, alsoa neurologist. They were married on July 11,1888, and had one daughter, Yvonne Dejer-ine. Later, they both worked at the clinic fornervous diseases at La Salpêtrière, con-tributing much to the field.

Because of the many soldiers of WorldWar I who suffered from paralysis, Dejer-ine-Klumpke opened her own clinic for thepurpose of studying that condition. Herwork earned her a great deal of distinctionand respect. She died in Paris on November5, 1927.

References: “Dejerine, Augusta Klumpke,”The National Cyclopedia of American Biogra-phy, vol. 31, New York: J. T. White (1944):404; Haines, Catharine M. C., and HelenStevens, International Women in Science: A Bi-ographical Dictionary to 1950, Santa Barbara,CA: ABC-CLIO (2001).

Delano, Jane Arminda1862–1919

Jane Delano was the first director and or-ganizer of the American Red Cross NursingService. She enabled the organization toprovide over 20,000 professional nursesduring World War I.

Born in Townsend, New York, on March12, 1862, Delano was one of two daughtersof George and Mary Ann Wright Delano.Her father died in the Civil War, and her

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mother remarried. Her sister died in 1883,and thereafter Delano felt the lack of familyties even though she now had four stepsis-ters. She was educated at Cook Academy inMontour Falls.

In 1884 she attended the Bellevue Hospi-tal Training School for Nurses in New York.She showed unusual skill and proficiencyand was chosen early on to attend a mayor.Her observations in the hospital of organi-zation and leadership skills served her wellin later years. In 1888 she volunteered toserve during the yellow fever epidemic inFlorida. Then she worked in Arizona, or-ganizing a hospital during an epidemic ofscarlet fever. Following this, she went to theUniversity of Pennsylvania Hospital andbecame the superintendent of nurses.

It became very apparent after the Span-ish-American War that the Red Crossneeded an organized reserve of ready pro-fessionals in case of wars or epidemics at

home. Delano became the leader of this ini-tiative, replacing the Army Nursing Reservewith the Red Cross Nursing Service. Shewas very active in recruiting nurses of pro-fessional caliber and received many honorsover the years for her dedication to the RedCross.

After World War I ended, Delano wentabroad to oversee Red Cross activities inpostwar Europe. She suffered from mas-toiditis and died in a base hospital in Save-nay, France, on April 15, 1919. She nevermarried or had children. She was buried atArlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

References: Gladwin, Mary E., The Red Crossand Jane Arminda Delano, Philadelphia: W. B.Saunders (1931); Notable American Women1607–1950, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press(1971); Reeves, Connie L., “Delano, Jane Ar-minda,” American National Biography, vol. 6,New York: Oxford University Press (1999).

Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph1856–1939

Sister Mary Joseph Dempsey played an im-portant role in the growth of St. Mary’s Hos-pital and in its collaboration with the MayoClinic. As nurse, hospital administrator, andsurgical assistant to Dr. Will Mayo, she con-tributed to the success of both institutions.

Born in Salamanca, New York, on May 14,1856, Dempsey was the second of sevenchildren of Irish immigrants PatrickDempsey and Mary Sullivan Dempsey. Notlong after she was born, the family movedto a farm in Olmsted County, Minnesota.Dempsey, christened Julia, and two of hersisters became Franciscan nuns. Julia be-came Sister Mary Joseph of the Third Orderof St. Francis at the age of twenty-two. Shetrained as a teacher and worked in severalschools over the next decade.

A terrible tornado hit Rochester, Min-nesota, in 1883, convincing the convent’sMother Alfred that the convent needed ahospital. Dr. William Worrall Mayo agreedto staff the hospital if the sisters of the con-vent would build it. Mother Alfred felt thatSister Joseph would be a good nurse and

Jane Arminda Delano (American Red Cross/U.S.National Library of Medicine)

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called on her to learn nursing and work atthe hospital.

In 1889, Sister Joseph became head nurseat the newly created St. Mary’s Hospital. Ayear later she began to work for Dr. WillMayo as a surgical assistant and in 1892 wasthe superintendent of the hospital. She wasan exceptional administrator who had todeal with financial planning, personnelproblems, and the ongoing cooperationwith the Mayos’ medical practice. St. Mary’swent through a period of tremendousgrowth and change as staff responded to anincreasing number of medical discoveriesthat changed the hospital’s procedures andtreatments.

Sister Joseph, seeing a great need fornurses, started the St. Mary’s HospitalSchool for Nurses in 1906. She was a sterndisciplinarian who emphasized the impor-tance of academic education as well as prac-tical experience and tried to raise the statusof nursing as a profession. She died of bron-chopneumonia on March 29, 1939, at St.Mary’s Hospital.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000); Steller, Robert E.,“Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph,” NotableAmerican Women 1607–1950, Cambridge,MA: Belknap Press (1971).

Dengal, Anna Maria1892–1980

Anna Dengal became a well-known medicalmissionary and founded the Catholic Med-ical Mission Sisters in 1925. She is said tohave had some influence on Pius XI’s deci-sion to lift the ban on women in religiouswork entering the medical field. In 1936, af-ter he had lifted the ban, Dengal’s group be-came a religious congregation. Dengal wasborn in Steeg, Austria, the oldest of ninechildren. Her mother died when she waseight, and she went to boarding school inFrance. She was advised to go into the med-ical field and of the need for medical mis-

sionaries by a Scottish suffragist, AgnesMcLaren. McLaren was a physician andneeded more medical missionaries in India.Dengal pursued her premedical studies atCork University, Ireland, and in 1919 gradu-ated from Queens College Medical School.

In India she worked at St. Catherine’sHospital, treating women and children ofall religious backgrounds. She traveled tothe United States in 1924 in order to raisefunds to form the Catholic Medical MissionSisters. The sisters trained nurses, mid-wives, and others for foreign missions. Theywere the first to provide surgeons and ob-stetricians for mission work within the Ro-man Catholic congregations.

Dengal laid out the foundations of missionwork in her Mission for Samaritans in 1945.She believed missions were a practical wayto follow the example of Jesus Christ and theGood Samaritan and to deliver the justice thewhite race owed to others who were less for-tunate. She died in Rome in 1980.

References: Dries, Angelyn, “Dengel,Anna,” Biographical Dictionary of ChristianMissions, New York: Macmillan (1998);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science:Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge (2000).

Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza1866–1950

Eloiza Diaz Inzunza was the first woman inChile to obtain a medical degree. Graduat-ing from a high school for boys that she hadspecial permission to attend, Diaz went onto the Instituto Nacional in Santiago andgraduated in 1881 at the age of fifteen witha bachelor of arts. She then attended themedical school at the University of Chileand spent five years studying before earn-ing a medical degree in 1887. She spent allher career serving women and children. Shedied on November 1, 1950.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Vargas, Tegualda Ponce de, “Women

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Doctors of Chile,” Journal of the AmericanMedical Women’s Association 7, no. 10 (1952):389.

Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry1881–1963

Gladys Dick, along with her husband,George, were key figures in researching thetreatment and prevention of scarlet feverprior to the development of antibiotics dur-ing World War II. Their research proved thathemolytic streptococci caused scarlet fever.They were nominated in 1925 for the NobelPrize in physiology or medicine, althoughno award was given that year.

Dick was born in Pawnee City, Nebraska,on December 18, 1881. Her father, WilliamChester Henry, was a banker and graindealer and also raised horses. Her motherwas Azelia Henrietta Edson Henry. Dickwas the youngest of three children. Thefamily moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, whenshe was still a baby. She was educated lo-cally, then attended the University of Ne-braska, where she obtained her B.S. degreein 1900. Unable to convince her mother thatmedicine was an appropriate course ofstudy, she settled for teaching biology inCarney, Nebraska.

She also took graduate courses at the Uni-versity of Nebraska until her mother agreedto her pursuing a medical career. At thatpoint she entered the medical school atJohns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Sheworked at Johns Hopkins after her gradua-tion in 1907, then spent a year in Berlin,where her research interests in blood chem-istry intensified. After she returned, shewent to the University of Chicago in 1911.

It was here that she met George Dick.They were married in 1914, and she workedfor a time in private practice while Georgetook a position at McCormick Memorial In-stitute for Infectious Diseases. Soon shejoined her husband in researching scarletfever.

At the time scarlet fever was a huge prob-lem in North America as well as Europe.The mortality rate was 25 percent, and thosechildren who survived had a great risk of

being crippled for the rest of their life. Afterthe Dicks’ discovery of the agent causingthe disease, they developed a toxin and an-titoxin preparation and patented it in 1924.Some saw the patent as a move that fosteredcommercialism and that could hinder re-search. The Dicks argued that their ap-proach would ensure quality. They laterwon a lengthy court battle when theybrought a lawsuit against a manufacturerfor patent infringement and inappropriatelypreparing the toxin.

Their discovery led to the Dick skin test,which determined an individual’s suscepti-bility to scarlet fever. Once antibiotics be-came abundant during World War II, theirtest was no longer needed.

Dick’s later research involved polio, andshe also was deeply involved in the publichealth and welfare issue of adoption. Shewas active in the Cradle Society, an adop-tion organization in Evanston, Illinois, formany years. She and her husband adoptedtwo children, Roger and Rowena, in 1930.

Dick suffered a stroke on August 21, 1963,and died in Menlo Park, California.

Gladys Rowena Henry Dick (U.S. National Libraryof Medicine)

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References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO(1994); Notable Twentieth-Century ScientistsSupplement, Detroit: Gale Research (1998).

Dickens, Helen Octavia1909–

Helen Dickens became a specialist in obstet-rics and gynecology and was the firstAfrican American woman to become a fel-low of the American College of Surgeons.She is most noted for her counseling of stu-dents in the allied public health and medicalfields and as an advocate of education in or-der to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy.

Dickens was born to a former slave fromTennessee, Charles Dickens, on February 21,1909, in Dayton, Ohio. She was the oldest ofthree. Her mother was Daisy Jane GreenDickens. She attended integrated publicschools in Dayton. Upon graduation she at-tended Crane Junior College in Chicago.There, she ignored the racist attitudes ofsome students and focused on her studies,doing well in her premed courses.

She continued her studies at the Univer-sity of Illinois, receiving her B.S. degree in1932. She went on to the university’s med-ical school, graduating in 1934. She internedat Chicago’s Provident Hospital and laterbecame a resident in obstetrics. She and oth-ers had a desire to go out into the commu-nity but did not have the opportunity dur-ing their residency. Afterward she wasdrawn to a Quaker practicing medicine inher home in Philadelphia, Dr. VirginiaAlexander. Dickens went to work withAlexander for a while, taking on the entirepractice when Alexander left for further ed-ucation. She stayed for six years until decid-ing she needed to learn more about obstet-rics and gynecology.

Upon learning that the University ofPennsylvania Graduate School of Medicineoffered an advanced degree in medical sci-ence, she studied there and then went backto Provident Hospital in Chicago for her res-idency. There, she met Purvis Sinclair Hen-derson, a resident in general surgery. Theymarried in 1943, and soon thereafter Dick-

ens took a residency at Harlem Hospital inNew York City. Henderson returned to hispractice in Savannah, Georgia, and theythus had a long-distance marriage.

Dickens completed her residency atHarlem Hospital in 1946. She became certi-fied by the American Board of Obstetricsand Gynecology and in 1948 became direc-tor of the Department of Obstetrics and Gy-necology at Philadelphia’s racially inte-grated Mercy Douglass Hospital. Shewould remain there until 1967. In 1950 shebecame a fellow in the American College ofSurgeons.

Henderson eventually went to Pennsyl-vania and took a residency in neurosurgeryat the University of Pennsylvania MedicalCollege. He and Dickens had two children.He died in 1961. Dickens began her rela-tionship with the University of Pennsylva-nia School of Medicine in 1965. In 1976, sheattained the position of professor of obstet-rics and gynecology. She currently is profes-sor emerita at the University of Pennsylva-nia School of Medicine.

Through her many publications on the

Helen Octavia Dickens (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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subject of teen pregnancy, its preventionand effects, Dickens had a great influenceon prevention programs. She has also doneextensive research on cancer and sexuallytransmitted diseases. She also counsels stu-dents, particularly women, who are inter-ested in medicine or other science disci-plines. She has received numerous awardsover the years, including an honorary doc-torate from the Medical College of Pennsyl-vania.

References: Contemporary Black Biography,vol. 14, Detroit: Gale Research (1997).

Dickey, Nancy Wilson1950–

Nancy Dickey was the first female presidentof the American Medical Association(AMA). Her yearlong term began in June1998, and during that time she helped createthe National Patient Safety Foundation, dis-cussed issues concerning terminal illnessand the rights of the patient, and challengedthe profession to be more forthright aboutmistakes.

Dickey was one of seven children. Shewas born in South Dakota on September 10,1950, and was raised on a farm. She and hersiblings gathered eggs, slopped hogs, andhelped with the other farm chores until shewas ten and the family moved south. Theyended up in Katy, Texas, where Dickey firstbecame interested in medicine. Her parentswere very encouraging, but some teachersand others warned against such high ambi-tions. They urged her to have either a fam-ily or a medical career. She was discourageduntil she met her future husband, who sup-ported her in pursuing both goals. She stud-ied psychology at Stephen F. Austin StateUniversity in Nacogdoches and worked as anursing aide in the summers. She obtainedher M.D. from the medical school at theUniversity of Texas in Houston in 1976. Shechose family practice instead of a limitedspecialty because she felt she would like thediversity. She was a resident in family prac-tice from 1976 to 1979 at Memorial HospitalSystem in Houston.

She has tackled tough ethical issues, par-ticularly the end-of-life issue, while work-ing within the AMA and as its president.Under her leadership the AMA ethics com-mittee resolved that “honoring the requestof terminal patients or their surrogates todiscontinue artificial nutrition or hydrationwas ethical” (Turner 1997, 1).

She also feels that although physiciansnow have the capability to keep peoplealive longer, that is sometimes not the ethi-cal choice. She is opposed to physician-assisted suicide but feels that “we do thingsbecause we can. We need to think moreabout whether we should” (Mangan 1997,A10).

Her husband is a football and basketballcoach in Bryan, Texas. She has three chil-dren and is also active in her community.She was the founding program director forthe Brazos Valley Family Practice Programin Bryan and treats patients there on a regu-lar basis. She is also a professor at the TexasA&M University College of Medicine, andserves on staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital inBryan, Texas, and the College Station Med-ical Center, College Station, Texas. She iscurrently president of the Health ScienceCenter and vice chancellor for health affairsfor the Texas A&M University system.

References: Mangan, Katherine S., “FirstFemale President: Texas A&M ProfessorPrepares to Lead AMA,” Chronicle of HigherEducation 44 (10 October 1997): A10; Turner,Allan, “Healthy, Irrepressible Perspective:AMA’s First Female President BreaksThrough Perceived ‘Old Boys’ Network,”Houston Chronicle (29 June 1997): 1.

Dix, Dorothea Lynde1802–1887

Dorothea Dix was an early advocate for therights of the mentally ill and responsible forbringing state and national attention to theproblems of the day in caring for and treat-ing those with mental illnesses. Without aformal education, she symbolizes the valueof common sense with her view that mentalillness is a medical problem, not a moral

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one. Because of her efforts there were 123mental hospitals in the United States in 1880compared to only 13 in 1843. Without beingaware of her influence, she also laid thegroundwork—in her Remarks on Prisons andPrison Discipline in the United States—for thechanges to come in the care and treatment ofprisoners. She emphasized the need to edu-cate inmates and give them psychiatrictreatment and the need to keep certain typesof prisoners separated from others.

Born in Hampden, Maine, on April 4,1802, Dix was the daughter of Joseph andMary Bigelow Dix. Her father was a minis-ter. She had two younger brothers, whomshe cared for often because her mother washandicapped. Occasionally, she was able tospend time in Boston, where she visited hergrandparents and became interested ingaining an education. She was an avidreader and, despite being raised by relativesin her early teens, managed to gain enougheducation to open a small school. She taughton and off for years until she became inter-ested in the plight of the mentally ill.

Her interest in the well-being of the men-tally ill grew out of her astonishment at thecruel and unusual punishment they werereceiving in jails and prisons around thecountry. She had gone to teach a Sundayschool class for women prisoners and wasshocked to find that some of them were im-prisoned only because they were mentallyill. As time went on, she surveyed other in-stitutions and found that most facilities forthe insane were entirely inadequate.

She began to bring the problem before thelegislatures in many states, using the slav-ery issue in her arguments. How could abo-litionists propose freeing slaves when theycouldn’t take care of their own mentally ill?Soon many states appropriated funds forproper facilities.

Eventually Dix presented her case at thenational level, feeling that federal landshould be set aside for a trust whose incomewould benefit the insane. Congress grap-pled with this matter for six years, finallypassing a bill in 1854. President FranklinPierce vetoed the bill, saying the statesshould deal with the problem.

Dix suffered from poor health throughout

her life but never gave up the fight for thementally ill. She also volunteered her ser-vices during the Civil War and was madethe superintendent of army nurses. Thiswas a frustrating role for her because shedidn’t possess the organizational skills nec-essary for such a position. Eventually thesecretary of war lessened her authority be-cause she was not an effective leader. Shecontinued her service until the war ended.

Following the war, she picked up whereshe left off, visiting several southern statesand lobbying on behalf of various causes,among them prison reform. While visitingthe mentally ill in numerous institutions,she also saw firsthand the prison conditionsof inmates who were not mentally ill. Sheadvocated better conditions for them.

During Dix’s career as a social reformer,she met many influential people, once visit-ing a welcoming Pope Pius IX in order todescribe the conditions in prisons and asy-lums that existed in Rome.

She never married or had children. Sheretired to Trenton, New Jersey, and died onJuly 18, 1887.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (Library of Congress)

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References: Marshall, Helen E., DorotheaDix, Forgotten Samaritan, Chapel Hill: Uni-versity of North Carolina Press (1937); No-table American Women 1607–1950, Cam-bridge, MA: Belknap Press (1971);Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, The Historical Ency-clopedia of Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

Dmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna1859–1947

Valentina Dmitrieva was one of the earlyRussian women physicians. She is betterknown as a revolutionary and writer, buther brief medical career led her to workingwith the less fortunate during famine andepidemics. Her fiction and memoirs giveone of the few early pictures of the desper-ate situation in Russia toward the end of thenineteenth century as medical providersfaced insurmountable odds in trying to helpthe helpless.

She was born on April 28, 1859, inVoronino, a village in Saratov Province. Herfather was a serf, and her mother taught herto read, which she did avidly. She was ableto attend high school in Tambov and didwell. The family struggled after emancipa-tion and lived a transient life.

She pursued medical training in St. Pe-tersburg, and she also went to Moscow tostudy obstetrics. She worked as a physicianmost of 1892–1894, when epidemics andstarvation were widespread in Russia. Arevolutionary, she spent years in exile inTver and Voronezh. She wrote an autobiog-raphy in 1930, Tak Bylo: Put Moei Shizni (TheWay It Was), and several of her memoirs de-pict the seemingly hopeless situation shefaced as a physician.

In one village, she wrote, “I could see thewhole panoply of destruction wrought bychronic hunger: the ulcers, rashes, bleedinggums, paralysed muscles, and putrefyingbones. . . . The crowd straggled after me,staring at me with a mixture of hope anddesperation. And I realized my total impo-tence: all the medicine I could prescribe, thevisits I could make, seemed pointless andridiculous, reduced to childish games in the

face of the rural poverty which was closingin on me from all sides” (Dmitrieva 1994,158). Dmitrieva died in Sochi on February18, 1947.

References: Buck, Claire, ed., BloomsburyGuide to Women’s Literature, London:Bloomsbury (1992); Davies, Mildred,“Valentina Dmitrieva,” Russian WomenWriters, vol. 2, New York: Garland (1999);Dmitrieva, Valentina, “After the GreatHunger,” in Catriona Kelly, ed., An Anthol-ogy of Russian Women’s Writing, 1777–1992,Oxford: Oxford University Press (1994); En-gel, Barbara Alpern, Mothers and Daughters:Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Cen-tury Russia, Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press (1983).

Dock, Lavinia Lloyd1858–1956

Lavinia Dock was an early nursing leaderand educator who worked with IsabelHampton Robb at Johns Hopkins and wasinspired by the work of Lillian D. Wald,which enhanced her vision of what thenursing profession should be. She was in-strumental in the early years of her career inpromoting a professional identity for nursesand in establishing high standards in thenursing profession. Born on February 26,1858, to Gilliard and Lavinia Loyd Bom-baugh Dock, she was raised in Harrisburg,Pennsylvania, and enrolled in the TrainingSchool for Nurses in New York at BellevueHospital. She graduated in 1886 and a fewyears later assisted Clara Barton followingthe devastating Johnstown, Pennsylvania,flood of 1889. She made a lasting contribu-tion to nursing with her publication the fol-lowing year of the Textbook for Materia Med-ica for Nurses, a guide for nurses on the useof drugs. It served as a textbook for manyyears and went through several editions.

Isabel Hampton Robb appointed Dockthe assistant superintendent of nurses atJohns Hopkins Hospital. She became veryinvolved in the profession, realizing nursesneeded an organized voice. In 1893 she or-ganized the American Society of Superin-

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tendents of Training Schools and a fewyears later joined the community of womenliving in the Settlement House on HenryStreet in New York City. Lillian Wald, whohad started the house, was a tremendous in-fluence on Dock.

Her work there for the next twenty yearsformed a foundation for nurses having ahuge role in public health care. She wasvery vocal about problems that others didnot want to think about or discuss; she wasone of the first nurses to talk about the prob-lem of prostitution and the need for treatingvenereal disease.

Elizabeth Blackwell early declared, ina letter to her sister, her determinationnot to be intimidated or discouragedin the difficult task of attacking the so-cial evil by methods of education, andher books and addresses on this sub-ject are classics in their dignity and no-bility of position. . . . From that time onwomen physicians as an entire bodyhave stood united for a single stan-dard of morals and for the educationof the public. In their ranks there canbe found no division or opposingopinions on this subject. They are ac-tive in the warfare against vice, inevery country where medicine hasopened its door to women, and in ourown country they have been publiclycalled upon by their colleagues in themedical profession to carry the teach-ings of hygiene to the women of theland” (Dock 1910, 80–81).

Hygiene and Morality (1910) speaksstrongly against prostitution and addressesother public health concerns. She latermoved away from nursing and becamemore involved in the women’s suffragistmovement and equality for women.

Dock died in Chambersburg, Pennsylva-nia, on April 17, 1956.

See also: Barton, Clara; Robb, Isabel Hamp-ton; Wald, Lillian D.References: Dock, Lavinia L. Hygiene andMorality: A Manual for Nurses and Others,Giving an Outline of the Medical, Social, and

Legal Aspects of the Venereal Diseases, NewYork: G. P. Putnam’s Sons (1910); Sklar,Kathryn Kish, “Dock, Lavinia Lloyd,” Amer-ican National Biography, vol. 6, New York:Oxford University Press (1999).

Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson1829–1909

One of the early women physicians in theUnited States, Dolley provided leadershipfor women wanting a career in medicine.When hospitals wouldn’t allow women topractice, she assisted and was elected as thefirst president of the Provident DispensaryAssociation. The dispensary provided helpfor the needy women and children ofRochester until 1894.

Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania,on March 11, 1829, Dolley was the third offive children. Her parents were CharlesAdamson and Mary Corson Adamson, ofQuaker descent. She was educated at theFriends’ School in Philadelphia and laterbecame interested in medicine. She was de-nied admission to many schools until Cen-tral Medical College accepted her. Shegraduated in 1851.

Following an internship at Blockley Hos-pital, she married Dr. Lester Clinton Dol-ley, an anatomy professor. They had twochildren, Loilyn in 1854 and Charles Sum-ner in 1856. Loilyn died in 1858 of typhoidpneumonia.

Dolley remained in Rochester for life,continuing to be active in her medical prac-tice, which she devoted to women and chil-dren, and continuing her education by go-ing to Paris, Prague, and Vienna to learnfrom their physicians. She became very in-volved in organizing professional women’sassociations. Her husband’s career at Cen-tral Medical College didn’t last because thecollege closed, but he also had a privatepractice.

She had an unusually good reputation fora woman physician of the time due to hertraining after her education in college. Evenmale colleagues had respect for her talents.Dolley died in Rochester, New York, on De-cember 27, 1909.

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References: Miller, Genevieve, “Dolley,Sarah Read Adamson,” in Notable AmericanWomen 1607–1950, Cambridge, MA: Belk-nap Press (1971); More, Ellen Singer, Restor-ing the Balance: Women Physicians and the Pro-fession of Medicine, 1850–1995, Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press (1999).

du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite

1714/5–1794

Angelique du Coudray was a midwife ineighteenth-century France. Because manynewborns died from the brutal practices ofwomen not properly trained or licensed topractice midwifery, King Louis XV ap-pointed her to go on an urgent missionacross all of France to train women as wellas men to deliver babies. He invested herwith broad authority.

Through all her correspondence, which isplentiful, du Coudray does not reveal muchabout her personal life. She may have beenorphaned or abandoned; one can only spec-ulate. She trained with the able midwifeAnne Bairsin, passed her examinations, andwent to Paris to earn her living. Recordsshow she was a registered midwife in Parisin 1740 at the age of twenty-five. On recordalso is a petition from 1745 that she andforty other midwives signed, asking the fac-ulty of medicine at the University of Paris togive them lessons. Since 1733 the midwiveshad been attending sessions conducted bythe school of surgery, but the surgeons hadstopped these lessons, and the midwiveswere left with no one to give them ongoingtraining and instruction. The faculty ofmedicine, who had a higher status than thesurgeons did and who were their old rivals,immediately obliged the midwives.

The midwives complained that manywomen were practicing without licenses anddoing harm. These women, who didn’t havethe knowledge to deliver babies when com-plications existed, were competing with themidwives for business and damaging theprofession. Louis XV was also concernedabout women practicing without a license,

but his greater priority was dealing with de-population. France was losing many soldiersin its battles of the Seven Years War, andnewborns were dying. It was at this time, in1759, that he commissioned du Coudraywith training midwives across the country.

Du Coudray realized that she neededtraining tools and that same year wrote anobstetrical text, Abrégé de l’art des accouche-ments (Summary of the Art of Delivery),which has many illustrations. The book washelpful, but after her trip to Auvergne, whereshe heard numerous stories of malpractice bymidwives, she felt she needed more effectivetraining materials. Illiteracy was very high inthe rural areas of France, and the midwivesneeded hands-on experience as well as the il-lustrations from her text. She then invented amechanized anatomical model of a pregnantwoman along with a child. The anatomicalmodel aided a great deal, as students couldpractice turning models of babies into thecorrect position before birth. Hundreds ofthese models were made and sent to othersto use in training.

Du Coudray never got lost in the mechan-ics of training, always reminding her stu-dents that they would be dealing with hu-man beings and precious new lives. Shegave very practical advice as well. In regardto twins, she told her students that if a mid-wife saw a left foot and a right foot protrud-ing, “before pulling them out she must checkthat they both belong to one baby. If insteadshe is holding one foot of each twin, it wouldbe futile and fatal to pull. She will need topush them back in and search around untilshe is confident that she has found two feetof the same child” (Gelbart 1998, 70).

Many babies died who could have beensaved had someone given them the properattention: “A weak, motionless baby mis-taken for dead will be wrapped up and putaway in a corner to spare the mother such asad sight. Some are buried alive, and with-out baptism” (Gelbart 1998, 137). DuCoudray went on to explain to her studentshow she had brought four such infants backto life, one having had his toe eaten by adog. She constantly told midwives in train-ing to pay attention to the baby.

Du Coudray trained 10,000 midwives in

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about forty different cities. She earned a rep-utation that preceded her wherever shewent. Not all people were happy with her;she had to deal with jealous women, sur-geons who saw her as unwanted competi-tion, and the politics of the day. However,she was able to deal with these problemswith equanimity and work within the sys-tem. Her letters are very professional. Sheseems to have derived the motivation forher work from her patriotism.

Du Coudray did not even protest in lateryears when Louis XVI became king in 1774and wanted her to train men as veterinarians,because in many rural situations when awoman giving birth was having trouble, peo-ple called on the nearest shepherd to help.

Du Coudray was found dead by authori-ties on April 17, 1794, during the Reign of Ter-ror. She had wisely trained her niece, anotherable midwife, to take her place, but soon afterher niece died in 1825, no one seemed to takethe mission as seriously as they had.

References: Gelbart, Nina Rattner, TheKing’s Midwife: A History and Mystery ofMadame du Coudray, Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press (1998); Snodgrass, MaryEllen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

Dufferin Fund

The Dufferin Fund was established in 1885to fund medical training for nurses, mid-wives, physicians, and hospital assistants aswell as provide for small hospitals and thecare of women and children in India. QueenVictoria was convinced there was a greatneed for medical women in India, and LadyDufferin, wife of the viceroy to India, initi-ated the fund. It was the first organized ef-fort to help the women and children of Indiawith a strong argument for its support be-ing that women of the Hindu and Muslimfaiths would not see male physicians.

When Lady Dufferin surveyed the condi-tions in India, she saw firsthand the needsthat existed. She worked very hard at pro-moting the fund’s success, and it helped nu-merous women and children over the years.

While she and her husband were in India,the colonial government was very support-ive of the effort, and support also grew inEngland. When she left India in 1888, how-ever, no one was as enthusiastic in main-taining the same level of assistance that shehad achieved.

References: Lal, Maneesha, “The Politics ofGender and Medicine in Colonial India: TheCountess of Dufferin’s Fund, 1885–1888,”Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68, no. 1(Spring 1994): 29–66.

Dunn, Thelma Brumfield1900–

Thelma Dunn became a leading authorityon the tumors in mice and directed the Can-cer Induction and Pathogenesis Section ofthe Pathology Laboratory at the NationalCancer Institute.

Born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, onFebruary 6, 1900, she attended Cornell Uni-versity and graduated with a bachelor’s de-gree in 1922. She proceeded to the Univer-sity of Virginia and earned her medicaldegree in 1926. She interned at BellevueHospital in New York and later worked inpathology at the University of Virginia andGeorge Washington University, eventuallytaking a position at the National Cancer In-stitute researching cancer.

She wrote a book on cancer in 1975 on theimportance of research. Her knowledge ofmouse tumors greatly aided in the researchshe did at the National Cancer Institute. Sheis a realist about the disease and its conse-quences but not pessimistic—“a cure maycome unexpectedly as insulin did for dia-betes, as liver did for pernicious anemia, oras the antibiotics did for bacterial diseases.In the meantime we can continue to fight alimited war, a war of containment wherecancer deaths are reduced and life pro-longed. We have not yet applied all weknow about preventing cancer” (Dunn1975, 191). She married in 1929 and hadthree children. She currently lives in Char-lottesville, Virginia.

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References: American Men and Women of Sci-ence, 14th ed., New York: Bowker (1979);Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, The Unseen Fightagainst Cancer: Experimental Cancer Re-search—Its Importance to Human Cancer,Charlottesville, VA: Batt Bates (1975); Kass-Simon, Gabriele, Women of Science: Rightingthe Record, Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress (1990).

Durocher, Marie JosefinaMathilde

1809–1893

One of the first woman doctors in LatinAmerica, Marie Durocher became a famousBrazilian obstetrician and was awarded thefirst medical degree of the newly reorganizedMedical School at Rio de Janeiro in 1834.

Durocher was born in Paris but moved toBrazil with her family at the age of eight.She married early and had two children.Her husband died young and thus she hadto seek a profession. Durocher was activefor sixty years, usually dressing in men’sclothes because she felt they were morepractical than dresses for her work.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doc-tors of the World, New York: Macmillan (1957);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The Bi-ographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pio-neering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20thCentury, New York: Routledge (2000).

Dyer, Helen Marie1895–1998

Helen Dyer’s development of the index oftumor chemotherapy in 1949 was requisitefor the National Cancer Institute to develop achemotherapy program. The index is a com-pilation of data she had gathered on earlierchemical treatments of tumors and their evo-lution. She was a gifted biochemist who con-tributed to the understanding of cancer andits treatment. She was also a proponent ofmore women going into science disciplines.

Born on May 26, 1895, in Washington,

D.C., she was the daughter of Joseph E. Dyerand Florence Robertson Dyer, who had fourchildren. She graduated from Western HighSchool in 1913. She went on to Goucher Col-lege in Baltimore to study biology and phys-iology and graduated in 1917.

She worked for the Civil Service Commis-sion and the Red Cross during World War I.Afterward, she wanted to advance her edu-cation in order to teach. She took courses atMount Holyoke, then went back to Wash-ington, D.C., to take a position at the Hy-gienic Laboratory, which was part of thePublic Health Service. She worked there forseven years, researching the effects ofchemotherapeutic drugs on animals. Shealso studied tumor growth rates.

In order to gain more education, she wentto George Washington University to do grad-uate work. She earned a master’s degree andstayed on to teach biochemistry while work-ing on a doctorate degree, which she receivedin 1935. She continued to teach and had avery good reputation with the students.

She went to the National Cancer Institutein 1942 and stayed for twenty-three years.She was invaluable in creating the index oftumor chemotherapy and published numer-ous articles on the topic. She also did re-search on amino acids.

Dyer was active in the Washington Chem-ical Society and in 1962 was selected as adelegate to the International Cancer Con-gress in Moscow due to her internationalreputation. She earned numerous awardsand honors over the years, including theGarvan Medal in 1962 for her work in bio-chemical research.

Dyer never married or had children. Sheretired in 1965 but continued to do researchfor several years. She died September 20,1998, at her home in Washington, D.C., atthe age of 103.

References: “Helen Dyer, 103, Cancer Re-searcher,” Washington Times (22 September22, 1998): C6; Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000).

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Edinburgh School of Medicine1887–1898

Founded in Edinburgh by Sophia Jex-Blake,it was an early medical school for women inEurope. Jex-Blake had very high standardsand was considered by many to be too strict.The school closed in 1898 because of com-petition from other medical schools, partic-ularly the Medical College for Women,which had lower tuition and access to clini-cal facilities at the Edinburgh Royal Infir-mary beginning in 1892.

See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia LouisaReferences: Todd, Margaret G., The Life ofSophia Jex-Blake, London: Macmillan (1918).

Elders, Minnie Joycelyn1933–

Joycelyn Elders became the first AfricanAmerican to hold the position of surgeongeneral in the United States. She was out-spoken in her commitment to health reform,health education, and particularly sex edu-cation in schools.

Born in Schaal, Arkansas, on August 13,1933, Elders was the oldest of eight childrenof Haller and Curtis Jones, who were lovingparents. They were sharecroppers with norunning water or electricity, and Elders,along with her brothers and sisters, workedin the cotton fields. She was very good inschool, earning a scholarship to attend col-lege. She received a B.A. in biology fromPhilander Smith College in Little Rock,

Arkansas. She then worked as a nurse’s aidein the Veterans’ Administration in Milwau-kee before joining the U.S. Army in 1953.She trained as a physical therapist. Once outof the army, she went to medical school andreceived her M.D. degree from the Univer-sity of Arkansas Medical School in 1960.

Elders interned at the University of Min-nesota Hospital and did a residency in pedi-atrics at the University of Arkansas MedicalCenter. While in Arkansas she also earnedan advanced degree in biochemistry. Shewas an assistant professor in pediatricsthere after receiving a National Institutes ofHealth Career Development Award. In herresearch, she focused on endocrinology andpediatrics 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 atthe funeral for one of her brothers, who hadbeen murdered. While in that office, she in-creased immunization rates, made it morepossible for poor women to get mammo-grams, and increased early preventive-med-icine screenings for children.

Elders could see what early pregnancyand sexually transmitted diseases were do-ing to young people and the health of thecountry, and she worked hard on educatingthe young. She was a strong advocate of sexeducation and contraception, opposed bymany conservative politicians and religiousleaders.

President Clinton nominated her in 1993for the surgeon general position. She faced abattle during her confirmation hearingswith many opponents in Congress feelingthat she was too liberal. She was eventually

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confirmed and took office. She is a proponentof plain talk about sex, condoms, and mas-turbation, which she sees as part of humansexuality. Young people seemed to embraceher frankness, but some of their parents, andsome government officials, did not. Sheserved as surgeon general for only fifteenmonths because of controversy over some ofher remarks. She has no regrets and still feels“committed to the issues I have always beenabout: comprehensive health education, pre-vention of teenage pregnancy, early-child-hood education, school-based clinics to makehealth care available for all children, a pre-ventive approach to health care for every-one” (Elders and Chanoff 1996, 336).

She married Oliver Elders in 1960 andhad two sons, Eric and Kevin. After serv-ing as surgeon general, Elders returned tothe University of Arkansas as a pediatricendocrinologist.

References: Elders, M. Joycelyn, and DavidChanoff, Joycelyn Elders, M.D.: From Share-cropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of theUnited States of America, New York: Morrow(1996); Notable Black American Scientists, De-troit: Gale Research (1998).

Elion, Gertrude Belle1918–1999

Gertrude Elion received the Nobel Prize inphysiology or medicine in 1988 “fordemonstrating the differences in nucleicacid metabolism between normal cells anddisease-causing cancer cells, protozoa, bac-teria, and viruses” (McGrayne 1998, 302).She shared the award with George Hitch-ings and Sir James Black. It was the firsttime in thirty-one years that an award wasgiven for drug research, and Elion was oneof the few to receive a Nobel Prize withouthaving a doctorate.

Elion developed many new drugs for can-cer treatment. Before her research, mostchildren with leukemia were not expectedto survive; because of her contributions, alarger percentage of them now survive(Elion 1988, 449). She also laid the founda-tion for azidothymidine (AZT), the first

drug approved by the FDA for AIDS pa-tients, and made organ transplants possiblewith the development of a drug to inhibitorgan rejection.

Born on January 23, 1918, in New YorkCity, Elion was the daughter of two immi-grants. She had one younger brother. Her fa-ther, Robert, had come from Lithuania anddescended from a long line of rabbis. He as-pired to be a dentist and in 1914 graduatedfrom the New York University School ofDentistry. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, hadcome from Poland. Elion was educated earlyin the public schools and proved an excel-lent student, graduating from high school atthe age of twelve. She wanted to attend col-lege but was unsure of what to major in. Herfather had lost a lot of money in the stockmarket crash of 1929, but she was able to at-tend Hunter College for free because of hergrades. She felt that the professors at Hunter,an all-female college, didn’t expect studentsto set out on a career, but Elion planned todo so from the beginning.

She majored in science and chemistry,wanting, in emulation of her belovedgrandfather, to help others. He had died ofcancer when she was fifteen.

She graduated from Hunter with an A.B.degree in 1937. Like many others during theGreat Depression, she struggled to findwork. For three months, she taught bio-chemistry at the New York Hospital Schoolof Nursing. Then she found a low-paid po-sition as a laboratory assistant for a chemist.She stayed with the chemist for a year and ahalf and saved her money. With her savingsand some help from her parents, she wasable to enter graduate school at New YorkUniversity in 1939.

She received an M.S. in chemistry in 1941.World War II was just beginning, and therewas a shortage of chemists. Wanting to doresearch, she could find only laboratoryjobs, which bored her. Eventually she took ajob as an assistant to George Hitchings atBurroughs Wellcome, a pharmaceuticalcompany. “I never felt constrained to re-main strictly in chemistry, but was able tobroaden my horizons into biochemistry,pharmacology, immunology, and eventu-ally virology” (Elion 1988).

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Elion also became interested in getting adoctorate, but because she loved her job andcould not keep it and pursue further educa-tion, she chose to stay at Burroughs Well-come. Hitchings was very supportive andencouraged her work on purines and theenzymes involved, letting her make com-pounds and then experiment to find outhow they worked. She began to publish herfindings. In 1950, Elion synthesized twocancer-treatment drugs. A purine com-pound called diaminopurine could interferewith leukemia cells, but the side effectswere very strong, and eventually patientsrelapsed. Elion continued her studies. Latershe developed a new compound called mer-captopurine (6-MP), which was also effec-tive; but again, patients with leukemia re-lapsed after a time. She was committed tomaking 6-MP better.

Another drug she synthesized wasthioguanine, a close relative of 6-MP. Whenphysicians began treating leukemia patientswith thioguanine or 6-MP combined withother drugs, they were successful. Still Elioncontinued to try to make the effects of 6-MPlast longer. She also became interested inimmune-system suppressants, and researchled her to the development of Imuran, amore sophisticated version of 6-MP. Itwasn’t long before it proved useful in organtransplants, which had usually failed priorto Imuran because recipients’ bodies re-jected the new organ. By 1961 it had becomepossible to successfully transplant organs.

Hitchings retired in 1967, and Elion couldadmit that they’d had their differences andthat he never gave her proper credit for herwork. She was glad to be on her own tochoose her projects without reporting tohim.

Antivirals were of interest because scien-tists felt that any drug developed to kill avirus would also harm the DNA of a healthycell. Elion returned to the aminopurine,which had been observed to have antiviralproperties back in 1948 but was also tootoxic. She developed a related compoundthat was successful against herpes.

Later, in the mid-1970s, her team testedacyclovir, which was successful againstviruses but not at all toxic. This develop-

ment convinced scientists that enzymescould be specific to viruses. Acyclovir wasmarketed as Zovirax in 1991.

In 1970, Elion moved with the companyto North Carolina. She retired in 1983 andserved as a consultant to Burroughs Well-come. Within one year her division had de-veloped AZT, the first drug approved by theFDA to treat AIDS patients.

In October 1988, a reporter called to tellher she’d won the Nobel Prize. She was sur-prised until she heard that the other twowinners were Hitchings and Sir James W.Black. She was thrilled but stressed that thebiggest reward in her career was knowingshe had helped develop tools to cure dis-eases.

She continued to work, teaching DukeUniversity students research methods, con-sulting at Burroughs Wellcome, and servingon national and international committees.

Elion died February 21, 1999, in ChapelHill, North Carolina.

References: Elion, Gertrude B., “The PurinePath to Chemotherapy,” “Elion, GertrudeB.,” Official Web Site of the Nobel Foun-dation, http://www.nobel.se/medicine/l a u re a t e s 1 9 8 8 / e l i o n - a u t o b i o . h t m l ;McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel PrizeWomen in Science, New York: Carol (1998).

Emerson, Gladys Anderson1903–1984

Gladys Emerson isolated vitamin E for thefirst time in 1936 after her husband, OliverEmerson, discovered it. She contributedmuch to the understanding of the impor-tance of vitamins and minerals in daily nu-trition and aided the government in estab-lishing dietary guidelines. She alsocontributed a great deal of research on vita-min B deficiencies.

Born July 1, 1903, in Caldwell, Kansas,she and her parents, Otis and Louise Ander-son, moved to Fort Worth, Texas. She at-tended public schools there and eventuallygraduated from high school in El Reno, Ok-lahoma. She went on to higher education atthe Oklahoma College for Women, graduat-

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ing with A.B. and B.S. degrees in 1925. Sheattended Stanford and received an M.A. in1926, followed by a Ph.D. in nutrition andbiochemistry from the University of Califor-nia, Berkeley, in 1932.

She and Oliver traveled to work in Ger-many for a brief time before beginning workat the University of California, Berkeley. Sheworked as a research associate there for theInstitute of Experimental Biology from 1933to 1942. She then went to the Merck Institutein New Jersey to head its department of nu-trition. During her stay there she did a greatdeal of work on the vitamins E and B. Shedid experiments on both rats and monkeysto determine the effects of various vitamindeficiencies.

She next took a position as head of theDepartment of Nutrition and Home Eco-nomics at the University of California in LosAngeles. She was an enthusiastic teacherand lecturer on nutrition. By this time shewas known as an expert in the field and hadfrequent requests for lectures around thecountry.

She and her husband divorced in 1940,and she never remarried or had children.One of the highest honors she received wasthe Garvan Medal, in 1952. It is given in thefield of chemistry to a woman who hasmade significant accomplishments.

Emerson died of cancer on January 18,1984, at her home in Santa Monica, Califor-nia. She was buried on January 24, 1984,next to her parents in El Reno, Oklahoma.

References: Folkers, Karl, “Gladys Ander-son Emerson (1903–1984): A BiographicalSketch,” Journal of Nutrition 115, no. 7 (July1985): 837–841; Notable Twentieth-CenturyScientists Supplement, Detroit: Gale Research(1998).

Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana1715–1762

Germany’s first woman doctor, DorotheaErxleben, was fortunate enough to practicepublicly as a physician by being bold

Gladys Anderson Emerson (UCLA School of Public Health/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

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enough to petition King Frederick II for con-sent to attend the University of Halle withher brother. She was born in Quedlinburg in1715 to Christian Polycarpus Leporin andAnna Sophia Meinecken. She felt early onthat she benefited from reading and aspiredto learn all she could. By the time herbrother entered the University of Halle, shehad prepared herself for further study andwas interested in medicine. She had learneda great deal from her father, a physicianwho supported her goal.

With King Frederick II’s approval, she andher brother went to the University together.Many opposed her attendance, feeling thatfemales were far too fragile to ever be welleducated, much less become physicians.

When Austria and Germany went to warand her brother was called into militaryservice, she left school because she was notcomfortable attending classes without him.She married Johann Erxleben, a deacon, andassumed responsibility for his five children,adding four of her own. While raising herfamily, she did practice medicine eventhough she did not have a university degree.

In 1753 she was accused of not treatingpatients correctly after one of her patientsdied. She addressed the charges and was al-lowed to defend her dissertation and takethe exams to prove her knowledge. She didan excellent job on the exams, receiving herdegree on June 12, 1754. She continued hermedical practice until her death in 1762.

References: Schiebinger, Londa L., The MindHas No Sex? Women in the Origins of ModernScience, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press (1989).

Eskelin, Karolina1867–1938

Karolina Eskelin was the first woman to re-ceive a doctorate (1895) in medicine in Fin-land and the first woman to be a surgeon inFinland. She was allowed to practice medi-cine as a physician at the Surgical Hospitalin Helsinki prior to founding another hospi-tal in Tampere. She also founded a secondprivate hospital in Helsinki. She briefly vis-

ited the United States and practiced medi-cine in Oregon and Massachusetts.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomanDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Olkkonen, Tuomo, “Suomen Ensim-mainen Naistohtori,” Opusculum 5, no. 3(1985): 122–128; Riska, Elainne, “Women’sCareers in Medicine: Developments in theUnited States and Finland,” ScandinavianStudies 61 (Spring–Summer 1989): 185–198.

Evans, Alice Catherine1881–1975

Alice Evans’s pioneering work in milk bac-teria led to the acceptance of pasteurization.She was the first woman to serve as a bacte-riologist for the U.S. Department of Agricul-ture (USDA).

Born in Neath, Pennsylvania, on January29, 1881, she was the daughter of Anne B.Evans and William Howell Evans and hadone brother, Morgan. Both her parents wereteachers, and her father was also a farmer.She became a teacher as well and, after fouryears, enrolled in a program for rural teach-

Alice Catherine Evans (Underwood & Underwood/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

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ers at Cornell that her brother had told herabout.

There Evans became interested in scienceand completed a degree in bacteriology in1909. She went on to the University of Wis-consin for a master’s degree. Upon gradua-tion, she worked for the government, inves-tigating the microbes in cow’s milk. Afterobtaining a position with the USDA in itsdairy division, Evans discovered, in 1917,that bacillus abortus, which causes Bang’sdisease in cows and was thought to be aharmless germ to humans, was very similarto the bacteria known as Micrococus meliten-sis, which was from raw goat’s milk andmade people sick with what was called un-dulant fever. Undulant fever had been aproblem since the nineteenth century. Evansconcluded that the disease that becameknown as brucellosis could be contracted byhumans from drinking both cow’s andgoat’s milk.

Later scientific investigations led to therealization that many people who had bru-cellosis were at times misdiagnosed as hav-ing influenza or tuberculosis.

Evans published her findings but was ig-nored because she held no doctorate degree.She moved on to work for the U.S. PublicHealth Service but continued to argue aboutthe importance of pasteurizing milk. No one

listened until two other researchers, Dr.Charles M. Carpenter of Cornell Universityand Dr. Karl F. Meyer of the University ofCalifornia, confirmed her findings. Carpen-ter found that the same germ that led to un-dulant fever in humans caused Bang’s dis-ease (brucellosis) in animals. Meyersuggested a new genus be named Brucella toincorporate both organisms. By the 1930s,the dairy industry was pasteurizing all milkin the United States.

During her own research, Evans con-tracted brucellosis in 1922 and suffered withit for twenty years. Nonetheless, she contin-ued her bacteria research, which includedlooking for the cause of meningitis andstreptococcus infections. In 1928 she becamethe first woman to become president of theSociety of American Bacteriologists. She re-tired in 1945 but stayed active in microbiol-ogy research until her death from a stroke onSeptember 5, 1975, in Alexandria, Virginia.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000); Stevens, MarianneFedunkiw, American National Biography, vol.7, New York: Oxford University Press(1999).

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Fabiola, Saintd. ca. 399

Saint Fabiola founded a public hospital inRome that was the first such hospital inwestern Europe. She was also responsiblefor establishing a hospice in Porto, Italy,with the help of St. Pammachius. A Chris-tian noblewoman, Fabiola dedicated her lifeto helping the poor and needy after con-verting to Christianity and following theteachings of St. Jerome. She studied thescriptures, as she knew Latin, Hebrew, andGreek.

Fabiola came from a wealthy family de-scended from Julius Maximus. She marriedvery young and then separated from thechurch because she married a second timebefore her first, abusive, husband died.Upon the death of her second husband andher public penitence, she sold her posses-sions and worked for the good of the poor.At the hospital she founded, she attended tothe patients herself regardless of their dis-ease or condition.

She followed Jerome to Bethlehem in 395and stayed with her relative, Oceanus. Shereturned to Rome following the Huns’threat to invade Palestine in 396. She con-templated a long journey due to her rest-lessness but died before she could com-mence. All of Rome admired her greatly.December 27 is her feast day.

References: Carter, E. D., “Fabiola, St.” NewCatholic Encyclopedia, New York: McGraw-Hill (1967); “Fabiola, Saint,” EncyclopediaBritannica, vol. 4, Chicago: EncyclopediaBritannica (1997).

Farquhar, Marilyn Gist1928–

A cell biologist, Marilyn Farquhar has con-tributed a significant amount of research onrenal disease and more recently on the char-acteristics of G proteins.

Born on July 11, 1928, in Tulare, Califor-nia, to Brooks Dewitt Gist and Alta GreenGist, Farquhar had one older sister. She waseducated in the public schools and then at-tended the University of California atBerkeley. She majored in zoology as apremed student. She graduated in 1949 andwas one of only three women admitted tomedical school at the University of Califor-nia in San Francisco.

After two years, she became interested inthe study of diseases. She changed hercourse of study and received a Ph.D. inpathology in 1955 at the University of Cali-fornia, Berkeley. She went with her hus-band, John Farquhar, to the University ofMinnesota and studied kidney disease. Cellbiology was a new field, and electron mi-croscopy made it possible for scientists tosee much more detail.

Farquhar returned to the University ofCalifornia at San Francisco in 1962 andeventually became a full professor ofpathology. Her first marriage ended in di-vorce, and in 1970 she married GeorgePalade, a future Nobel Prize winner.

Farquhar has published hundreds of arti-cles and papers on cell biology, renal disease,kidney problems, and G proteins. In 1988she was elected to the National Academy ofSciences. Currently she serves as professor

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of pathology and is the chair of cellular andmolecular medicine at the University of Cal-ifornia, San Diego. She has two sons, Bruceand Douglas, by her first marriage.

References: Notable Twentieth-Century Scien-tists, Detroit: Gale Research (1995); Shearer,Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, NotableWomen in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic-tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996).

Felicie, Jacoba1280–?

Jacoba Felicie was a very learned healer inthe thirteenth century in Paris. She was pos-sibly as skilled as male physicians of thetime were.

Most women then could not obtain li-censes to practice medicine and were notadmitted to universities, with the exceptionof Italian universities, and thus they hadlimited training. Skilled physicians some-times taught women. Felicie, an empiric,was prosecuted several times for practicingmedicine without a license.

References: Hughes, Muriel Joy, WomenHealers in Medieval Life and Literature, NewYork, King’s Crown Press (1943); Ogilvie,Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The Biograph-ical Dictionary of Women in Science: PioneeringLives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Cen-tury, New York: Routledge (2000).

Female Genital Mutilation

Many cultures use female genital mutilation(FGM) to circumcise young girls. Many ofthese girls die from the procedure or de-velop physical and emotional problems.

Over the past two centuries, women whowere subjected to this procedure havesought the help of female physicians andmedical missionaries. Many have also triedto escape those societies that practice thisprocedure, which is often bound up in cul-tural and religious beliefs. FGM is nowagainst the law in many countries due tobetter awareness of the damage it can do.

With so many undesirable effects ofexcision and infibulation it mightappear most extraordinary that suchpractices survive. But the practicesthemselves have been kept so secretand there are indeed many who havenot suffered the after-effects described,themselves, and are therefore quiteunaware of the medical hazards.Moreover many rural dwellers still donot associate certain medicalconditions with the excision operation.The lack of communication sometimesbetween the educated urbanpopulation and unschooled ruralpeople encourages the continued beliefin traditional mythological rationaliza-tions for the customs, and ideologicalarguments remain unchallenged.(Sanderson 1981, 44)

See also: Ramsey, Mimi; el Saadawi, NawalReferences: Sanderson, Lilian Passmore,Against the Mutilation of Women: The Struggleto End Unnecessary Suffering, London: IthacaPress (1981); Toubia, Nahid, and Susan Izett,Female Genital Mutilation: An Overview,Geneva: World Health Organization (1998).

Fenselau, Catherine Clarke1939–

Catherine Fenselau contributed to the de-velopment of mass spectrometry and its usein analyzing chemical compounds to deter-mine molecular mass, structure, and com-position. Researchers use the method exten-sively today to determine the benefits ofmany drugs in treating diseases.

Born in York, Nebraska, on April 15, 1939,Fenselau became interested in science inhigh school. She was encouraged to go tocollege at Bryn Mawr and graduated with anA.B. in chemistry in 1961. She chose Stanfordfor graduate study and received her Ph.D. in1965. By this time she was married to AllanH. Fenselau. At Stanford she began workingin the new field of mass spectrometry.

Her first teaching job was at Johns Hop-kins School of Medicine, where she rosefrom instructor to professor. She worked

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there from 1967 to 1987. In 1985 she won theGarvan Medal from the American ChemicalSociety for her outstanding contributions tochemistry.

She left Johns Hopkins for a position at theUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County,as professor and chair of the Department ofChemistry. Her interests in mass spectrome-try led to studies of laetrile, an anticancerdrug. The World Health Organization alsoasked her to study the metabolism of clo-fazamine, a drug used to treat leprosy.

In 1992 Fenselau received a Merit Awardfor her work from the National Institutes ofHealth. Currently she is a professor in theDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistryat the University of Maryland, College Park.She has two sons.

References: Roscher, Nina Matheny, “Cath-erine Clarke Fenselau,” in Benjamin F.Shearer and Barbara S. Shearer, eds., NotableWomen in the Physical Sciences: A BiographicalDictionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1997).

Ferguson, Angela Dorothea1925–

Angela Ferguson did pioneering researchin the diagnosis and treatment of sickle cellanemia. She also made it clear that more re-search was needed on African Americanchildren so that black pediatricians likeherself would know what norms to expectin their clients and what advice to givemothers.

She was born in Washington, D.C., on Feb-ruary 15, 1925, to a poor family. Her fathertaught at a segregated high school and alsoserved in the U.S. Army Reserves, but he didnot earn enough during the depression tosupport a family of eight. Angela worked inthe school cafeteria in exchange for meals,and many times at home dinner consisted ofonly potatoes or cocoa and water.

Never intending to go to college, Angelaattended Cardoza High School. It was herethat she discovered her love of and gift forscience, particularly chemistry and mathe-matics. She took summer-school courses to

catch up with some of the other studentsand graduated in 1941.

She decided to seek a career in scienceand was accepted at Howard University.Her parents could afford her first year there,since she lived at home. After that she ob-tained scholarships for tuition and fees andcovered other expenses by working in thelaboratories at Freedmen’s Hospital, theteaching hospital at Howard University andthe predecessor of Howard University Hos-pital. She graduated from Howard in 1945.

Her interests changed to biology andmedicine with a desire to help children, andshe pursued pediatrics training in medicalschool at Howard University. She gradu-ated with her medical degree in 1949 and in-terned in all departments of Freedmen’sHospital. After passing her final examina-tions, she went into private practice. Duringthis time, she realized that research focusedprimarily on children of European descent,and she did not have sufficient informationto treat her black patients.

Howard University School of Medicinehired her to begin to rectify this lack, andduring her research, she discovered thatmany black children suffered from sicklecell anemia. It was a very hard disease to di-agnose, as its symptoms vary by age and arecommon to other ailments. She studiedhundreds of cases in order to determine themost obvious signs and shared her findingswith colleagues. One of her greatest contri-butions was promoting the use of a bloodtest at birth to determine if African Ameri-can babies had the disease. She also devel-oped helpful treatments for sickle cell ane-mia, among them increasing fluid intake tohelp the flow of blood.

In 1965 her work changed dramaticallywhen she became involved in building anew teaching hospital at Howard Univer-sity. From the beginning of the project, sheadvised government officials and others onwhat was needed in a teaching hospital. Thenew Freedmen’s Hospital opened ten yearslater, and Ferguson held the position of as-sociate vice-president for health affairs forover twenty years, until she retired in 1990.She is married to Dr. Charles M. Cabanissand has two daughters.

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References: Kessler, James H., DistinguishedAfrican American Scientists of the 20th Cen-tury, Phoenix: Oryx Press (1996); “Scientist,”Ebony (August 1960): 44.

Flexner Report1910

The Flexner Report came about as a result ofconcerns over educational standards. In thelate nineteenth century and the early twen-tieth century, large numbers of proprietarycolleges and universities were starting upwithout sufficient standards and governingboards in place. The Carnegie Foundation,charged with the evaluation of education inthe country because of these developments,appointed Abraham Flexner to investigatethe problem. His 1910 Flexner Report dras-tically changed medical education in theUnited States and Canada in the followingdecades. Flexner was very critical of propri-etary medical schools, reinforcing the im-portance of scientific education and clinicalexperience. His report encouraged stan-dardization in medical school curriculumsand resulted in massive reforms and theclosing of many schools over the next sev-eral years.

Unfortunately for women, the report re-sulted in the closing of some of the schoolsthat allowed them to enter, and some of theschools that survived continued to refuseadmittance to women for quite some time.Thus despite its positive ramifications formedical education as a whole, the reportresulted in a decline in women physi-cians during the early part of the twentiethcentury.

References: Flexner, Abraham, Medical Edu-cation in the United States and Canada: A Re-port to the Carnegie Foundation for the Ad-vancement of Teaching, New York: CarnegieFoundation for the Advancement of Teach-ing (1910); King, L. S., “Medicine in theUSA: Historical Vignettes, XX. The FlexnerReport of 1910.” JAMA 251, no. 8 (February24, 1984): 1079–1086.

Footbinding

For over a century, it was the custom inChina for women to bind their feet in orderto make them tiny. According to Pruitt, “Agirl’s beauty and desirability were countedmore by the size of her feet than by thebeauty of her face” (1945, 22). Also, Hongsays, “Bound feet were associated with se-curity, mobility and status” (1997, 25).

Western medical missionaries wereamong the first to help the women who suf-fered from the practice. Footbinding emo-tionally affected the women physiciansmore than men in the field because the cus-tom was associated with male dominanceand kept Chinese women and girls in de-spair. It was the female missionaries, stirredby their own reform movements at home inWestern Europe, Canada, and the UnitedStates, who fueled the antifootbindingmovement of the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries.

In the missionaries’ eyes tiny-footedgirls usually looked as if they were inpain, for instead of jumping abouthappily they needed help in walking,as if they were wounded. Footbindingwas consequently denounced as anevil which crippled approximately halfthe population, added to the misery ofthe poverty stricken, increased childdeaths, prevented women from sup-porting themselves and from caringadequately for their children, inhibited‘the cheer and cleanliness’ of theirhomes, and confined women and theirthoughts to the narrowest of spheres”(Hong 1997, 55).

Girls with bound feet could not attendschool or engage in any physical activity;many suffered infections, broken bones, in-tense pain, and sometimes death. “Mygrandmother had wanted me to have boundfeet. She told me that big feet were not beau-tiful. I thought that was fine, so I had my feetbound, but it was very painful. When youbind your feet, you have to wear at least twopairs of cloth shoes, plus several layers ofcloth strips binding your feet tightly inside

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the shoes” (Young 1995–1996, 535). The Chi-nese outlawed the custom in 1902.

References: Hong, Fan, Footbinding, Femi-nism, and Freedom: The Liberation of Women’sBodies in Modern China, London: F. Cass(1997); Pruitt, Ida, A Daughter of Han, NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press (1945);Wang, Ping, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding inChina, Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress (2000); Young, Helen Praeger, “FromSoldier to Doctor: A Chinese Woman’s Storyof the Long March,” Science and Society 59,no. 4 (Winter 1995–1996): 531–547.

Fowler, Lydia Folger1822–1879

Lydia Fowler became the second femalephysician in the United States in 1850 andwas the first woman to become a professorat a U.S. medical school. She lectured fre-quently and argued for the need of womenin the medical profession.

Fowler was born May 5, 1822, in Nan-tucket, Massachusetts, to Gideon and Eu-nice Macy Folger. She had a good basic ed-ucation, including math and science, andleft school in 1838 to teach in Norton at theWheaton Seminary. She married LorenzoNiles Fowler in 1844 and had a daughter,Jessie Allen, in 1856.

Lorenzo Fowler was a phrenologist wholectured extensively on this new science. Ly-dia accompanied him and eventually beganspeaking on physiology and hygiene. Shedecided to enroll at Central Medical Collegein New York, which was one of the firstmedical schools to accept women on a regu-lar basis. She learned a great deal aboutanatomy and became a lecturer at the col-lege. Later on she was promoted to professorin order to teach in the area of midwiferyand the diseases of women and children.Her post was short-lived because the schoolmerged with a competitor in New York.Fowler left to begin private practice. She alsotaught and gave periodic lectures to women.

Eventually the women’s rights movementand the temperance drive took more of hertime. She and her husband moved to London

in 1863, where she continued to be involvedin the temperance movement. She died ofpleuropneumonia on January 26, 1879.

References: Ford, Bonnie, “Lydia FolgerFowler,” in Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Livesfrom History, American Women Series, vol. 2,Pasadena, CA: Salem Press (1995).

Franklin, Martha Minerva1870–1968

Martha Franklin was a leader and organizerof black nurses in the United States at theend of the nineteenth century and begin-ning of the twentieth century. She foundedthe National Association of Colored Gradu-ate Nurses (NACGN) in 1908 with supportfrom other black nurses, notably Mary ElizaMahoney and Adah Belle Samuels Thoms.She also had support from the NationalMedical Association (NMA), the majorblack physicians’ association of the time.

Born in New Milford, Connecticut, toHenry J. Franklin and Mary E. Gauson onOctober 29, 1870, Franklin had a sister, Flo-rence, and a brother, William. Her fatherhad been a soldier in the Civil War. She at-tended public school in Meriden, Connecti-cut, where there were few blacks. She chosea nursing career and went to Philadelphia,where she became the sole black graduate ofthe December 1897 class of the Women’sHospital Training School for Nurses.

Like most black nurses, Franklin experi-enced discrimination. The American NursesAssociation did not allow blacks to join, andshe felt that having no voice was a major ob-stacle to progress. She conducted a surveyof 1,500 black nurses and urged a meeting.

In 1908 a meeting finally took place, andthe NACGN was officially founded withFranklin as president. There were fifty-twonurses at the first meeting in New York City.By 1940 there were over 12,000 members.

Franklin worked very hard within the as-sociation and with other groups who weresupportive. She became a registered nursein New York after completing a postgradu-ate course at Lincoln Hospital. She workedas a nurse in the public schools and contin-

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ued to obtain more education as needed.Franklin died on September 26, 1968. In1976 she was posthumously inducted intothe Nursing Hall of Fame.

See also: Mahoney, Mary ElizaReferences: Davis, Althea T., Early BlackAmerican Leaders in Nursing: Architects for In-tegration and Equality, Boston: Jones andBartlett (1999); Davis, Althea T., “Franklin,Martha Minerva,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 8, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999).

Franklin, Rosalind Elsie1920–1958

Rosalind Franklin contributed an enormousamount of information toward the under-standing of DNA’s structure. Her work wasvital to the discovery of nucleic acids andtheir molecular structure.

Born in London on July 25, 1920, to Ellisand Muriel Waley Franklin, she grew upwith three brothers until a sister came alongwhen she was eight. She received a good ed-ucation at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, where shebecame very interested in science. Her par-ents were devoted to public service and werephilanthropists. Her father helped numerousJews escape from Nazi Germany. Many inher family were socialists, as was she. Rela-tives were oftentimes involved in women’scauses, and their work had an impact on her.

Her father did not encourage her interestin science because he wanted her to go intosocial work. After he refused to pay for hereducation at Cambridge, an angry Aunt Al-ice and her mother agreed to finance herschooling. Later her father relented and wassupportive. She attended Newnham Col-lege at Cambridge University in Londonand received a degree in chemistry in 1941.She stayed at Cambridge and studied gas-phase chromatography while on a researchscholarship. She earned her Ph.D. in 1945while studying the structure of coal and car-bons to help in the war effort. She con-tributed a great deal to the industry by help-ing to find high-strength fibers in carbon.

Once the war ended she turned her atten-tion to X-ray crystallography and diffrac-tion in order to find out more about howmolecules form. In 1947 she went to Franceand began work at the Laboratoire Centraledes Services Chimiques de l’Etat. There dur-ing the next three years, she furthered herwork on carbon fibers. She then returned toEngland and in 1950, Sir John Randall atKing’s College asked her to join MauriceWilkins and Raymond Gosling, who werealready working at King’s on DNA; Randallwanted someone to study the photosGosling had already taken.

Franklin preferred to work indepen-dently and from the beginning did not getalong with Wilkins. There were furtherproblems regarding the roles each wouldplay, and the partnership did not last.Franklin and Gosling did work well to-gether and published five papers.

Franklin found King’s College very for-mal. The segregation of men and womenthere was a hindrance to cooperative re-search efforts. She led a social life outside ofthe college, keeping busy also with social re-forms. She continued to work on DNA andits structure, making a lot of headway andproducing some of the best existing photosof DNA. Working with coal had helped herto work with structures that were not totallycrystalline. She was able to show that theDNA molecule could exist in either a morecrystalline A form or a B form.

Wilkins eventually showed James D. Wat-son one of Franklin’s photos without herknowledge or permission. The photo gaveWatson a piece to the puzzle that he andFrancis Crick had been looking for, and theywere able to publish an article on the struc-ture of DNA. They would win the NobelPrize in medicine in 1962 along withWilkins, four years after Franklin’s death toovarian cancer.

Franklin went on to Birkbeck College in1953 and studied virus structures. Her workthere helped lay the foundation for bio-molecular science. She died on March 20,1958, after having been diagnosed with can-cer in 1956. Franklin continued to work de-spite being gravely ill.

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and was not good at small talk. Althoughmost admired her, some colleagues foundher difficult. In The Double Helix, JamesWatson’s account of the discovery of thestructure of DNA, Franklin is portrayed in a very negative way. Some critics havecalled the book very cruel, and some scien-tists feel Watson should have given a gooddeal of credit to Franklin for her work onDNA. Franklin did not appear as an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography untilthe 1993 Missing Persons volume waspublished.

References: Klug, Aaron, “Franklin, Ros-alind Elsie,” Dictionary of National Biogra-phy: Missing Persons, Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1993); McGrayne, SharonBertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Science: TheirLives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries,Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Sayre, Anne,Rosalind Franklin and DNA, New York: Nor-ton (1975).

Freud, Anna1895–1982

Anna Freud was a pioneer in psychoanaly-sis. She carried on after her father and es-tablished her own theories in child therapy.

Born in Vienna, Austria, on December 3,1895, the last of six children, she was thedaughter of the founder of psychoanalysis,Sigmund Freud, and his wife, MarthaBernays. She was educated as a teacher, buther father had a profound impact on the di-rection her work would take.

She worked closely with her father in Vi-enna until the Nazi invasion, at which timeshe and her family escaped to England. Shecontinued her work there and with DorothyT. Burlingham established a nursery andlater a clinic in Hampstead in order for chil-dren to receive medical and educationalservices following World War II.

Freud’s work focused on child therapyand human defense mechanisms. She builton her father’s work but also contributedmuch to our understanding of children andhow their environments affect them. Shehad tremendous energy and was an excel-

lent public speaker, appealing to audiencesof diverse backgrounds. She also was a clearwriter who published a number of papersand books during her lifetime.

Psychoanalysts are still developing manyof her ideas, and she is widely read. “Shehas gone forward where he left off, givingher life to children from unhappy homes, tochildren in the midst of the terrors of war, tonormal children in their puzzling, inspiringvariety” (Coles 1992, 198). Freud died Octo-ber 9, 1982, in London.

References: Coles, Robert, Anna Freud: TheDream of Psychoanalysis, Reading, MA: Ad-dison-Wesley (1992); Jahoda, Marie, “Freud,Anna,” Dictionary of National Biography:1981–1985, London: Oxford UniversityPress (1990); Limentani, Adam, BetweenFreud and Klein: The Psychoanalytic Quest forKnowledge and Truth, London: Free Associa-tion Books (1989); Sheehy, Noel, Antony J.Chapman, and Wendy A. Conroy, Biographi-cal Dictionary of Psychology, London: Rout-ledge (1997).

Anna Freud (U.S. National Library of Medicine)

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Friend, Charlotte1921–1987

Charlotte Friend was the first scientist to dis-cover that a virus could cause cancer. Manywere skeptical about this at the time, but herhard data, published in 1957, were convinc-ing. Friend was also an activist for women’srights and a leader among women in sci-ence. She was elected to the National Acad-emy of Sciences in 1976 and became the firstwoman president of the New York Academyof Sciences and later, president of the Amer-ican Association for Cancer Research.

Born March 11, 1921, during the depres-sion, Friend grew up in New York Cityalong with her two older sisters and ayounger brother. Her parents, Morris Friendand Cecelia Wolpin, had emigrated to theUnited States from Russia as young adults.Her father died when she was three yearsold, and her mother moved the family to theBronx to be closer to her own extended fam-ily there.

Friend was educated at Hunter HighSchool and later Hunter College. Sheworked at a doctor’s office at night whilegoing to college. She loved New York Cityand took advantage of the many free cul-tural and educational opportunities as shewas growing up. She developed a love ofart, music, and science.

Upon graduation in 1944 she enlisted inthe navy and worked in Shoemaker, Califor-nia, at the naval hospital’s hematology labo-ratory. After World War II ended, she usedthe GI Bill to go to graduate school at Yale.She earned a Ph.D. in 1950 in bacteriology.

Friend’s first job after graduation wasworking at the Sloan Kettering Institute forCancer Research in New York City. She wasfree to do research that interested her, and itwas here that she was able to isolate whatbecame known as the Friend leukemia virus(FLV), which caused leukemia in rats. Shepublished her findings in 1957 in the Journalof Experimental Medicine. Many researchersasked for samples of the virus from her, andnumerous research projects followed.

In 1966 she moved on to Mount SinaiHospital to work in its new medical school’s

Center for Experimental Cell Biology. Shewas both a professor and the director. Shecontinued her research there, and her cellcultures, which were used all over theworld, made a significant impact on cell andmolecular biology. She received manyawards during her lifetime.

Friend, who never married, developedlymphoma when she was sixty and sufferedwith it for six years. She died in New YorkCity on January 13, 1987.

References: Diamond, Leila, “CharlotteFriend (1921–1987),” Nature (23 April 1987):748; Diamond, Leila, “Friend, Charlotte,”American National Biography, vol. 8, NewYork: Oxford University Press (1999); Dia-mond, Leila, and Sandra R. Wolman, ViralOncogenesis and Cell Differentiation: The Con-tributions of Charlotte Friend, New York: NewYork Academy of Sciences (1989).

Fulton, Mary Hannah1854–1927

Mary Fulton founded the Hackett MedicalCollege for Women, the first women’s med-ical college in China. A physician and med-ical missionary, she was bold enough totake on the responsibility of educating Chi-nese women medical students when thecollege that originally admitted them, Can-ton Medical Missionary Hospital, decidednot to continue to educate women. Had itnot been for Fulton, the female medical stu-dents would have had to discontinue theireducation.

Born May 31, 1854, in Ashland, Ohio, shereceived a good education at Lawrence Uni-versity and received her B.S. from HillsdaleCollege in 1874.

She taught in public school in Indianapo-lis, Indiana, before entering the Women’sMedical College of Pennsylvania, fromwhich she received her medical degree in1884. She took a great interest in doing med-ical missionary work in China, and thatsame year, the Presbyterian Board of For-eign Missions appointed her and herbrother, Albert, a Presbyterian minister, toserve in South China.

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They initially settled in Canton, and fol-lowing a brief stay in Kwangsi, whichproved to be too violent, returned to Can-ton. Fulton was very successful in setting updispensaries and worked at the CantonMedical Missionary Hospital. When therewas a fallout between two of the male lead-ers of the hospital, one physician left andtook all his male students with him. The fe-male medical students were left with noteachers or support. Fulton took it uponherself to set up a women’s and children’smedical hospital and later the Hackett Med-ical College for Women.

Throughout the late nineteenth centuryshe treated bubonic plague, endured theopium wars, and treated women slaves inChina. “I often returned from attendingthose ill at home, sick at heart. In everyhouse I found either bound feet, those af-flicted with tuberculosis or those addictedto the use of opium; sometimes all three”(Fulton 1915, 106). The bubonic plague wasdevastating to the Canton population:“John Kerr, the director of the Canton Mis-sionary Hospital, lamented that in ‘the greatcity of Canton, . . . there was no SanitaryBoard, the government adopted no sanitaryor preventive measures, there was no isola-tion of cases, no removal of filth or rubbish,no water supply, no system of drainage, and

. . . Chinese medicine and Chinese supersti-tions had full and unrestricted sway’”(Benedict 1996, 135).

Despite these overwhelming problems,Fulton persevered in establishing the med-ical school, and also a school for nurses. Sheretired to Pasadena, California, after poorhealth forced her to leave China. She wroteof her missionary work and died on January7, 1927.

See also: Guangzhou, ChinaReferences: Balmer, Randall, and John R.Fitzmier, The Presbyterians, Westport, CT:Greenwood Press (1993); Benedict, Carol,Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-century China,Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press(1996); Cadbury, William Warder, and MaryHoxie Jones, At the Point of a Lancet: OneHundred Years of the Canton Hospital, 1835–1935, Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh (1935); Ful-ton, Mary H., “Inasmuch”: Extracts from Let-ters, Journals, Papers, etc., West Medford,MA: Central Committee on the UnitedStudy of Foreign Missions (1915); Tucker,Sara W., “Opportunities for Women: TheDevelopment of Professional Women’sMedicine at Canton, China, 1879–1901,”Women’s Studies International Forum 13, no. 4(1990): 357–368.

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Geneva Medical College1835–1872

Geneva Medical College was the first insti-tution of higher education in the UnitedStates to confer a medical degree upon awoman, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first fe-male physician in the United States.

Geneva College wanted a medical schoolin order to bring in more money. This movewas very problematic, as the College ofPhysicians and Surgeons in New York (laterpart of Columbia University) was against it.College officials and others persisted untilthe college’s doors opened in 1835.

At the time Elizabeth Blackwell attended,the college had a two-year program. Theschool had a faculty of physicians who alsoengaged in private practice when the col-lege was not in session. The school did quitewell until the 1850s and 1860s broughtmuch new competition from other medicalschools; some of these, unlike Geneva Col-lege, were near hospitals.

In 1872, Geneva Medical College con-ferred its last medical degree. Most of themedical school faculty then moved to Syra-cuse University, which had better facilities.

Geneva Medical College had been a smallpart of Geneva College, which was startedin 1796 as Geneva Academy, gaining a char-ter to become a college for men in 1825 withthe help of John Henry Hobart. It wasknown as Geneva College until 1852, whenit became Hobart College, named after itsfounder. It is known as Hobart and WilliamSmith Colleges today.

References: Smith, Warren Hunting, Hobart

and William Smith: The History of Two Col-leges, Geneva, NY: Hobart and WilliamSmith Colleges (1972).

Giliani, Alessandra1307–1326

Alessandra Giliana was the first female pro-sector. She studied with and was an assis-tant to Mondino dei Luzzi, considered agreat anatomy teacher of the time, at theUniversity of Bologna in Italy.

She was skilled at dissecting cadavers andused a colored dye that dried quickly toshow the smallest of blood vessels to stu-dents. This demonstration was an indispen-sable learning aid for medical students of thetime. She died very young on March 26, 1326.

References: Hughes, Muriel Joy, Women Heal-ers in Medieval Life and Literature, New York:King’s Crown Press (1943); Shearer, BenjaminF., and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women inthe Life Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary,Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1996).

Goodrich, Annie Warburton1866–1954

Annie Goodrich implemented new stan-dards for nurses that became nationally ac-cepted and directly improved patient carein the United States. In Washington, D.C., in1918, Goodrich also established the first U.S.Army School of Nursing and served as thefirst dean.

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Born in Brunswick, New Jersey, on Feb-ruary 6, 1866, she was the second child ofAnnie Williams Butler and Samuel Gris-wold Goodrich. She and her older sister,Grace, had five more siblings: John,Samuel, Chauncey, Catherine, and Sophie.The family moved to New York City whenshe was still very young. She was tutoredat home and then in 1877 went to Berlin,Connecticut, to attend Miss Churchill’s Pri-vate School. The family then moved to En-gland, where her father’s job selling insur-ance took them, and she finished hersecondary education at private schoolsabroad.

They returned to Hartford, Connecticut,in 1885 because of her father’s failinghealth. Goodrich later moved to Boston andearned a living by being a companion to so-cialite Miss A.S.C. Blake. In 1890, Goodrichentered the New York Hospital TrainingSchool for Nurses, prompted by her feelingthat she could earn a living being a betternurse than the woman who aided her aginggrandparents could.

Upon graduation she stayed and workedat the hospital for a few months, then washighly recommended to take the position as

superintendent of nurses at the New YorkPost-Graduate Hospital. She helped im-prove the nursing-education standards andstayed for seven years before moving on towork at St. Luke’s Hospital for two years. In1902 she took a position as the superinten-dent of nursing at New York Hospital.

She was there until 1907, when she re-signed to take work at Bellevue and AlliedHospitals as the general superintendent.The state of New York also hired her tooversee its licensing and registration ofnurses; many training schools were in needof educational standardization.

She worked as an assistant professor atColumbia in 1917 in nursing administrationuntil she was needed in World War I. For theU.S. Army hospitals during the war she be-came the chief nursing inspector to the hos-pitals in the United States and France. Sheorganized the U.S. Army School of Nursingin Washington, D.C., in order to meet thedemands of nurses training for work in themilitary.

She later became the first dean of Yale’sSchool of Nursing, which had high stan-dards for entrance and graduation. The firstwoman to get a degree at Yale graduated inthe field of nursing. Goodrich also assistedin starting Yale’s master’s degree program.From the beginning she realized that“tragedy can result from placing responsi-bility in hands that lack the intelligent skillwhich results from mastery of both the sci-ence and the art of nursing” (Werminghaus1950, 75).

Goodrich retired from Yale in 1934 andserved as a consultant to a number of or-ganizations. Later, when World War II wasunder way, she helped the U.S. PublicHealth Service organize the Cadet NurseCorps. She died in Cobalt, Connecticut, onDecember 31, 1954.

Because of her high expectations and per-severance, the nursing profession madegreat progress. She wrote, served on manyorganizational committees, and workedtirelessly to care for the sick and to educatethose who would take up the job that shewould leave behind. She stated, “Knowl-edge is more than power; it is a definite re-sponsibility” (Koch 1951, 148).

Annie Warburton Goodrich (U.S. National Libraryof Medicine)

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References: Carey, Charles W., Jr.,“Goodrich, Annie Warburton,” AmericanNational Biography, vol. 9, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999); Koch, Harriett RoseBerger, Militant Angel, New York: Macmil-lan (1951); Werminghaus, Esther A., AnnieW. Goodrich: Her Journey to Yale, New York:Macmillan (1950).

Gordon, Doris Clifton Jolly1890–1956

Doris Gordon was the second woman to be-come a physician in New Zealand and thefirst woman in Australasia to be recognizedby a fellowship (granted in 1925) to theRoyal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Born in Melbourne on July 10, 1890, shewas the daughter of Lucy Clifton Crouchand Alfred Jolly. They emigrated in 1894 toNew Zealand and lived first in Wellington,then later, in 1905, in Tapanui, Otago.

Doris did not attend school until she be-came interested in becoming a medical mis-sionary. She graduated from the TapanuiDistrict High School and went on to theUniversity of Otago Medical School, gradu-ating in 1916. She became a house surgeonat Dunedin Hospital that same year.

She married William Patteson PollockGordon, a physician, in 1917. FollowingWorld War I she and her husband set uppractice in Stratford on the North Island.She spent much of her career dealing withchildbirth matters, particularly pain med-ications for women going through child-birth, and other obstetric and gynecologicconcerns of the times. She helped establish achair in obstetrics at Otago Medical Schooland founded the New Zealand ObstetricalSociety. High standards were very impor-tant to her.

“We are young enough not to be encour-aged by antiquity. Comparatively speakingwe have no shortage of money. Certainlyskyscraper hospital buildings are not popu-lar because of our earthquake menace, andamazing population spurts in northern ar-eas leave many hospitals in the predicamentof the small boy who habitually outgrowshis pants. But we can be proud of our com-

pulsory standard of floor space per bed, ourspacious theatre suites, our general stan-dard of surgery, and very proud of our uni-fied nursing stand” (Gordon 1958, 55–56).

She had four children, three sons and adaughter. She felt being a mother was ex-tremely fulfilling. She was strong-mindedand determined and did not hesitate to getinvolved in political matters. She stronglyopposed government control of medicine,feeling doctors could make better decisionsin health matters. She remained active withpublic health concerns all her life. DorisGordon died on July 9, 1956, at the MarireHospital.

References: Bryer, Linda, “Gordon, DorisClifton,” Dictionary of New Zealand Biogra-phy, vol. 4, 1921–1940, Wellington: BridgetWilliams Books and the Department of In-ternal Affairs (1998); Gordon, Doris Jolly,Doctor Down Under, London: Faber andFaber (1958).

Guangzhou, China

Guangzhou, China, became the center forProtestant missionary work in the nine-teenth century, welcoming female medicalmissionaries and also serving as an educa-tional center for women physicians inChina, first through the Canton MedicalMissionary Hospital and then through theHackett Medical College for Women.

Guangzhou is in the province of Guang-dong, but Westerners had also come toknow the city as Guangdong—Canton—bylate in the sixteenth century. The firstwomen’s medical college in China wasfounded there by Mary Hannah Fulton in1902 and thrived until the late 1920s, whenpolitical changes forced its closure.

See also: Fulton, Mary HannahReferences: Cohen, Saul B., The ColumbiaGazetteer of the World, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press (1998); Rubinstein, MurrayA., The Origins of the Anglo-American Mis-sionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840, Lan-ham, MD: Scarecrow Press (1996).

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Hamilton, Alice1869–1970

Alice Hamilton was a physician who pro-gressively advocated occupational healthamong workers in the industrial trades; shealso served as the first female faculty mem-ber at Harvard Medical School in 1919. As apioneer in occupational medicine, she be-came the foremost authority in the new fieldduring her lifetime. Without her persever-ance, occupational health hazards wouldhave gone undetected in many industries inthe United States.

Born in New York City on February 27,1869, to Montgomery Hamilton and Ger-trude Pond, she grew up in Fort Wayne, In-diana, in a fourth-generation home. She andher siblings, Edith, Margaret, and Norah,were all very close in age, and their parentstaught them at home. A brother, Arthur,whom everyone called Quint, was bornwhen she was seventeen.

Hamilton felt her home education wasnot very sound. Her lessons had includedreading, languages, history, and literaturebut very little math or science. Also, hermother had instilled in her a deep socialconsciousness. Gertrude Pond Hamilton feltvery strongly about the shortcomings of so-ciety that allowed cruelty to prisoners,blacks, child laborers, and the poor. She ad-mired those who did something about aproblem as opposed to only talking about it.

As was the family tradition, when Alicewas seventeen she attended a school inFarmington, Connecticut, for two years. Theschool was inadequate in some ways, butthere Alice began lifelong friendships.

When she returned home, she and her sisterEdith determined to prepare for a career, asthe family’s finances were dwindling.

Alice chose medicine, the only otherchoices for women at the time being teach-ing and nursing, neither of which appealedto her. She also felt she could do the mostgood as a physician. She was not well edu-cated in the sciences, however, so she gotsome tutoring in physics and chemistry andthen attended a small medical school in FortWayne for a year to study anatomy.

Once her father was convinced she wasserious about a medical career, she enrolledat the Medical School at the University ofMichigan in Ann Arbor. There she loved theatmosphere and the depth of courses of-fered. She also did not have to fight the sex-ism that existed in so many other schools.“The school was coeducational and hadbeen for about twenty years, so we womenwere taken for granted and there was noneof the sex antagonism which I saw later inEastern schools. A man student would stepaside and let the woman pass through thedoor first, the women had the chairs if therewere not enough to go round, but when itcame to microscopes or laboratory appara-tus it was first come, first served” (Hamilton1943, 40).

Graduating in 1893 from medical schoolat the University of Michigan, Hamiltonwanted to pursue bacteriology and pathol-ogy, but she was urged to take on some hos-pital work for the added experience. Sheheld two internships, two months in theHospital for Women and Children in Min-neapolis and nine months in Boston at theNew England Hospital for Women and

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Children. In this work, she became aware ofa wide variety of problems in public health.

Hamilton’s professors told her that tospecialize in bacteriology and pathology,she would need some education in Ger-many, so she and Edith traveled to Leipzigin 1895. She worked in Leipzig and Munich,returning to study at Johns Hopkins Med-ical School in Baltimore.

The Women’s Medical School of North-western University was where Hamiltonfirst began teaching. It was her desire to goto a settlement house, Hull House inChicago, and work, but it was hard to get inbecause many new students were interestedin working there. She was able to gain aroom at Hull House in 1897 and lived therewhile teaching at Northwestern. At HullHouse, Hamilton realized she needed moreeducation on industrial diseases. She sawmany working-class people suffering fromlead and carbon monoxide gas poisoningand pneumonia.

In 1910, Hamilton headed a commission

in Illinois to study industrial diseases. Atthis time, awareness of occupational haz-ards was growing, and Hamilton’s workwould focus on many of these specifichealth hazards.

The commission’s report in 1911 led Illi-nois and six other states to pass occupa-tional disease laws. The laws required em-ployers to provide periodic medical examsfor workers and incorporate safety mea-sures. Violators could be prosecuted.

Following her work with the Illinois com-mission, Hamilton worked for the federalgovernment in various capacities from 1911to 1920, studying the deleterious effects ofworking with lead, rubber, munitions, andrayon. In 1915, U.S. munitions factorieswere busy making explosives for France touse in World War I. Hamilton realized thatno one knew much about the health effectsof munitions production, and doctors knewvery little, if anything, about nitrous fumes.On one of her first trips to New Jersey, shewitnessed two workers involved in makingpicric (an explosive) for the French. The twomen, one black and one white, had orangestains on their skin and yellow in their hairand eyebrows.

I edged nearer and being greeted witha friendly grin by the Negro, ventureda question: “Dyeing cotton goods?”“No, Miss, we’re working over to theCanary Islands, making picric for theFrench.” “Is it dangerous?” I asked.“Not this yellow stuff ain’t, but there’sa red smoke comes off when theyellow stuff is making and it like toknocks you out and if you don’t run itgets you. You don’t suspicion nothingmuch, you goes home and eats yoursupper and goes to bed, and then inthe night you starts to choke up andby morning you’re dead. . . . Sure it’strue, Miss. The man who had the bunkunder me, he died that way. I ain’tgoing to stay myself after next payday.” (Hamilton 1943, 185)

She saw this dangerous munitions workeverywhere; nitrous fume poisoning wasvery frequent and the cause of many deaths

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in workers making explosives for the wareffort.

Hamilton was a pacifist during the war,but she did not make her views public be-cause she felt she was doing importantwork and did not want to jeopardize herjob. She was on good terms with most of thegovernment officials she worked with.

After the war ended, her reputation as anauthority in the field of public health gainedher an appointment to the Harvard MedicalSchool in 1919, a time when the school stilldid not admit women as students. Shestayed there and taught until retiring in1935, never attaining a position higher thanassistant professor.

She served on many state, national, andinternational committees working for pub-lic health and social reform. She supportedand spoke for women in industry and forthe protection of their health in legislationand regulations. Her major contributionwas the work Industrial Toxicology in 1934and its subsequent revised edition in 1949,which was the first work of its kind to en-lighten professionals on dangerous indus-trial practices.

In her autobiography, which she wroteduring World War II, she notes that theprogress between the two wars was very ev-ident. Even though the same kinds of dan-gerous materials were used for makingweapons, more safety regulations were inplace, and engineers and doctors knewmuch more about protecting workers. Evenemployers found that a high turnover ofworkers in these industries was not a prof-itable answer to the problems. “Industrialmedicine had at last become respectable”(Hamilton 1943, 198).

Hamilton suffered from increasingly poorhealth during her nineties; deafness and aseries of strokes hampered her. She died onSeptember 22, 1970, in Hadlyme, Connecti-cut, at the age of 101. It seemed appropriatethat the Occupational Safety and Health Actwas passed a few months later. PresidentNixon signed it on December 29, 1970. Theact serves to ensure safety and health in theworkplace.

References: Corn, Jacqueline Karnell,

“Hamilton, Alice,” American National Biogra-phy vol. 9, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999); Hamilton, Alice, Exploring theDangerous Trades: The Autobiography of AliceHamilton, M.D., Boston: Little, Brown (1943);Sicherman, Barbara, Alice Hamilton: A Life inLetters, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press (1984).

Han Suyin1917–

An early physician in Asia, Han Suyin isbest known for writing fiction, particularlyA Many Splendored Thing, which was madeinto a movie in 1955. Her writings includeautobiographical stories, historical and po-litical accounts of revolutionary China, andromances.

Born in Sinyang, China, as ElizabethChou on September 12, 1917, she served asa physician after receiving an education atthe University of London and the Univer-sity of Brussels. She worked at the QueenMary Hospital in Hong Kong from 1948 to1952 and then went to the Johore Bahru

Han Suyin (World Health Organization/U.S.National Library of Medicine)

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Hospital in Malaya. She maintained a pri-vate practice for about ten years.

Her later years have been substantiallyfilled with political and literary endeavors;in her early life she showed perseverance inpursuing a medical education when fewwomen sought such a profession. She wasone of the first Chinese women physiciansin Asia.

References: International Who’s Who ofWomen, London: Europa (1997).

Hautval, Adelaide1906–1988

Adelaide Hautval was a French physicianand psychiatrist who aided women in theGerman concentration camps during WorldWar II. She later testified about the medicalexperiments on Jewish women in the campsof Auschwitz. She was recognized in 1965by Yad Vashem as one of the RighteousAmong the Nations, an honor bestowed onthe courageous men and women whorisked their lives to help the Jews under per-secution in Nazi Germany.

Born in France to a Protestant family,Hautval studied medicine in Strasbourgand then worked in many psychiatric clinicsthere and in Switzerland. She encounteredresistance from the Nazis upon trying tocross occupied France in 1942 in order to at-tend her mother’s funeral. She was arrestedand imprisoned and witnessed the inhu-mane treatment of the Jewish prisoners bythe Gestapo. She protested continually andwas eventually sent to Auschwitz to workas a doctor treating sick Jewish women.

During her time there she was asked topractice gynecology and agreed until shediscovered that inhumane medical experi-ments were being performed on Jewishwomen. They were sterilized by means of Xrays or ovariectomies, sterilization beingpart of the grand plan for all Jewish womenafter the awaited Nazi victory. Hautval re-fused to participate and instead gave med-ical aid as best she could to women who hadtyphus. Had the Nazis known any of thewomen had typhus, they would have killed

them immediately because of its infectiousnature. Hautval hid some of the women ontop of the bunks in her block.

She was later sent to Birkenau and gavemedical aid as best she could under the cir-cumstances. She then worked at Ravens-bruck until liberation. She testified in 1964in a libel trial in England involving the ac-tions of Wladyslaw Dering, a physician whohad participated in the medical experimentsat Auschwitz. “Justice Frederick HoraceLawton, in his summation to the jury calledHautval ‘perhaps one of the most impres-sive and courageous women who have evergiven evidence in the courts of this coun-try’” (Gutman 1990, 650).

Hautval died in 1988. A book of her writ-ing about her experiences and the inhuman-ity of the Nazi medical experiments waspublished in 1991.

References: Epstein, Eric Joseph, and PhilipRosen, Dictionary of the Holocaust: Biography,Geography, and Terminology, Westport, CT:Greenwood Press (1997); Gutman, Israel,The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, New York:Macmillan (1990); Hautval, Adelaide, Méde-cine et Crimes Contre l’Humanité, Le Mejan,Arles: Actes Sud (1991); Rozett, Robert, andShmuel Spector, Encyclopedia of the Holo-caust, New York: Facts on File (2000).

Hazen, Elizabeth Lee1885–1975

Along with Rachel Fuller Brown, ElizabethHazen was responsible for discovering thefirst antifungal antibiotic that could be usedsafely on humans. Most scientists consid-ered this biomedical discovery to be themost important since Sir Alexander Flemingdiscovered penicillin in 1928. She andBrown subsequently donated all their royal-ties from the patent to scientific research.

Hazen was born in Rich, Mississippi, onAugust 24, 1885. Her parents were WilliamEdgar Hazen and Maggie Harper Hazen.Both died when she was a child, and anaunt and uncle adopted her. She attendedcollege at Mississippi Industrial Instituteand College. After receiving her B.S., she

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taught school in order to earn money forgraduate study at Columbia University.

Hazen earned her master’s degree in1917 and worked at the West Virginia Hos-pital’s bacteriological laboratory while pur-suing her Ph.D. at Columbia. She earned itin 1927 and went to work for the New YorkState Department of Health. Her work inanalyzing bacteria and possible vaccinesled to her interest in finding an antifungalantibiotic. She eventually worked withRachel Fuller Brown, and they developedNystatin. Hazen and Brown patented theirdiscovery in 1950, and E.R. Squibb andSons developed a method for mass produc-tion. Nystatin became available to the pub-lic in 1954.

Nystatin proved to have many uses. It is atreatment for Dutch elm disease, fightsmolds in foods, and saved priceless art-works that had developed fungus after aflood in Italy.

Hazen and Brown were both interested infurthering women’s education in science.Their donation of all income from the Ny-statin patent benefited numerous studentsand researchers. Hazen became a professorat Albany Medical College in 1958. She diedon June 24, 1975, in Seattle, Washington.

See also: Brown, Rachel FullerReferences: Baldwin, Richard S., The FungusFighters: Two Women Scientists and Their Dis-covery, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press(1981); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000); Vare, Ethlie Ann, and Greg Ptacek,Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb:Forgotten Women and Their UnforgettableIdeas, New York: Morrow (1988).

He Manqiu1920?–

He Manqiu became one of the first Chinesefemale doctors by training during the LongMarch in harsh and primitive conditions.

Born to a liberal father, she had onebrother and was close to her grandmother.

Her father was supportive of her early edu-cation at a missionary school in Chengdu,and she “wanted to participate in the revo-lution and help liberate women for a longtime. A lot of students in Chengdu were or-ganized to cut off pigtails and unbind feet,to propagate the spirit of the May 4th move-ment against feudal ideas. Although I wasyoung, I accepted the idea of women beingliberated” (Young 1996, 536).

He Manqiu joined the Red Army whenshe discovered women could become sol-diers. It was during a stay at a short-staffedhospital that she developed a desire to learnabout medicine. She became a nurse and af-ter that had an opportunity to take an examand become a medical student in the Chi-nese army. During the long march, she andthe other students learned medicine underprimitive conditions as they had no paperand pencils (only sticks for writing in thedirt), and had to memorize everything theteachers taught. For cadavers they had touse what they found.

On our way back we just happened tofind an intact, fresh corpse in a cave.We felt sure that this person had hadno family to prepare him for deathand that no one would try to find thebody because this corpse had had nofuneral or burial. We had seen severalfunerals in this Tibetan area. The fam-ily always claimed the dead body anddisposed of it in one of several ways.One funeral practice was to flay theskin and expose the body to the vul-tures. Another was cremation, and thethird was to put the body in a river orstream. Sometimes when a persondied, the body was tied to a tree andstones were piled up around until itwas completely covered. That’s why itwasn’t easy to find a cadaver in such aplace. Of course, we couldn’t use ourown soldiers or prisoners of war. Usu-ally when our soldiers died weclaimed the bodies and then buriedthem, because the Communist Partywas humane. If we hadn’t found thatperson’s body in the cave, we wouldhave had to wait for the body of a

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criminal who had been sentenced todeath. (Young 1996, 545)

He Manqiu continued to work as a physi-cian for many years in the Chinese militaryand retired to Beijing.

References: Young, Helen Praeger, “FromSoldier to Doctor: A Chinese Woman’s Storyof the Long March,” Science & Society 59, no.4 (Winter 1996): 531–547.

Healy, Bernadine1944–

Bernadine Healy has the distinction of be-ing the first woman appointed to head theNational Institutes of Health (NIH), in1991–1993 under George Bush. She was alsothe first woman to hold the position of deanof the College of Medicine and PublicHealth at Ohio State University before as-suming her duties as president of the Amer-ican Red Cross, the first physician to holdthat title. She was also CEO of the organiza-tion until her resignation in 2001.

Healy was born on August 2, 1944, inNew York City. She is the second of fourdaughters of Michael J. and Violet McGrathHealy. Her parents operated a perfumebusiness at home while she was growing upin Queens. She graduated from Hunter Col-lege High School and went on to Vassar,where she majored in chemistry, graduatingin 1965. She received her M.D. from Har-vard Medical School in 1970 along with 9other women in a class of 120.

She did her internal medicine and cardi-ology postgraduate work at Johns HopkinsUniversity School of Medicine and Hospi-tal, where she later served as full professorand directed the coronary care unit.

Healy has done extensive research as wellas worked with patients of all ages andbackgrounds. Her excellent managementskills have proved an asset wherever she hasworked within the medical community.While she served the Research Institute ofthe Cleveland Clinic Foundation as director,funding rose from $8 million to $36 millionin only five years. She is one of the few med-

ical professionals who don’t see manage-ment duties as detracting from research andpatient care. Her leadership has influencedthousands of physicians, politicians, and pa-tients. “As a doctor and researcher, I havededicated my life to alleviating human suf-fering,” Healy says. She was pressured to re-sign her position at the Red Cross followingcontroversial remarks after the terrorist at-tacks on September 11, 2001 (she had askedU.S. Muslims to support Israel’s inclusion inthe International Red Cross). She is marriedto Dr. Floyd Hoop and has two daughters.

References: Encyclopedia of World Biography,vol. 7, Detroit: Gale (1998); Stapleton,Stephanie, “Former NIH Chief to Lead RedCross,” American Medical News (2 August1999): 241; www.redcross.org/healyart.html.

Heikel, Rosina1842–1929

Rosina Heikel was the first female physicianin Finland, receiving her medical degreefrom the University of Helsinki in 1878. Herparents were Carl Johan Heikel and KristinaElisabet Dobbin. She did well in school and,like her brothers before her, wanted to studymedicine.

When she was ready for university study,no medical schools in Finland were open toher. She went to Stockholm and took a phys-iotherapy course, studied midwifery back inHelsinki, and then went back to Stockholm tolearn more about physiology and anatomy.She was eventually allowed to study medi-cine by special permission of the emperor.

After completing her degree, she was re-stricted to practicing medicine on womenand children. She worked as a pediatricianand gynecologist in Helsinki most of herlife. Outside of her medical career she wasvery involved in the women’s rights move-ment in Finland (Naisasialiitto Unioni) andwas a proponent of women’s education.

References: Forsius, Arno, “Emma RosinaHeikel (1842–1929)—Suomen ja Pohjois-maiden ensimmainen naislaakari,” http://www.saunalahti.fi/arnoldus/heikel.html;

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Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of theWorld, New York: Macmillan (1957);“Rosina Heikel: First Woman Doctor inFinland, 1842–1929,” Women of Learning,http ://www.hels inki . f i/akka- info/tiedenaiset/english/heikel.html; Seppanen,Anni, “Medical Women in Finland,” Journalof the American Medical Women’s Association5, no. 7 (1950): 291.

Hemenway, Ruth V.1894–1974

A pioneering medical missionary in Chinaprior to World War II, Ruth Hemenwaygrew to embrace practical medical scienceto meet the needs of the Chinese in the earlydecades of the twentieth century and to in-troduce some measure of health care in ru-ral areas. She placed health care above herChristian missionary goals in order to betterserve the people she saw in need.

Born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, in1894, she grew up on her father’s farm andhad an early desire to become a physician.She graduated from Northampton HighSchool in 1910 and then taught school in or-der to save money for medical school.

She continued to work odd jobs while at-tending Tufts Medical School. China was ingreat need of physicians, and Hemenwaywas motivated by her religious convictionsto serve others; she also wanted to learnabout other cultures and religions. Havinggrown away from traditional religions, shenevertheless realized that she would requiresupport from an organized religious groupin order to serve as a missionary. She ac-cepted support from the Methodist Wo-men’s Board of Foreign Missions in 1924and was destined for Mintsing, Fukien.

She arrived, began working in primitiveconditions, and realized a great need forsanitary practices, health clinics, and basiceducation. Early on she conducted a clinicin a village church:

Hordes of people of all ages and bothsexes began to push up to the table.We made them walk single file pastthe opposite side of the table. But with

each patient came children and babies,sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law, and afew neighbors. Many men were pres-ent and they all shoved themselvesinto the front row so that they couldhear all the histories and symptoms.No privacy was possible. A sick per-son at each end of the table shoutedher symptoms to one of us doctors.She had to yell louder than all thescreaming babies and shrieking rela-tives as well as shouting men who at-tempted to help her out in her narra-tion. One baby’s ears were packedwith dirt. When I asked why, theyoung mother told me that her babywas only two years old, and she wasafraid he was too young to bathe.(Hemenway 1977, 44–45)

Hemenway was in China from 1924 until1941 during very turbulent political times.Although the villages she worked in weregenerally far removed from the revolution,sometimes it came very close. She contin-ued to focus on proper health care service tothe people who needed it most. During thisperiod she occasionally spent brief periodsin the United States and elsewhere. On onesojourn in the United States to recover froman illness, she realized she had developedan appreciation of China’s “long history ofphilosophy and high ethical teachings, herlove of beauty in nature, in literature, in mu-sic and all arts. I thought of China’s youngpeople with their great artistic ability, theirhigh intelligence, their reverence for learn-ing, their respect for the aged, and their pas-sionate patriotism. I remembered Chineseways of courtesy and gentleness; their finesensitivity and intuition were characteristicsin even the illiterate mountain people. Eventhe poorest people possessed a wonderfulgraciousness and dignity. Confucius andsons had given their people a great deal”(Hemenway 1977, 92).

Hemenway died in 1974.

References: Hemenway, Ruth V., Ruth V.Hemenway, M.D.: A Memoir of RevolutionaryChina, 1924–1941, Amherst: University ofMassachusetts Press (1977).

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Hildegard of Bingen1098–1179

Hildegard’s writings include a great deal ofinformation on the medicinal properties ofplants, minerals, and animals. This informa-tion came to her in visions that both she andher parents believed were a gift from God.The use of the spiritual to explain the phys-ical world was acceptable during her time;science was considered a bridge betweenthe physical and spiritual worlds. Hilde-gard used her knowledge to treat the sick.She was well respected during and after hertime, and many health practitioners soughtout her writings.

She was born in summer 1098 in Bermers-heim, south of Mainz, Germany, the tenthchild of Hildebert and Mechthilde. Her par-ents were wealthy and belonged to the no-bility. Hildegard began having her visionsat a very early age. Apparently they were sostrong that she was ill much of the time. Herparents sent her to Disibodenberg, whereher Aunt Jutta and others at the Benedictinemonastery educated her. When her auntdied she became abbess of the convent. In1147 she founded her own convent at Ru-pertsberg. She died at Rupertsberg, nearBingen, in 1179.

References: Flanagan, Sabina, Hildegard ofBingen, 1098–1179: A Visionary Life, London:Routledge (1998); Pagel, Walter, “Hildegardof Bingen,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography,vol. 6, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons(1970–1980); Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sci-ences: A Biographical Dictionary, Westport,CT: Greenwood Press (1996); Snodgrass,Mary Ellen, Historical Dictionary of Nursing,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

Hoby, Lady Margaret1571–1633

Throughout her life, Lady Margaret Hobyplayed the role of a physician in taking careof neighbors and family. Her diary is theearliest that shows the deep influence of

Puritanism on the lives of Elizabethanwomen.

The daughter of Arthur Dakins andThomasine Genevieve, Hoby married threetimes. Her last husband was Sir ThomasHoby. She was educated in the household ofHenry Hastings and became the caregiverfor workers of her husband’s estate. It is notclear how vast her medical knowledge was,but it is clear that she believed that God wasthe great healer: “I may truly conclude it isthe Lord, and not the phisision, who bothordaines the medesine for our health andorderethe the ministring of it for the good ofhis children” (ca. 1599; Hoby 1998, 13).

She witnessed much death due to diseaseand plagues, which reinforced her faith inGod. “This day I hard the plague was sogreat at whitbie that those wch were cleareshutt themselues vp, and the infected thatescaped did goe abroad: Likewise it was re-ported that, at London, the number wastaken of the Liuinge and not of the deed:Lord graunt that these Iudgementes mayCause England wt speed to tourne to theLord” (ca. 1603; Hoby 1998, 195). In her day,the faithful saw disease as a punishmentfrom God. She had no children and died in1633. She was buried in the chancel of Hack-ness Church on September 6, 1633.

References: Hoby, Lady Margaret, The Pri-vate Life of an Elizabethan Lady: The Diary ofLady Margaret Hoby, 1599–1605, ed. JoannaMoody, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton(1998); Slack, Paul, “Hoby, Margaret, Lady,”Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Per-sons, Oxford: Oxford University Press(1993).

Hodgkin, Dorothy MaryCrowfoot

1910–1994

Dorothy Hodgkin received the Nobel Prizein chemistry in 1964 for her use of crystal-lography as an exceptional analytical tool inshedding new light on the structure of mol-ecules. She identified the structure of over100 molecules, including vitamins D and

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B-12, insulin, and penicillin. She was thesecond woman after Florence Nightingaleto be a recipient of Britain’s Order of Meritand also received the Royal Medal, theRoyal Society’s highest honor, in 1965. Shewas the first woman to receive this honor.

She was born in Cairo, Egypt, then aBritish colony, on May 12, 1910. Her father,John Crowfoot, worked for the British gov-ernment in the education department, andher mother, Grace Mary Hood Crowfoot,enjoyed weaving in the ancient methodsand botanical studies. After the outbreak ofWorld War I, the family was dispersed.When Dorothy was four, the Crowfoots senther and her three younger sisters to En-gland for safety; there, they stayed with anursemaid and had their grandmothernearby. They saw their mother only onceduring the four years of the war, butDorothy felt the separation made her moreindependent.

After the war, her mother taught the girlsat home for a time. Dorothy attended the SirJohn Leman School from 1921 to 1927. Shewas interested early on in chemistry andbiochemistry, and also in crystals.

She graduated from Somerville College atOxford University in 1931. She then took anopportunity to work with John D. Bernal atCambridge University. He was working onsterol crystals and had a well-financed labo-ratory. She continued her exploration of X-ray crystallography on protein crystals.

In 1934 she was diagnosed with severerheumatoid arthritis. Hodgkin complainedlittle during her life about the pain she en-dured from this crippling disease, and it didnot slow her work or determination.

She accepted a job at Somerville Collegeeven though she would miss Bernal and hiswell-equipped lab. At Somerville she had towork in antiquated laboratories, and therewas a shortage of equipment. She also did notenjoy the isolated life of a woman scientist atOxford. Many clubs excluded women, whichshe felt was a huge problem. She did work offand on at Cambridge when she could whileteaching chemistry at Somerville.

While at Somerville, she and her researchstudent, C. H. Carlisle, determined the struc-ture of cholesterol iodide. “For the first time,

X-rays had revealed the structure of a mole-cule that synthetic and organic chemistscould not decipher” (McGrayne 1998, 237).

This success encouraged Hodgkin to studyas many crystals as she could. Before long,other scientists learned of her work and be-gan sending samples for her examination.

In 1937, she married Thomas L. Hodgkin;they would have three children, Luke, Eliza-beth, and Toby. Thomas was involved in pol-itics and was a member of the CommunistParty; Dorothy was interested in the worldpeace movement. Having lost four of herbrothers in World War I, Dorothy would beinvolved in controversies throughout her lifebecause she campaigned for peace duringthe post–World War II and Cold War years.

She had obtained her Ph.D. in 1937 fromOxford and soon thereafter became inter-ested in cracking the code for insulin andpenicillin. With the outbreak of World WarII, she focused on penicillin. At that timemany chemists thought this work could notsucceed because penicillin was far too com-plex. Dorothy was determined to find itschemical structure using X-ray crystallogra-phy. “Due to the increasing number of casu-alties in World War II, soldiers were in direneed of the medicinal properties of peni-cillin, as the number of bacterial infectionscontracted during the war was increasing ata rapid rate. The world, however, was at astandstill in terms of mass-producing peni-cillin because its chemical structure was stillunknown” (Van der Does 1999, 170).

By 1944, Hodgkin had determined thestructure of penicillin. She was promotedfrom fellow to university lecturer at Oxfordin 1946 and received international recogni-tion. She aided in founding the Interna-tional Union of Crystallography, a politicalworry to some Western governments be-cause the union welcomed members fromany country and did not exclude those whobelonged to the Communist Party. This in-clusiveness suited Hodgkin’s goal of unityin the world of science.

Her next success was with B-12, a muchlarger molecule than penicillin and key incuring anemia. John White worked with heron this mystery. She was finally promotedto full professor at Oxford in 1958 and had a

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new laboratory. In 1964 she received the No-bel Prize in chemistry. She kept on the trailof insulin, which had interested her thirtyyears before, and determined its structure in1969. “She had the imagination to insist thatthe problem she chose could be solved, eventhough she had to wait for many years forthe answer. In fact Dorothy pioneered manyof the methods of macromolecular structuredetermination that we now take forgranted” (Glusker 1994, 2469). Hodgkinsdied on July 29, 1994.

References: Glusker, Jenny P., “DorothyCrowfoot Hodgkin,” Protein Science 3, no. 12(December 1994): 2465–2469; McGrayne,Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Sci-ence, Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Nobel Lec-tures: Chemistry 1963–1970, River Edge, NJ:World Scientific (1999); Van der Does,Louise Q., and Rita J. Simon, RenaissanceWomen in Science, Lanham, MD: UniversityPress of America (1999).

Honzakova, Anna1875–1940

Anna Honzakova was the first Czechwoman to graduate from a Czechoslovakianuniversity and become a physician. Aftergraduating from Minerva high school inAustria, she attended medical school at theUniversity of Czechoslovakia in Prague.She obtained her physician credentials in1902. She went on to serve as a school physi-cian at a girls’ grammar school and laterspecialized in gynecology and midwifery.She authored a book on protecting childrenagainst tuberculosis and also wrote a bookabout Anna Bayerova.

She was born in Kopidlno on November16, 1875. She served as the first president ofthe Women’s Medical Association ofCzechoslovakia. She died on October 13,1940.

See also: Bayerova, AnnaReferences: Ceskoslovensky Biograficky Slov-nik, Prague: Academia (1992); Lovejoy, Es-ther P., Women Doctors of the World, NewYork: Macmillan (1957).

Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy1892–1984

Icie Hoobler made important contributionsto the field of nutrition, particularly the nu-trition of nursing mothers and their infants,by studying nutrient values of vitamins andanalyzing milk. She also discovered thatcottonseed products varied in toxicity. Thisfinding later resulted in better manufactur-ing methods that “greatly reduced or re-moved the toxicity and made the cottonseed products safer to use in animal foods”(Hoobler 1982, 56).

Born in Gallatin, Missouri, on July 23,1892, Hoobler had two brothers and a sister.Their parents, Perry Macy and Ollevia Elva-ree Critten Macy, managed a farm. Hooblerreceived her early education in a one-roomschoolhouse and later attended Central Col-lege for Women, as did her sister.

In the beginning she wanted to please herfather, who wanted a musician in the family.She spent three years of intense practice onthe piano only to discover music was not forher. She did enjoy her classes with Lily G.Egbert, an enthusiastic female biologyteacher, and thought about a career in sci-ence. She received an A.B. degree in Englishin 1914.

She wanted to attend the University ofChicago, but her parents were concernedthat she was too young and inexperiencedfor a big-city university. Instead she at-tended Randolph-Macon College forWomen for a year to prepare. She was fur-ther encouraged in her endeavor to studyscience and went to the University ofChicago in 1915 to earn enough credits toobtain a B.S. After receiving that degree, shetaught chemistry at the University of Col-orado and at the same time earned her M.S.degree.

She entered Yale University GraduateSchool in 1918 and received her Ph.D. in1920 in physiological chemistry. It was atYale that she did her study on cottonseedsand their toxicity. She was at the same timeaware of new developments in the sciences.“What intrigued me most was the fact thatchemistry and physics were becoming in-

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creasingly relevant in the study of biologyand physiology. Body and mind processeswere being recognized as physiological innature and the basis of mental activity. Theinterlinking of the human body and mindchemically and physiologically had a pro-found effect on my desire to ultimately beinvolved in these areas of study and re-search” (Hoobler 1982, 69).

Her first position was as an assistantchemist at Western Pennsylvania Hospital.She had to work many hours in the labora-tory and faced much discrimination, such asnot being allowed to eat in the doctors’ din-ing room and not having a women’s rest-room nearby. The lack of a convenient rest-room led to a serious bout of nephritis, akidney infection; it was only after a year’sleave that she was well enough to return towork. After complaining to no avail, shesubmitted her resignation. However, oncethe president of the board of trustees foundout what was happening, facilities were im-proved after she left.

She moved on to become director of theNutrition Research Laboratories at the Mer-rill-Palmer School and Children’s Hospitalin Detroit. There, she demonstrated good or-ganizational skills and became an expert onnutrition. She studied metabolism, thechemical characteristics of growth in chil-dren and how nutrition affects growth, hu-man milk composition, and the chemistry ofred blood cells. On June 11, 1938, she mar-ried Dr. Raymond Hoobler, who encouragedher to pursue her professional goals. Hedied after only five years. Hoobler contin-ued her work and eventually retired in Gal-latin, Missouri. She died on January 6, 1984.

Hoobler wrote her autobiography in part“because of my hope that young womenstudents of like desires and intellectual in-terest as my own, may find some optimisticguidance and encouragement to enter thescience arena where their participation andfull life commitment are needed and theirunique talents and skills may be given fullexpression, in a worthy, womanly, and satis-fying manner” (Hoobler 1982, 3).

References: Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy,Boundless Horizons: Portrait of a Pioneer

Woman Scientist, Smithtown, NY: ExpositionPress (1982); Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Physi-cal Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary, West-port, CT: Greenwood Press (1997).

Horney, Karen TheodoraClementina Danielsen

1885–1952

Karen Horney was a physician and world-renowned psychoanalyst who challengedFreud’s theories. She received a great deal ofrespect within the psychiatric community inthe early twentieth century and is still re-spected today.

Born September 16, 1885, in Blankense,Germany, Horney was the daughter ofClotilde Marie Van Ronzelen Danielsen andBerndt Henrik Wackels Danielsen. She re-ceived her medical education at the Univer-sity of Freiburg and received her medicaldegree in 1915 from the University of Berlin.She specialized in psychiatry and wasdeeply involved in psychoanalysis, whichKarl Abraham had brought to Berlin.

She had married Oskar Horney, a doc-toral student, in Freiburg. She became un-happy and asked Abraham, a follower ofFreud, to psychoanalyze her. She began lec-turing and teaching on the techniques ofpsychoanalysis. In the 1920s her marriageended in separation and later divorce. Shehad three daughters.

She differed very much with Freud’s viewof “penis envy” and also was the first to ar-gue that “womb envy” existed. She believedcultural factors had a greater influence onwomen’s subordination to men. She wrotepersuasively and challenged some ofFreud’s other views as well, such as hisview that biological development is a pri-mary force in personality development. Shegained many followers over the years.

Fascism was rising in Germany, and in1932 she moved to Chicago to work at theInstitute for Psychoanalysis. She stayed twoyears before leaving for New York City. Herlectures there at the New School for SocialResearch at the New York Psychoanalytic

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Institute were very popular and causedmuch friction between the Chicago and theNew York psychoanalytic institutes. Thereseemed to be two growing schools ofthought, one espousing Freud’s theoriesand the other, Horney’s.

The New York Psychoanalytic Instituteeventually demoted Horney, and she re-signed. She founded the Association for theAdvancement of Psychoanalysis, where sheworked for the last nine years of her life.

Horney had a very good understandingof the relationship between physical ail-ments and psychological illness. “It is im-possible to tell from a cough alone whetherthe patient has a cold or tuberculosis. Thesame is true of functional female disorders,especially in borderline cases. The physicianmust determine whether they require phys-ical or psychological treatment, or somecombination of the two. As I have sug-gested, this can be a very difficult diagnosis.If the patient’s problems are psychological,in whole or in part, the physician must fur-ther decide whether his help will suffice orwhether psychoanalytic therapy is calledfor” (Horney 2000, 116).

She died in New York City on December4, 1952.

References: Horney, Karen, The UnknownKaren Horney, Essays on Gender, Culture, andPsychoanalysis, New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-versity Press (2000); Paris, Bernard J., KarenHorney: A Psychoanalyst’s Search for Self-Understanding, New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-versity Press (1994); Quinn, Susan, A Mindof Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney, NewYork: Summit Books (1987); Sokal, M. M.,“Horney, Karen (Danielsen),” in MartinKaufman, Stuart Galishoff, and Todd L.Savitt, eds., Dictionary of American MedicalBiography, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1984).

Hubbard, Ruth1924–

Ruth Hubbard was the first tenured femaleprofessor at Harvard. She is a prominent bi-ologist who has worked to educate scien-

tists in the applications of genetics research,encourage women in the sciences, andclimb the ladder of academia at Harvard.

Born March 3, 1924, in Vienna, Austria,Hubbard grew up making rounds with herphysician father, Richard Hoffman. Hermother, Helene, was also a physician. At anearly age, Ruth assumed she would be adoctor. Her family moved to the UnitedStates in 1938 following Hitler’s annexationof Austria. She attended school in Brook-line, Massachusetts, and then entered Rad-cliffe College for premedical studies. Shelater saw that a traditional medical careerwas unusual for a woman and turned herattention to biochemistry: “The fact thatwomen were more successful in gaining ac-cess to biochemistry than to anatomy andphysiology has its parallel in the fact thatbiochemistry was also more accessible toJews than were anatomy and physiology. Itmay be that the young, aspiring science ofbiochemistry was simply more open thanthe old, established medical sciences” (Hub-bard 1990, 44).

Ruth Hubbard (Bachrach/U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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She earned her Ph.D. in 1950. She enjoyedresearch more than teaching, a preferencethat presented problems for many women.Either universities hiring research scientistswere not hiring women or institutions thatwere hiring women had small or inade-quate research facilities. Hubbard, however,had the good fortune of working at GeorgeWald’s laboratory at Harvard and eventu-ally worked her way up, combining teach-ing and research. Her early interests lay inphotochemistry and vision, retinal pig-ments, and photoisomerization. She laterbecame concerned about the emphasis ongenetics as the sole basis for explaining peo-ple’s characteristics. She is also very con-cerned about ethical standards in genetic re-search.

Beyond asking what genetic researchshould be done and how it should beapplied, we need to question the cur-rent emphasis on genes as determiningour development, health, and behav-ior. Focusing on genes leads almost in-evitably to an assignment of values:these genes are good, those genes arebad. We may start with relativelyclear-cut cases like Tay-Sachs disease,which is invariably fatal in early child-hood, but we almost immediately getinto gray areas where people leadingquite ordinary lives can suddenly findthemselves stigmatized as defective.

Scientists and physicians should notbe given the right to assign such la-bels, but the problem is greater thanthat. The labels themselves are inher-ently wrong, no matter who is doingthe labeling. There is no way to saywhich lives are or are not valuable. Iam glad Woody Guthrie was born,though he developed Huntington Dis-ease. I am glad for all the blind poetsand musicians, from Homer to StevieWonder. Who knows, maybe HelenKeller would have led a completelyundistinguished life instead of becom-ing a famous writer and political ac-tivist had her immune system notfailed her as a child. (Hubbard andWald 1997, 161)

As a feminist and scientist, Hubbard haswritten for both scholarly and popular pub-lications. She writes clearly about her con-cerns within the scientific community.Aware of the advances in medical scienceover the years, she is also aware of and out-spoken about the dangers of proceedingwithout a conscientious effort to maintainproper policies and procedures for the goodof humanity.

Hubbard is professor emerita at Harvard.She married Frank Hubbard in 1942, butthey later divorced. She married GeorgeWald in 1958, and they had two children,Elijah and Deborah Hannah.

References: Hubbard, Ruth, The Politics ofWomen’s Biology, New Brunswick, NJ: Rut-gers University Press (1990); Hubbard,Ruth, and Elijah Wald, Exploding the GeneMyth: How Genetic Information Is Producedand Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Em-ployers, Insurance Companies, Educators, andLaw Enforcers, Boston: Beacon Press (1997);Kropf, Allen, and Ruth Hubbard, “The Pho-toisomerization of Retinal,” Photochemistryand Photobiology 12, no. 4 (October 1970):249–260.

Hugonay, Countess Vilma1847–1922

Countess Vilma Hugonay was the first fe-male physician to graduate at a medicalschool in Hungary. She was motivated to re-ceive medical training after her first childdied. She received her M.D. in 1879 at theUniversity of Zurich but for many yearswas allowed to practice only midwifery. In1897, she was finally allowed by the Hun-garian Ministry of Culture to practice as aphysician.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

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Hyde, Ida Henrietta1857–1945

Ida Hyde broke down the barriers in Ger-many to advanced education for womenand was the first women to work in themedical school at the University of Heidel-berg. She did research on a variety of phys-iological aspects of health and wrote twotextbooks as well as numerous papers onphysiology, all of which were well received.

She was born in Davenport, Iowa, on Sep-tember 8, 1857, to Babette Loewenthal andMeyer H. Hyde. Her father left the family,and her mother, her brother, and she movedto Chicago, where Hyde attended publicschools. She eventually taught in the publicschools and introduced science courses. In1891 she received an A.B. degree from Cor-nell with a major in the biological sciences.

She continued her studies that year atBryn Mawr College, but after a professor atthe University of Strassburg heard abouther research project on jellyfish, he invitedher to Germany on a fellowship in 1893. Atthat time there were no German universitiesthat allowed women students, but she wasallowed use of the laboratory. When shecould not gain entrance at Strassburg, shepersisted with the University of Heidelberg,which accepted her as a Ph.D. candidate.She graduated with honors in 1896.

Hyde worked at the Naples ZoologicalStation, doing research on octopus salivary

glands, then came back to the United Statesto work at Harvard Medical School. Shestudied the heart’s blood flow and alsotaught at some preparatory schools. In 1898she moved to the University of Kansas, be-coming professor of physiology in the med-ical school.

Hyde was active in community health andlectured on numerous public health con-cerns while at Kansas. She also began a pro-gram to examine children with communica-ble diseases. Her research included manyaspects of physiology. “She studied the ef-fects of the environment and nutrition on thenervous system, the reactions of various an-imals to drugs, alcohol, and stress, and theeffects of caffeine on humans. She also de-veloped a microelectrode that enabled her tostimulate and study a single cell” (Shor 1999,613). From 1922 to 1923 she went to the Uni-versity of Heidelberg and did research on ra-dium and its biological effects.

Hyde worked hard to ensure equal edu-cational opportunities for women in the sci-ences. She was the first woman to become amember of the American Physiological Soci-ety (1902). She died in California on August22, 1945.

References: Shor, Elizabeth Noble, “Hyde,Ida Henrietta,” American National Biography,vol. 11, New York: Oxford University Press(1999).

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Inglis, Elsie Maude1864–1917

Elsie Inglis was a pioneer and leader ofwomen physicians in Scotland, founded theElsie Inglis Hospital for Women and Chil-dren, and for the cause of World War Ifounded the Scottish Women’s Hospitals.She proposed, and had accepted by some ofthe Allies, women medical units in the fieldto treat wounded soldiers.

Born in Naini Tal, India, at a Himalayanhill station where her father worked in thecivil service, she had seven siblings and wasencouraged at an early age to gain a goodeducation. Her father was very supportiveof her decision to go into medicine.

She first attended the Edinburgh Schoolof Medicine for Women, which had beenfounded and was run by Sophia Jex-Blake.She later went to Glasgow to attend theMedical College for Women because shewas interested in surgery and the collegehad better facilities for those interested inclinical practice. She passed her Triple Qual-ification in 1892 and went to work in theHospital for Women in London as a housesurgeon.

During these early years she worked withElizabeth Garrett Anderson and other pio-neers in England. She went to Dublin andtook a three-month course in midwifery inthe Rotunda. There were more mixedclasses there (both men and women), andshe felt the teaching was exceptional. Shelater opened a practice in Edinburgh withDr. Jessie MacGregor.

Inglis’s father died in 1894. The loss of theman who had always supported her career

and with whom she had corresponded al-most daily was a severe blow to her. In 1899the University of Edinburgh admittedwomen to the medical examinations; Inglispassed and became an official physicianwith a medical degree. From then on herpractice grew, and she responded to theneeds she saw in the community. Sheopened a clinic, called a hospice, that wasstaffed by women and included a maternityward. As the hospice grew, it was clear thather idea of locating it on High Street, nearher patients’ homes, had been a good one.Eventually, “she had a small ward of fivebeds for malnutrition cases, a baby clinic, amilk depot, health centres, and the knowl-edge that the Hospice has the distinction ofbeing the only maternity centre run bywomen in Scotland. This affords women stu-dents opportunities denied to them in othermaternity hospitals” (Balfour 1919, 133).

Inglis never denied treatment to thosewho could not afford it. According to one ofher patients, “‘That woman has done morefor the folk living between Morrison Streetand the High Street than all the ministers inEdinburgh and Scotland itself ever did forany one. She would never give in to diffi-culties. She gave her house, her property,her practice, her money to help others’”(Balfour 1919, 136).

Over the next decade, Inglis continuedher work as a physician in London andDublin. She also continued to work forwomen’s suffrage and to promote equalityin education for women, involvements shehad taken up while still in medical school.Her organizational skills were well honedwhen World War I broke out. She decided to

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form a unit of women to help with caringfor the wounded in the field. Suddenly theEdinburgh Suffrage offices became the Scot-tish Women’s Hospitals. Inglis had an enor-mous circle of friends in the medical com-munity as well as the suffrage movement,and all were willing to help her.

Britain did not accept the women’s med-ical units, but the French and others wereglad to have them. The Scottish Women’sHospitals went to France, Belgium, Corsica,Serbia, and Russia. Inglis and her unit didmuch work in Serbia even after being takenprisoner. She and her colleagues workedunder horrendous conditions with inade-quate facilities and medical supplies. She re-turned to England briefly after being re-leased, only to take a medical team toRussia, where help was badly needed. She

stayed with her units until the BolshevikRevolution was inevitable and they had topull out. She returned to England and diedthe day after she arrived, on November 25,1917.

See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Edin-burgh School of Medicine; Jex-Blake, SophiaLouisa; Scottish Women’s HospitalsReferences: Balfour, Lady Frances, Dr. ElsieInglis, New York: George H. Doran (1919);Leneman, Leah, In the Service of Life: TheStory of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’sHospitals, Edinburgh: Mercat Press (1994);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science:Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to theMid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

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Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam1842–1906

One of the most prominent women physi-cians and educators of the late nineteenthcentury, Mary Jacobi was the first woman toteach at the all-male New York Postgradu-ate Medical School. She was also a giftedwriter, a leader in promoting equal educa-tion and training for women in medicalschools when few were allowed entrance,and a vocal activist in the women’s suffragemovement of the late nineteenth century.

Born in London, England, on August 31,1842, Jacobi was the daughter of GeorgePalmer Putnam, a New York publisher whohad taken his family to London to open anoffice there, and Victorine Haven. Mary wasthe oldest of eleven children and was deter-mined early in life to be a physician. Her fa-ther returned with his family to New Yorkin 1847. She graduated from school in 1859,although much of her education had takenplace at home.

She first studied at the College of Phar-macy in New York and was the first femalegraduate in 1863. She spent some time inNew Orleans during the Civil War, tendingto an injured brother and writing both non-fiction and fiction. Upon leaving New Or-leans, she enrolled in the Female MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania and graduated in1864. Some faculty members there felt shehad not had enough education to graduate,particularly the dean, Edwin Fussell. How-ever, Ann Preston, a professor at the college,strongly supported Jacobi and felt sheshould be allowed to take graduation exam-inations: “[Fussell] contends that she has not

fulfilled the requirements, then that she is in-competent, and intermittently that her cre-dentials were not sufficient for advancedplacement. He then escalates the charges tomisrepresentation and a possibility of delib-erate fraud. When he calls her ‘unworthy,’ itis not clear whether his objections are techni-cal, relating to formal requirements; princi-pled, relating to competence and knowledge;or moral, relating to deceptions” (Gartner1996, 474). Fussell resigned following this in-cident, and Ann Preston became the dean.

Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi (MCP HahnemannUniversity)

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Following her internship at the New En-gland Hospital for Women and Children, Ja-cobi was convinced that she still did nothave enough knowledge to practice medi-cine, a concern of most women physiciansof the time. The schools that were startedjust for women did not have access to thekinds of medical laboratories or teachinghospitals that would have allowed them tobetter train their students.

Jacobi sought admission to the Univer-sity of Paris and was denied numeroustimes. She studied on her own, was taughtby observing physicians working in hospi-tals, and eventually obtained admission to the university. She graduated with hon-ors in 1871. During this time she lived onher writing and on what her family couldsend her.

Following her final examinations, she stillfelt challenged. “I was prepared for a muchmore difficult examination, and internally Idon’t consider the passing this one evenwell (that other youth was accepted in spiteof the most innumerable and awful blun-ders, so you see the mere fact of passingdoes not count for much), to be any greatshakes; still as it is almost the first school inthe world, and as the examination is reallymuch more minute and extensive than athome, I suppose it counts for something”(Putnam 1925, 183).

She began working at the Women’s Med-ical College of the New York Infirmary,which had been founded by ElizabethBlackwell. She taught pharmacology andtherapeutics. She strived to strengthen thecurriculum and in 1874 became head of pe-diatric outpatients at Mount Sinai Hospital.She served as a professor of children’s dis-eases at New York Postgraduate MedicalSchool in 1882.

Her views on some aspects of medicineand medical education differed in some re-spects from Elizabeth Blackwell’s. She feltwomen should not specialize in women’sand children’s diseases but instead shouldbe well rounded. She also did not opposeexperimentation on animals (Blackwell wasan antivivisectionist).

She viewed a male physician as an equal.“Perhaps Jacobi’s successes in the male pro-

fessional world were due at least in part toher willingness to accept men as equals. Cer-tainly Jacobi did not share Blackwell’s am-bivalence toward romantic attachments tomen, and her private correspondence neverreveals the suspicion of marriage character-istic of many accomplished women of hergeneration” (Morantz-Sanchez 1985, 194).

She married a well-known pediatricianpioneer, Abraham Jacobi, in 1873. They hadthree children, only one who survived toadulthood. She also maintained a close rela-tionship with many of her siblings.

Much of her medical writing focused onpathology and neurology. She did not setlimits for herself as to what she would writeabout. “If Ann Preston and Hannah Long-shore ventured into territories of languageclosed to women, Mary Putnam Jacobi laidclaim to vast tracts of forbidden ground:menstruation, hysteria, nervous disease, theinterior of the uterus. Other nineteenth-cen-tury women physicians were active scien-tists or prolific popular writers; few com-bined both genres, and none as productivelyas Mary Putnam Jacobi” (Wells 2000, 147).

Before her death from a brain tumor, shepublished the article “Description of EarlySymptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Com-pressing the Cerebellum. From Which theWriter Died. Written by Herself,” which wasreprinted in Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D.: APathfinder in Medicine (1925). She circulatedthe report to her physician friends. She diedon June 10, 1906.

See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; Medical Col-lege of Pennsylvania; Preston, AnnReferences: Gartner, C. B., “Fussell’s Folly:Academic Standards and the Case of MaryPutnam Jacobi,” Academic Medicine 71, no. 5(May 1996): 470–477; Gartner, Carol B., “Ja-cobi, Mary Corinna Putnam,” American Na-tional Biography, vol. 11, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999); Morantz-Sanchez,Regina Markell, Sympathy and Science:Women Physicians in American Medicine,New York: Oxford University Press (1985);Putnam, Ruth, Life and Letters of Mary Put-nam Jacobi, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons(1925); Wells, Susan, Out of the Dead House:Nineteenth-Century Women Physicians and the

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Writing of Medicine, Madison: University ofWisconsin Press (2000).

Jacobs, Aletta Henriette1854–1929

Aletta Jacobs was the first Dutch femalemedical doctor in the Netherlands. She ob-tained a license to practice medicine in1878. She led the way for more women en-tering universities in the Netherlands andwas an activist for social reforms andwomen’s suffrage.

Born on February 9, 1854, Jacobs was theyoungest of eight children of Abraham andAnna de Jongh Jacobs. She was born andraised in Sappemeer, a small village inGroningen. She had six brothers and foursisters. Her father was a country doctorwho made rounds, and her mother kepthouse. Jacobs received a good education, asher father and mother felt education wasimportant.

She enjoyed the outdoors and was quite atomboy. She was a good student, at timesbeing assisted by her father and older broth-ers. She wanted to be a doctor like her fatherand easily passed the exam to become apharmacist’s assistant. The local boys’ highschool allowed her to sit in on classes, andthe University of Groningen permitted herto attend classes for one year. She realizedlater that “ultimately, the opening of theDutch universities to women depended onmy progress during this first year” (Jacobs1996, 13).

She did very well even though she was of-ten ill in her student days and received hermedical credentials after defending her doc-toral thesis on March 10, 1879. She becamethe first female doctor in the Netherlands.She wanted to continue her studies and didtravel to London to visit the New Hospitalfor Women opened by Elizabeth Garrett An-derson. Jacobs and Anderson were both in-terested in many social issues of the times,and they got along well together.

In September 1879, Jacobs went to Am-sterdam to attend a medical conference andwas encouraged to get further training inLondon. This was her intent, but “during

the conference, I received so many requestsfrom Amsterdam families asking me to re-place their regular doctor and I was ap-proached by so many mothers wanting meto supervise the health of their children thatit seemed to me wiser not to return abroad”(Jacobs 1996, 35).

She set up a practice in Amsterdam andoffered free clinics to the poor, treatingwomen from many different backgroundsfor many years. Many of them had toomany children and were relieved when Ja-cobs advocated birth control, a subject littlediscussed at the time.

This approach led to much controversy,with some accusing Jacobs of promotingabortion and some fearing that her viewswould lead to underpopulation. This oppo-sition did not deter her either from promot-ing birth control or from speaking out aboutvenereal diseases.

She treated many prostitutes at her clin-ics. “I have seen much misery caused bymarriages involving young men who didnot realize that they were still sufferingfrom a venereal disease when they wed thewoman of their dreams. In addition, as theonly woman doctor in the Netherlands, Iwas consulted by prostitutes about diseasesthat I never even knew existed” (Jacobs1996, 102).

Despite criticism, Jacobs continued toconsult with young people who came to herfor advice. During the early days of herpractice, she had met another social re-former and activist, Carel Victor Gerritsen.They worked together for many years andshared similar interests in public welfare.They married in 1892, and in September1893, Jacobs realized she was expectingtheir first child. The baby died following amistake by the midwife. “I simply cannotdescribe how devastated we felt. It took meyears to recover from my grief. But lookingback, despite all the sorrow I still count my-self lucky that I know how it feels to be amother, that I have held my child in myarms, even though it was for but one day”(Jacobs 1996, 120).

Gerritsen suffered much with poorhealth, although he was continually in-volved in politics and spoke on social con-

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cerns, as did Jacobs. He died of liver andstomach cancer on July 5, 1905. Followinghis death, Jacobs turned her attention towomen’s suffrage work until World War I.During the war she was a committed paci-fist, believing that women’s presence asnurses during the war seemed to condoneviolence if they did not actively protestagainst it. “It was our duty to protestagainst the mindless destruction of art trea-sures, the breaking up of families, the bar-baric sacrificing of young lives” (Jacobs1996, 167).

She traveled to North America and vis-ited many public health institutions andwomen’s rights groups, even gaining an au-dience with President Woodrow Wilson.Once the war was over she worked hard forvarious peace initiatives and women’srights.

Jacobs died on August 10, 1929.

See also: Anderson, Elizabeth GarrettReferences: Jacobs, Aletta, Memories: MyLife as an International Leader in Health, Suf-frage, and Peace, New York: Feminist Press(1996); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harney,eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women in Sci-ence, New York: Routledge (2000).

Jalas, Rakelfl. 1930s

Rakel Jalas was a leading psychiatrist in Fin-land prior to 1948. She was a consultant tothe Ministry of Social Affairs and waselected to the Finnish parliament in 1948.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Seppanen, Anni, “Medical Women inFinland,” Journal of the American MedicalWomen’s Association 5 (1950): 291.

Jemison, Mae Carol1956–

Better known as the first female AfricanAmerican astronaut, Mae Jemison is first aphysician who has been able to apply her

medical skills in space experiments. She hascontributed to medicine, engineering, andspace science.

Born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Al-abama, she grew up in Chicago with abrother and a sister. She is the daughter ofCharles Jemison, a carpenter, and DorothyJemison, a schoolteacher. She had an earlyinterest in space flight and was not deterredby the fact that at the time, no blacks orwomen were part of the space program.

She attended Morgan Park High Schoolin Chicago, where she was interested in as-tronomy as well as space flight and in danceand art. Upon graduation she entered Stan-ford University with an interest in biomed-ical engineering and graduated in 1977 witha degree in chemical engineering.

After graduation she applied to NASA’sastronaut-training program and to the med-ical school at Cornell, graduating in 1981.She worked for the Peace Corps and helpedadminister the medical programs in SierraLeone and Liberia, where she learned towork with people of various backgrounds.When she returned to the United States, sheworked for a health maintenance organiza-tion as a physician before finally being ac-cepted into the space program in 1987. Sheworked for NASA for the typical five yearsbefore being eligible to serve on a shuttlemission. On September 12, 1992, she and sixothers traveled into space on the Endeavor toconduct numerous experiments. She stud-ied weightlessness, motion sickness, tissuegrowth, and the loss of calcium in bones.

Jemison’s background in both engineer-ing and medicine allows her to makeunique contributions; she was recently in-volved in coordinating a space-based com-munications system to support health caredelivery in the developing world. She feelsvery strongly that people of all backgroundsand races have a right to have input on thedirection of the space program. Jemison cur-rently lives in Houston.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science, 1950 to the Present: A Bio-graphical Dictionary, Santa Barbara, CA:ABC-CLIO (1998); “Jemison, Mae C.,” Cur-rent Biography Yearbook, New York: H. W.

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Wilson (1993); Welch, Rosanne, Women inAviation and Space, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1998).

Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa1840–1912

Sophia Jex-Blake was the leader of themovement in Great Britain to open medicalschools to women. Along with ElizabethGarrett Anderson, she founded the LondonSchool of Medicine for Women. Jex-Blakewas born in Sussex, Hastings, on January21, 1840, to Thomas and Maria Emily Jex-Blake. Three years before Sophia was born,her grandfather had the family name ofBlake officially changed to Jex-Blake inhonor of his grandmother, Elizabeth Jex.Sophia was the youngest of three children;she had a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Car-oline. Three other children had died in in-fancy. Her father was the proctor of DoctorsCommons.

Sophia’s parents educated her at homeuntil she was eight. The various boardingschools she attended after that found the en-ergetic and bored Sophia hard to handle. Asa late teen, she began thinking about a vo-cation; she did not want to marry, the goalof most girls her age.

She considered teaching but was very dis-appointed in the education she had receivedin girls’ schools with teachers she felt shouldhave been better educated. She persuadedher parents to allow her to attend Queen’sCollege for Women. She thrived at college,hungry for knowledge and taking a full loadof courses in many areas: math, philosophy,English, French, religion, astronomy, andhistory. Because of her proficiency in math,she was asked to be a tutor. By her secondyear she was teaching women for the Soci-ety for Promoting the Employment ofWomen, founded in 1858 to help womenlearn simple skills so that they could acquirework as clerks and in shops. This workbrought her into contact with women whohad fallen on hard times, and she sent someof these people to her parents for assistance.Active members of the Anglican Church,they were quick to help the needy.

Sophia completed her studies in 1861 andthen felt a need to go abroad. She visitedvarious countries, teaching on occasion andlearning as much as she could about differ-ent cultures. She visited the United States in1865 and worked under Dr. Lucy Sewall atthe New England Hospital for Women andChildren. In 1868 she began her own med-ical study in New York under ElizabethBlackwell.

Returning to England upon the death ofher father, Sophia looked to her own coun-try for the remainder of her medical educa-tion. The Medical Act of 1858 seemed tohave closed all roads to women seeking aneducation in medicine, but she perseveredand was finally accepted by the medicalschool at Edinburgh.

Thus began a long battle for her and thefour other women undertaking medicalstudies at Edinburgh. Although at first thewomen were only occasionally subjected toheckling and rude behavior, more and moremale professors and students came to resenttheir presence. In November 1870, a mob ofprotestors, some drunk and not even stu-dents, gathered at Surgeon’s Hall to preventthe women from attending class. Severalhecklers, mudslingers, and trash throwersshowed up to perform. Supportive maleclassmates helped them get through the en-trance and into the buildings. In the sameyear, college officials denied the women en-trance to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary,where medical students were required toobtain clinical training. The women chal-lenged this decision.

In January 1871, Mr. Craig, the studentJex-Blake had indicated as the instigator ofthe riot at Surgeon’s Hall, filed a defamationwrit against her. Mr. Craig worked for Pro-fessor Christison, who was adamantlyagainst having females educated in medi-cine. Sophia defended herself in court fourmonths later. The jury found in favor of theclaimant but awarded him one farthing in-stead of the 1,000 pounds he wanted. Sophiaand her female colleagues, who had servedas her witnesses, were seen as the victors.

The women also had to fight to take theprofessional examinations; the faculty didnot support giving them to women. The

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university court had ruled the womenwould have to accept certificates of profi-ciency instead of medical degrees, or leave.The women students sued the universityand won the right to stay in medical schoolin 1872, but that judgment was reversed in1873. They were not allowed to take the de-gree examinations until the Russell GurneyEnabling Act of 1876.

Helping the women’s cause during theseyears was public opinion. A wave of publicsympathy and support countered everysetback the women experienced. Why ad-mit the women and then prevent themfrom completing their education? Jex-Blake’s mother and brother were also veryencouraging.

In 1874, Jex-Blake founded the LondonSchool of Medicine for Women. Clinicalwork had to wait until 1877, when the RoyalFree Hospital opened its doors to women.In the meantime, Sophia had obtained herM.D. in Berne. She returned to qualify inGreat Britain by taking the license of mid-wifery at the College of Surgeons. This planwas foiled when the examiners resigned enmasse. In response, Parliament passed theRussell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, whichobligated all medical examining bodies toexamine women (except in the field of sur-gery) and stipulated that women had thesame rights as men to enter the medical pro-fession. That same year Sophia Jex-Blakegained license to practice medicine throughthe Irish College of Physicians. She was fi-nally able to start a private practice in Edin-burgh and begin her career.

In her busy practice, she was especiallypopular with working-class women. Withinmonths of opening her practice, she estab-lished an outpatient clinic where poorwomen could receive care for a few pence.She saw patients at her dispensary, traveledto their homes, or received them in herhome. During these years she was attentiveto political developments regarding med-ical education for women. She was deeplyconcerned about a bill in 1878 that wouldhave required medical practitioners to ob-tain qualifications in both internal medicineand surgery. At the time, no examiningbody that qualified surgeons examined

women. She gathered some opponents ofthe bill, but eventually it was deferred andthen dropped. However, it wasn’t until1885 that women could qualify to practicesurgery.

In 1894, Edinburgh University finally al-lowed women to graduate from the medicalprogram. Jex-Blake’s mother, who had suf-fered from a long illness, died in 1881. Af-terward, an assistant at the dispensary diedsuddenly, and Sophia blamed herself for notnoticing that the assistant had been workingtoo hard. Suffering from depression overthese losses as well as exhaustion, she didn’tpractice medicine for almost two years.

There are no letters or diaries from thisperiod. Margaret Todd, a friend of Sophia’slater in life, received all her personal papers,but many assume that she destroyed all thedocuments prior to committing suicide.

In 1883, Jex-Blake returned to her work.Her practice thrived once again, and shealso was pleased to see the Edinburgh Hos-pital and Dispensary become Scotland’sfirst hospital staffed by women for the treat-ment and care of women.

In 1887, Sophia and friends opened theEdinburgh School of Medicine for Women.It wasn’t long, however, before the schoolwas competing with the second women’smedical college, the Medical College forWomen. It had been founded in part bywomen younger than she who had left herschool because they disagreed with herideas and strict standards.

The new college had a lower tuition andobtained access to the Edinburgh Royal In-firmary for clinical practice in 1892. Sophia’sEdinburgh School of Medicine for Womenwas forced to close in 1898, and Sophia re-tired to Sussex the following year.

Once in Sussex, she continued to followthe progress of women medical students.Her home was always a haven for students,friends, and colleagues. She continued tosuffer from heart problems off and on, hav-ing had a heart attack before leaving Edin-burgh. In her later years, the problem wors-ened, and she died on January 7, 1912.Margaret Todd, a very close friend and awriter who became a physician, wrote a bi-ography of Sophia in 1918.

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See also: Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett; Black-well, Elizabeth; Edinburgh School of Medi-cine; Medical Act of 1858; Russell GurneyEnabling Act of 1876; Sewall, Lucy EllenReferences: Jex-Blake, K., “Jex-Blake, SophiaLouisa,” Dictionary of National Biography1912–1921: Supplement 3, London: OxfordUniversity Press (1927); Roberts, Shirley,Sophia Jex-Blake: A Woman Pioneer in Nine-teenth-Century Medical Reform, London: Rout-ledge (1993); Todd, Margaret G., The Life ofSophia Jex-Blake, London: Macmillan (1918).

Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University was among thefirst major medical schools in the UnitedStates to admit women. The universitywould not have been able to open its med-ical school in 1893 had it not been for thefundraising abilities of four women: Miss

M. Carey Thomas, Miss Mary ElizabethGarrett, Miss Mary Gwynn, and Miss Eliza-beth King. They were daughters of thetrustees of Johns Hopkins and proponentsof the women’s rights movement.

When the women proposed raising thefunds needed to open the medical school,$500,000, they made sure the universitywould admit women and hold to very highstandards for all students. The requirementsfor admittance included a bachelor’s de-gree; language skills in Latin, German, andFrench; and a background in biology, chem-istry, and physics. Most of the faculty weretaken aback at such high standards. As Dr.William Osler reportedly said to Dr. WilliamWelch, it was lucky they got in as professorsbecause they could not have made it as stu-dents (Bernheim 1948, 31).

The medical school opened with fourrenowned physicians as the founding med-ical educators: William H. Welch, William S.

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Halsted, William Osler, and Howard Kelly.The school was a huge attraction for womenmedical students, who wanted to attend thetraditionally male schools because of theirbetter facilities and their hospital affilia-tions. Here, women could gain practical ex-perience as well as a good academic educa-tion.

References: Bernheim, Bertram Moses, The Story of Johns Hopkins: Four Great Doc-tors and the Medical School They Created,New York: Whittlesey House (1948);“Women (or the Female Factor),” http://www.hopkinsmedic ine .org/his tory.html#women.

Joliet-Curie, Irene1897–1956

Irene Joliet-Curie was a Nobel Prize–win-ning chemist and physicist who, along withher husband, Frederic, discovered artificialradioactivity. Like her mother, she studiedthe medical possibilities radioactivity of-fered. She also contributed much toward theunderstanding of the neutron.

Born to the famous couple Pierre andMarie Curie on September 12, 1897, in Paris,Irene was the older of two daughters. Hersister, Eve, was born in 1904. They wereboth educated at home. Her grandfather,Eugene Curie, who came to live with thefamily when she was very young, had agreat influence on her. She was taught by agroup of elite scientists who were friends ofthe Curies. For a time her mother taught herphysics, Paul Langevin taught her mathe-matics, and Jean Perrin taught her physics.

Her mother sent her to the College Se-vigne, where she graduated before the out-break of World War I. She also studied mathand physics at the Sorbonne. She eventuallygained licenses in physics and math whilealso working as a nurse during the war. Shehelped her mother set up the equipment fortaking X rays of the wounded soldiers.

It was during the war that Irene becamemuch closer to her mother. They shared asimilar mission in helping wounded sol-diers. “An intimate and charming comrade-

ship linked Mme Curie and this young girl.The Polish woman was solitary no longer.She was able to talk of her work or of herpersonal worries now with a collaboratorand friend” (Curie 1937, 301). Marie Curiehad complete confidence in Irene’s ability tohelp even though she was very young.

After the war Irene completed her doc-toral degree in physics and began workingfor her mother at the Radium Institute of theSorbonne. There she met Frederic Joliot,who had been hired as a laboratory assis-tant. Since he had no experience workingwith radioactive materials, Marie Curieturned his training over to Irene. They even-tually found they had similar interests, andin 1926 they married.

They began collaborating and studiedpolonium, which Irene’s parents had dis-covered to be radioactive. They found thatwhen polonium was placed next to alu-minum, positrons and neutrons poured outof the aluminum. When they announcedtheir finding at the Solvay Conference inBelgium in 1933, many scientists were skep-tical, and they were discouraged. However,a few scientists, including Wolfgang Pauli,encouraged them.

They returned to Paris to continue theirexperiments and soon saw that they hadbeen correct; further experiments with alu-minum in close proximity to polonium pro-duced radioactivity. This discovery of artifi-cial radiation would have a huge impact onchemistry, biology, and medicine. They re-ceived the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935.

In 1937 Irene began working at the Ra-dium Institute as a professor and became in-terested in the results of assailing uraniumwith neutrons. She did much of the originalresearch that Otto Hahn was able to build onin order to discover atomic fission. He wouldwin a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1944.

She and Frederic had two children, He-lene in 1927 and Pierre in 1932. She enjoyedmotherhood immensely and also thrivedworking in the laboratory even though shesuffered for many years with tuberculosis.As World War II approached, Frederic be-gan to work more on nuclear fission. He andIrene did not think an atomic bomb could beproduced by the end of the war; moreover,

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they were more interested in nuclear energybecause at the time France was very relianton other countries for fuel.

During the war the Joliots, particularlyFrederic, had less time for their research andspent more time on politics. Frederic even-tually headed the most organized of theFrench Resistance groups. When the Ger-mans occupied Paris and were a threat tothe lab where he and Irene did their re-search, he worked on protecting it. He alsohad to arrange for Irene and their childrento be smuggled out of the country toSwitzerland in 1944.

Another important issue was protectingthe uranium that France had, along with the“heavy water” (water enriched by deu-terium) that was necessary for the atomicgenerator they wanted to construct. Whenthe Nazis asked Frederic where the heavywater was, they were aware that Frederichad put it on a ship bound for England.However, they did not know which ship.Frederic gave them the name of one of theships he knew had sunk. He also managedto keep the uranium safe.

Irene was very proud of Frederic. He hadworked with the Resistance to get Jewishchildren out of Germany, giving them non-Jewish names and cards, and to shelter Jew-ish families until the end of the war. He as-sisted many who escaped from Germany.

Frederic joined the Communist Party andwas against nuclear power for weapons.This position eventually hurt his career.Irene was also a controversial political fig-ure during and after the war. They botheventually lost favor with many people be-cause of their Communist views. However,Irene continued to be more interested in re-search than in politics and went on with herexperiments even as she grew more ill fromradiation exposure.

Eventually she went to look for naturalsources of uranium in France and its over-seas territories. Unlike many physicists, shewas very knowledgeable about mineralogyand geology, particularly about mineralsthat produced natural radioactive sub-stances. This work she did in conjunctionwith the French Atomic Energy Commis-sion from 1946 to 1950. Frederic, with her

help, had been successful in constructingZoë, France’s first nuclear reactor, in 1948.She also continued her research at the Ra-dium Institute and spoke out for women’srights whenever she could.

She knew that the exposure to radiationhad taken a toll on her, and she becameweaker as time went on. By 1950, many sci-entists realized the dangers of working withradiation, and new precautions were inplace in labs around the world. “To the end,she maintained her faith in science. Duringthe last year of her life, she wrote, ‘Science isthe foundation of all progress that improveshuman life and diminishes suffering’”(McGrayne 1998, 142). Like her mother, shesuffered from leukemia. She died on March17, 1956. Both her children became scientists.

References: Curie, Eve, Madame Curie: A Bi-ography, New York: Doubleday (1937);McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel PrizeWomen in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, andMomentous Discoveries, Secaucus, NJ: Carol(1998); McKown, Robin, She Lived for Sci-ence: Irene Joliot-Curie, New York: J. Messner(1961); Perrin, Francis, “Joliot-Curie, Irene,”Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, NewYork: Scribner (1973); Shearer, Benjamin F.,and Barbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in thePhysical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary,Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1997).

Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon1828–1908

Mary Jones was a physician who excelled ingynecological surgery when it was still anew and controversial specialty. In the nine-teenth century, Jones was considered just asmuch an expert in the area as many malesurgeons. She is a controversial figure in thehistory of women in medicine because shedefied the norm for women physicians ofher day and proceeded on a course thatalienated her from many of her female col-leagues. The scandal surrounding her surgi-cal ability made the headlines in 1892. Pub-lic sentiment, professional opinion, and thesocial norms of the time all played a part inthe trials that followed.

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Born February 17, 1828, in DorchesterCounty, Maryland, she was one of severalchildren of Noah Dixon and Sarah Turner.Her family was Methodist, middle-class,and in the shipbuilding business. She wasable to obtain a good education at WesleyanFemale College, graduating in 1845.

She worked upon graduation as an in-structor of physiology and literature at Wes-leyan, then moved on to teach at the Balti-more Female College. She eventually took aposition at a girls’ seminary as the principal.All along she studied medicine with somelocal physicians.

After her marriage in 1854, she movedwest. She had three children and eventuallythe couple moved back to Baltimore so thather husband, John Quincy Adams Jones,could practice law. She then left the familyand went to New York City in 1862 and re-ceived a degree from the Hygeio-Therapeu-tic College.

After the Civil War ended, she lived inBrooklyn with her children while her hus-band stayed in Baltimore. She lectured onhealth issues for a time and was involved insome of the women’s rights events of theday. Her practice was quite successful, butshe decided in 1872 to pursue a traditionalmedical degree from the Women’s MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania, graduating afterthe required three years in 1875.

It is not known why she went on to get atraditional degree, but this course was notuncommon for women at that time. Shealso would certainly have been presentedwith patients who had problems she didnot have the skill to handle. Upon grad-uation she opened her private practiceagain and specialized in surgery and prob-lems of women. She again sought furthereducation in 1881 with Benjamin FranklinDawson, the founder of the American Jour-nal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women andChildren.

Gynecology and surgical procedures inthis area were still a relatively new field.“As a surgeon, she was bold, radical, and in-novative, quick to criticize the temporizingof more conservative colleagues and anx-ious to advertise her innovations in tech-nique. In this she mirrored the behavior of

many of the leading men she most ad-mired” (Morantz-Sanchez 1999, 79).

Rather than quietly treat patients, Joneswrote extensively and engaged in self-pro-motion in order to gain a good reputation.Some other women physicians thought shewas too forward. Many male physiciansfound her to be very competent and wereimpressed with her knowledge not only ofsurgery but also of pathology. She alsoworked on keeping a dialogue open be-tween herself and the male professionalsshe admired, both in the United States andabroad.

Beginning in 1889 the Brooklyn Eagle pub-lished a series of articles accusing her of var-ious unethical methods, from mismanage-ment of funds for her hospital tounnecessary surgeries. She was also ac-cused of not educating patients enough be-fore they had surgery. Hysterectomies werequite controversial at the time. Many hadthe view that a woman’s reproductive sys-tem belonged to the nation and that it wasevery woman’s duty to have children; byperforming hysterectomies on youngwomen, a physician was hurting the coun-try. The fact that Jones performed so manyhysterectomies came up in some of thenewspaper articles and in a trial when shewas accused of manslaughter. She wasfound to be innocent, but she then sued theBrooklyn Eagle to seek restitution. She lostthat battle, and her career was irreparablydamaged.

After losing the libel suit, she left Brook-lyn and went to New York City with herson, Charles, also a physician. She spent therest of her years publishing articles and diedin 1908. Her son continued to practice med-icine in Brooklyn and New York City.

References: Morantz-Sanchez, Regina,“Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon,” American Na-tional Biography, vol. 12, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999); Morantz-Sanchez,Regina Markell, Conduct Unbecoming aWoman: Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-the-Cen-tury Brooklyn, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999).

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Jones, Mary Ellen1922–1996

Mary Ellen Jones was a prominent re-searcher who discovered carbamyl phos-phate, a compound requisite for the biosyn-thesis of arginine and urea. She also led herpeers in DNA and cancer research and wasthe first woman to be a department head inthe School of Medicine at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Born in LaGrange Park, Illinois, on De-cember 25, 1922, Jones was the daughter ofElmer and Laura Klein Jones. She attendedthe University of Chicago, majoring in bio-chemistry, and graduated in 1944. Sheworked for four years to save money forgraduate studies at Armour and Company.She worked as a bacteriologist in qualitycontrol until 1948, when she went to Yale tostudy enzymology, completing her disserta-tion in 1951. She became increasingly inter-ested in enzymes as she studied andworked in Fritz Lipmann’s laboratory atMassachusetts General Hospital. He wouldlater win a Nobel Prize for his discovery ofcoenzyme A and its importance to metabo-lism.

She wrote well and was able to obtain aposition as an assistant professor at Bran-deis University in 1957, rising to associateprofessor in 1960. She built a well-respectedlaboratory in the Department of Biochem-istry. In 1966 she followed her husband,Paul Munson, to the University of NorthCarolina, where he was chair of the phar-macology department. She again worked inbiochemistry, but after her divorce fromMunson, she moved in 1971 to the Univer-sity of Southern California’s medical schooland remained until 1978. She then returnedto the University of North Carolina andworked until she retired in 1995.

Throughout her career, Jones studied pro-teins, enzymes and their actions, nu-cleotides, metabolism, and biosynthesis.She was a strong supporter of women andminorities in science and was very encour-aging to all her students. She had two chil-dren, Ethan and Catherine. Jones died ofcancer in Waltham, Massachusetts, on Au-gust 23, 1996.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO(1994); Fountain, Henry, “Mary Ellen Jones,73, Crucial Researcher on DNA,” New YorkTimes (7 September 1996): 13; Traut, Thomas,“Biographical Memoirs: Mary Ellen Jones,”http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/biomems/mjones.html.

Jordan, Lynda1956–

A top researcher in biochemistry, Lynda Jor-dan has worked to uncover the secrets ofphospholipase A2 (or PLA2) and its role indiabetes, arthritis, preterm labor, asthma,and other respiratory problems. Discover-ing the enzyme code may lead to new treat-ments, which are desperately needed.

Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on Sep-tember 20, 1956, Jordan had to undergoharsh beginnings as a black woman in herquest to become a scientist. Her mother’ssecond husband, Charles Jordan, hadtwelve children, and the children grew upin a rough housing project. At DorchesterHigh School, Jordan frequently got intotrouble and didn’t think too much abouthigher education until a speech for the Up-ward Bound program given by Joseph War-ren inspired her. She began to apply herselfin math and science and excelled in herstudies. She went on to college and gradu-ated from North Carolina A&T in 1974 andlater received her master’s at Atlanta Uni-versity and her Ph.D. at MIT in 1985. From1985 to 1987 she did research at the PasteurInstitute in Paris.

Despite the fact that some opposed her re-turn to North Carolina A&T to teach, shewanted to return to the historical black col-lege and give back to the university and itsstudents. She built a well-equipped labora-tory there for top-notch research and alsotakes every opportunity to encourage thosefrom underrepresented groups to furthertheir education.

Her work has focused on enzymes, par-ticularly A2. She recently served two yearsas the MLK Visiting Professor at MIT and

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currently is a professor at North CarolinaA&T. She is also a minister.

References: Coleman, Sandy, “At Home inthe Lab and Pulpit,” Boston Globe (18 April1999): 1ff.; Hawkins, B. Denise, “Sister, Sci-entist, Mentor: Lynda Jordan,” Black Issuesin Higher Education 11, no. 21 (15 December1994): 14–17.

Joteyko, Josephine1866–1929

Josephine Joteyko was one of the first fe-male Polish physicians. She excelled atmedical studies and published numerousarticles that were well received by bothmale and female colleagues of her day.

Born in Pocsujki on January 29, 1866, shewent to Warsaw with her family when shewas very young so that she would be able toobtain a good education. She attended theVarsovie secondary school and then studiedscience at the University of Geneva. Shewent to Brussels to study medicine and later

to the University of Paris, obtaining herM.D. in 1896.

Her first position was at the InstituteSolvay in Brussels as an experimental phys-iologist. She became interested in psychol-ogy, and in 1903 she headed research at theKasimir Laboratory of Psychology at theUniversité Libre of Brussels until 1921. Shewrote many articles and was the editor ofRevue Psychologique for a time. She also lec-tured at several European universities. Herresearch focused on nutrition, physiology,muscle fatigue, and pain. She received sev-eral European awards for her work.

During the last years of her life she re-turned to Warsaw to teach science. She diedin 1929.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey, and Joy Har-vey, eds., Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

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Kagan, Helena1889–1978

One of the earliest women physicians in Is-rael while it was still under Ottoman rule,Helena Kagan gained acceptance as a physi-cian even before women were given licensesto practice medicine. She was the firstwoman to be awarded the Medal of theFreedom of Jerusalem in 1958.

She was born September 25, 1889, inTashkent, Uzbekistan. Her father was an en-gineer. Hard times came when her father re-fused to convert to Christianity and lost hisjob. Her parents were still able to pay for herand her older brother to attend school. Shegraduated in 1905.

She went to Bern University in Switzer-land to study medicine, graduating in 1910.She continued to study there, particularlypediatrics, for four more years. She went toJerusalem in 1914 to practice medicine butwas not able to obtain a license. Instead sheassisted a physician at Jerusalem MunicipalHospital and trained young Arab and Jew-ish women as nurses for the typhus epi-demic. After the outbreak of World War I,the physician she worked for died, and shehad to take over for him. Because of theshortage of doctors, she found herself incharge of the typhus and cholera wards atthe hospital as well as overseeing the prisonhospital.

She eventually received a work permitand in 1916 founded a small children’s hos-pital, which would eventually become partof the Hadassah Medical Organization. Sheworked there as head of the pediatrics de-partment until 1925. She founded a home-

less shelter for children in 1927 and somenurseries for working mothers. She super-vised and trained many of the workers inthese nurseries.

She worked for a time at Bikur CholimHospital in Jerusalem and was also associ-ated with Hebrew University for manyyears. She received an honorary doctoratein 1967. She was one of the sole reasons forthe expansion of health care in Israel, as shewas really on her own for much of her earlywork. She established the Israel PediatricAssociation in 1927 and in 1975 received aspecial Israel Prize in recognition of all herwork. She passed away in 1978.

References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor,Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra-phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC:Hemisphere (1978); Kagan, Helenah, Reshitdarki bi-Yerushalayim, Tel-Aviv: Vitso, His-tadrut ‘olamit le-nashim Tsiyoniyot; Tel-Yit-shak ha-midrashah ha-Liberalit ‘a. s. Dr. Y.Forder (1980); Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957).

Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson1929–

Joyce Kaufman is a talented scientist whoseability to combine chemistry, physics, phar-macology, computing, and biology has sig-nificantly aided in the understanding of howdrugs affect the central nervous system.

Born in New York City on June 21, 1929,she attended Johns Hopkins University andreceived a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in

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1949, followed by a master’s degree in 1959and a D.E.S. (diplôme d’études supérieures)in theoretical physics from the Sorbonne in1963.

Kaufman has worked at various compa-nies doing research in many areas, includ-ing physiochemical studies and the nervoussystem. She has worked at Johns HopkinsUniversity in both the chemistry depart-ment and the School of Medicine’s anesthe-siology and surgery departments. She hasan unusual gift for understanding many sci-ence disciplines and their interrelationships.

She married Stanley Kaufman in 1948 andhas one daughter.

References: American Men and Women of Sci-ence, 20th ed., New York: Bowker (1998);Bailey, Martha J., American Women in Science:1950 to the Present, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1998).

Kelsey, Frances Oldham1914–

Frances Kelsey fought to ban thalidomide inthe United States and determined to keep adrug company from distributing it in 1962,thus saving thousands of unborn babiesfrom deformities. Her persistent skepticismabout the drug and its testing made her aheroine with the public and earned her thePresident’s Award for Distinguished Fed-eral Civilian Service in 1962. She also helpedestablish the groundwork for tougher druglaws and brought greater awareness to thepublic as to the dangers of new drugs thatdo not have proper and thorough testing.

Born in Cobble Hill, British Columbia, shedeveloped an interest in science as she“grew up in the country where she collectedeverything from bugs to bird eggs” (Bren2001, 27). She went to McGill University inMontreal and earned a bachelor’s degree in1934. She continued her studies during thedepression and obtained her master’s inpharmacology the next year. She then ac-cepted a scholarship from the University ofChicago, where E.M.K. Geiling was estab-lishing a new pharmacology department.

While working, she earned her Ph.D. and

became a faculty member at the Universityof Chicago. She married Dr. Fremont EllisKelsey in 1943, and they had two daughters.She worked at various jobs as a physicianand teacher before being hired by the U.S.Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Itwas here that she did her important workon studying thalidomide and its effects,studying reports from Europe on its effectson humans, and requiring the drug com-pany that was marketing it to provide moreinformation.

Kelsey continues to work for the FDA.

References: Bren, Linda, “Frances OldhamKelsey: FDA Medical Reviewer Leaves HerMark on History,” FDA Consumer 35, no. 2(March–April 2001): 24–29; Grigg, William,“The Thalidomide Tragedy—25 Years Ago,”FDA Consumer 21, no. 1 (February 1987):14–17; Mintz, Morton, “‘Heroine’ of FDAKeeps Bad Drug off of Market,” WashingtonPost (15 July 1962): A1.

Kenny, Elizabeth1886–1952

Elizabeth Kenny was an Australian nursewho treated polio victims with methodsthat went against the medical practices ofthe time but eventually gained acceptanceby the American Medical Association andothers interested in treating polio victimsbefore a vaccination was developed. Anurse serving in the backcountry, shetreated people with hot packs and stimula-tion, using her instincts rather than pre-scribed, traditional methods. “Kenny clin-ics” were established around the country.

Born in Warialda, New South Wales, onSeptember 20, 1886, she had very little formaltraining as a nurse. Her parents wereMichael and Mary Kenny, and she was one ofnine children. Her father was a veterinarian.

She served in the Australian bush from1911 until World War I. It was during thisearly period of her career that she cameacross victims of poliomyelitis. The populartreatment of the day was to splint or cast theaffected limbs right away. Having no idea ofthe accepted treatment in those early years,

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however, she developed her own techniqueof physical therapy. She treated her first casewith warm, moist packs applied to the af-fected muscles. She then worked with themuscles to retrain them and make themmore flexible. Using the same treatmentwith several other patients was successful.When she reported her treatments to Dr. Ae-neas McDonnell, he was surprised andshocked that the children had survived. Heinformed her of the accepted method of theday. “Then he fetched from his library someimpressive-looking tomes that dealt withthis baffling disease. What I discovered intheir pages left me speechless with aston-ishment. It simply could not be that I, incontraposition to wise authorities, hadblundered upon a treatment that had metwith success!” (Kenny 1943, 29). She told Dr.McDonnell she had treated the symptomsshe saw—spasms; this symptom was noteven mentioned in the book.

She treated many other types of ailmentsand delivered numerous babies in less thandesirable surroundings. She traveledmainly by horseback, spending manynights under the sky. By 1913 she had a cot-tage hospital in Clifton not far from hermother’s house. When World War I brokeout, she volunteered and served at the frontin France.

There were many dangers in serving as anurse at the front as well as aboard the shipsgoing to and from. During one troublesomebut ultimately successful trip, her ship wasreported as lost off the coast of Africa. Upongoing to headquarters the next morning, she“presented my pay book to the pay officer.He looked at the book, took my name, andconsulted his records. Then he informed methat I had been lost at sea and was dead. Un-der the circumstances, he could not possiblygive me any money. The announcementgave me pause. It was difficult to believethat a ghost should feel so keenly the needof replenishing her wardrobe. But the pay-master was obdurate. He was very busy atthe time, and took no further notice of me.Even the fact that he was dealing withsomeone who had been dead for severaldays failed to awaken the slightest interestin his official heart” (Kenny 1943, 42–43).

She eventually straightened out the prob-lem, and later when the other members ofher unit came, “I guided them through theintricate process by which they were re-stored to the land of the living, and we allwent out to celebrate our resurrection”(Kenny 1943, 43).

After a shrapnel wound to her leg andknee, she managed to survive the influenzaepidemic of 1918 while tending hundreds ofpatients on a ship bound for Australia. Soonthereafter she suffered a heart attack andwas treated in Germany before returningagain to her home country.

Kenny recovered and resumed her nurs-ing work when the war was over. She in-vented a stretcher on wheels, the SylviaStretcher, after seeing so many in battle andat home die on the way to medical care viaa bumpy road. Traditional stretchers couldput the patients in shock, and many did notsurvive these trips. Her stretcher kept pa-tients off the ground, allowing the tires andnot the patients to absorb the bumps andalso allowing Kenny to treat the patient forshock while in transit. Kenny named thestretcher after the little girl whose accidentinspired it and patented it in 1927 so that itcould be made available in more areas.

In the years that followed, Kenny strug-gled to gain acceptance for her methods oftreating infantile paralysis. She tried in Aus-tralia and England but was disappointedeach time. Kenny felt part of the problemwas that officials perceived her as claiminga cure. “In the first place, I did not—and donot—claim a cure for infantile paralysis. Ihad written a personal letter to each mem-ber of the English committee emphasizingthis fact. Infantile paralysis, like any otherdisease, takes its toll in human suffering. . . .Discovery of a cure would be enough toelectrify the world. In the meantime, if thetoll can be reduced and the legacy made lesssevere, any treatment accomplishing suchresults should be worthy of the most carefulconsideration before it is dismissed as use-less” (Kenny 1943, 176–177).

After failing to win support from the es-tablished medical communities in Australiaand Great Britain, in 1940 she went to theUnited States and demonstrated her meth-

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ods of treatment on polio victims. In Min-neapolis, she gained some listeners andeventually supporters who helped spreadthe idea and founded Kenny clinics in nu-merous places.

She died on November 20, 1952, afterhaving been given diplomatic status by theU.S. Congress, having lunched with Presi-dent Roosevelt, and most important, havingseen her method of treatment accepted andable to help hundreds of polio victims suf-fering from pain.

References: Cohn, Victor, Sister Kenny: TheWoman Who Challenged the Doctors, Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press(1975); Hiestand, Wanda C., “Think Differ-ent: Inventions and Innovations by Nurses,1850 to 1950,” American Journal of Nursing100, no. 10 (October 2000): 72; Kaufman,Martin, Stuart Galishoff, and Todd L. Savitt,eds., Dictionary of American Medical Biogra-phy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1984);Kendall, Florence P., “Sister Elizabeth KennyRevisited,” Archives of Physical Medicine andRehabilitation 79, no. 4 (April 1998): 361–365;Kenny, Elizabeth, And They Shall Walk, NewYork: Dodd, Mead (1943); Snodgrass, MaryEllen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway1880–1965

Josephine Kenyon was a pediatrician par-tially responsible, following the lead ofLuther Emmett Holt, for fueling the boomin “baby books” during the early twentiethcentury. Her 1934 publication Healthy BabiesAre Happy Babies: A Complete Handbook forModern Mothers was remarkably successful.

She was born to Charles Carroll Hemen-way and Ida Eliza Shackelford in Auburn,New York, on May 10, 1880. Her father wasa Presbyterian minister. In 1891 the familymoved to Glasgow, Missouri, after her fa-ther took a job as president of Pritchett Col-lege. She attended college there and re-ceived her bachelor’s and a master’s in 1898and 1899, respectively.

She wanted a career in medicine and

went to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvaniato study biology before entering the Schoolof Medicine at Johns Hopkins University inBaltimore. She had the great fortune to ob-tain training from some of the most promi-nent teaching physicians of the day: WilliamHenry Welch, Sir William Osler, WilliamStewart Halsted, and Howard Kelly, stillknown as the Big Four at Johns Hopkins.

Following graduation she worked at theJohns Hopkins University Hospital for ayear before moving to Babies Hospital inNew York City in 1905. She studied child-hood diseases and worked with Luther Em-mett Holt and Martha Wollstein, pioneers inpediatrics. Following a six-year residency,she opened her own practice and in 1911married James Henry Kenyon, a neurosur-geon on the staff of Babies Hospital.

Josephine had a great interest in educat-ing the public on childcare and hygiene. Shehad done some lecturing on the topic beforeleaving Babies Hospital and was appointedas a lecturer at Columbia University’sTeachers College in 1913. It was in this areathat she would gain national recognition.

In the early 1920s she began writing ad-vice for mothers in Good Housekeeping andcontributed popular articles on child andbaby care to other lay publications of theday. She appealed to so many women be-cause she was a mother herself (of twodaughters) and a physician. Her bookHealthy Babies Are Happy Babies was so pop-ular that it went through five revised edi-tions and nineteen printings.

Kenyon stressed that a mother’s healthwas as important as the baby’s was. Aheadof her day, she also talked about the child’semotional health while maturing. Shestressed the importance of children takingresponsibility within the family: “We haveheard much of the unquestioning obedienceof the children of an older generation and thewonderful men and women who resultedfrom that discipline. In my opinion, thestrong men and women developed, not be-cause of this implicit obedience or from fearof the consequences of disobedience, but be-cause these people, when young, had to takedefinite responsibilities as part of the work-ing unit—the family” (Kenyon 1934, 276).

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Kenyon maintained affiliations withmany hospitals and universities and wascalled to speak on childcare innumerabletimes. She worked for various charitableand religious organizations whose aim wasto make babies, mothers, and children safer.She also worked in educating women onproper conduct in the military while aroundsoldiers and worked with various socialleaders of the day. She closed her privatepractice in 1950 and moved to Colorado tobe near family. Kenyon died on January 10,1965, in Boulder, Colorado.

References: Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway,Healthy Babies Are Happy Babies: A CompleteHandbook for Modern Mothers, Boston: Little,Brown (1934); “Kenyon, Josephine Hemen-way,” [obit] JAMA 192, no. 1 (5 April 1965):75; Opitz, Donald L., “Kenyon, JosephineHemenway,” American National Biography,vol. 12, New York: Oxford University Press(1999).

Klein, Melanie1882–1960

Melanie Klein was one of the most influen-tial psychoanalysts in Great Britain. Herwork has had a lasting impact on psychoan-alysts and physicians. She built on the ideasof Freud and extended them. Her innova-tive method of analyzing child’s playhelped her later with adult psychoanalysis.Today many child clinics still employ hermethods.

Born in Vienna, Austria, on March 30,1882, she had three siblings. Her father,Moritz Reizes, was a physician and Jewishscholar, and her mother was Libusa Deutschfrom Hungary, who for a time ran a storeselling exotic plants. Her childhood wasmarred by the early deaths of her sister,Sidonie, and her brother, Emmanuel. Her fa-ther died when she was eighteen.

She received a good education and had adesire to become a physician like her father.However, her financial situation and earlymarriage to a second cousin, ArthurStephan Klein, changed her course. Theymoved to Budapest and were there until

1919, then went to Switzerland for a time.The marriage ended in divorce in 1923 afterthey had had three children, Melitta, Hans,and Eric.

It was in Budapest that Klein began read-ing Sigmund Freud’s work and becamevery interested in psychoanalysis. She wasencouraged by Sandor Ferenczi and later byKarl Abraham, who recognized her gift atanalyzing children. She presented a paperin 1921 on the development of children andreceived full membership in the HungarianPsycho-Analytical Society.

She continued her studies in Berlin. Therehad been no work on the analysis of chil-dren under the age of five or six, and she de-veloped a method for understanding veryyoung children who could not yet talk byanalyzing the way they played with toys.She felt she could interpret much about achild by the associations observed duringfree play.

She was asked to speak in England anumber of times and moved there perma-nently in 1926. Her methods and resultscaused conflict in the field of psychoanaly-sis. She had traced Freud’s views furtherback to the infant child, and many Freudianthinkers believed she did not have sufficientproof of the capability she attributed to in-fants. Many colleagues, however, embracedher methods. There was not a distinct divi-sion in the British Psychoanalytical Societybetween the Klein and Freud theories untila series of controversial discussions tookplace. Then it was clear there were twoschools of thought (each of which has sur-vived).

She contributed a great deal to psychoan-alytic theory by studying infants and chil-dren the first ten years she was in London.After her oldest son was killed in 1933 in amountaineering accident, she began to lookat depression, sorrow, and emotion. Sheused her own dreams in writing about sor-row and mourning.

Her research involved studying manychildren with problems and analyzing theirbehavior. One of the more controversial as-pects of Klein’s work is that she analyzedher own children. Many analysts today findthat disturbing. She had a very troubled re-

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lationship with her psychoanalyst daughter,Melitta Schmideberg, who openly arguedwith and lashed out at her mother in pro-fessional meetings.

Klein’s pioneering work in child psycho-analysis has endured and helped numerouschildren and adults around the world. Shepassed away on September 22, 1960.

See also: Freud, AnnaReferences: Grosskurth, Phyllis, MelanieKlein: Her World and Her Work, New York:Knopf (1986); MacGibbon, Jean, “Klein,Melanie,” Dictionary of National Biography,1951–1960, London: Oxford UniversityPress (1971); Segal, Hanna, Melanie Klein,New York: Viking Press (1980); Sheehy,Noel, Antony J. Chapman, and Wendy A.Conroy, Biographical Dictionary of Psychology,London: Routledge (1997).

Krajewska, Teodora1854–1935

Teodora Krajewska was a Polish physicianwho was one of the first female physiciansto serve in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Shefaced cultural barriers but succeeded inhelping Muslim women as a social worker,healer, and educator.

She was born in Warsaw in 1854. Her fa-ther, Ignacego Kosmowskiego, was ateacher. She had several sisters and was ed-ucated in Warsaw. She obtained her medicaldegree around 1892.

She traveled to Bosnia along with AnnaBayerova of Czechoslovakia to help womenin the Muslim faith receive proper healthcare, many for the first time. She helpedwith the establishment of better local healthservices and lived and worked in DolnjaTuzla and Sarajevo for almost thirty years,from 1893 to 1922.

Krajewska died in 1935.

See also: Bayerova, AnnaReferences: Krajewska, Teodora Kos-mowska, Pamietnik, Krakow: KrajowaAgencja Wydawnicza (1989); Necas, Ctibor,“Dr. Med. Teodora Krajewska, Lekarka

Urzedowa W Dol. Tuzle I Sarajewie,” Archi-wum Historii i Filozofii Medycyny (Poland) 50,no. 1 (1987): 75–98.

Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth1926–

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross revolutionized theway physicians, psychiatrists, and otherhealth care providers view death and gavethem a tremendous amount of informationin order to better understand the stages ofdeath, the acceptance of death as a part oflife, and most important, the tools needed tocounsel the terminally ill and their families.Medical and counseling centers around theworld continue to use her ideas and findings.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 8,1926, Kubler-Ross was one of triplet girls.Her parents, Emmy Villiger Kubler andErnst Kubler, were strict at home but spenta lot of recreational time with their threedaughters and an older son. She enjoyed herfamily but had a hard time finding her ownidentity, as so many persons of multiplebirths do. She had the same kinds of clothesand toys as the other girls and in her earlydays wanted to be different from them.

When Kubler-Ross was very young shehad a serious bout with pneumonia and de-veloped a bond with her roommate in thehospital.

That evening she stirred more thannormal. As I tried to get her attention,she kept looking past me, or throughme. ‘It’s important that you keep fight-ing,’ she explained. ‘You’re going tomake it. You’re going to return homewith your family.’ I was so happy, butthen my mood changed abruptly.‘What about you?’ I asked. She saidthat her real family was ‘on the otherside’ and assured me that there was noneed to worry. We traded smiles be-fore drifting back to sleep. I had nofear of the journey my new friend wasembarking on. Nor did she. It seemedas natural as the sun going downevery night and the moon taking itsplace” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 29).

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Her friend died peacefully that night. Fromthis experience, she learned that dying canbe a relief from pain and thus a positiveevent.

She did well in school, especially in sci-ence. In 1942 she set her sights on medicalschool, but her parents didn’t see that sheneeded higher education. After a maid posi-tion away from home did not work out, shefound a job as a lab assistant, thinking theexperience would help her get into medicalschool. In her work in the lab, she tookblood from people with late-stage venerealdisease. She felt she was “called” to helpthose who were ill. “In those days, beforepenicillin, VD sufferers were treated likeAIDS patients would be in the 1980s—theywere feared, abandoned, shunned, lockedaway” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 55). She foundshe could help them physically and emo-tionally by just listening to them and re-sponding sympathetically.

The hospital where she worked wasoverwhelmed with refugees from all overEurope after the Normandy invasion in1944. She later became a member of the In-ternational Voluntary Service for Peace andtraveled about helping all she could, finallyreaching Poland in 1948. She had promiseda doctor at the hospital where she workedin Switzerland that she would help the Pol-ish people recover from the aftermath ofthe war.

The devastation was overwhelming. Shehelped to rebuild schools and nurse the ill ina small farming town called Lucima. A tripto one of Hitler’s death camps, Maidanek,forever etched the horror of hatred in hermind as she visited those who had lost theirentire families. She also experienced dis-crimination when people who thought shewas Polish refused to help her when she be-came seriously ill on the trip home. Shewould see such discrimination again in thetreatment of AIDS patients.

Returning home, she was still determinedto become a physician and went back to labwork at the hospital. She talked with pa-tients, taking an interest in their problemsand fears, and was able to handle more re-sponsibility. She had seen that healing in-volved more than physical care, and she

was interested in mental as well as physicalhealth.

In 1951 she began medical school at theUniversity of Zurich, intending to followthe Swiss model of a physician—a countrydoctor who served the community. Shepassed her Matura, excelling in all sectionsexcept Latin.

Numerous times while at the Universityof Zurich she saw C. G. Jung but avoidedmeeting him. She didn’t want to become apsychiatrist, just a physician.

She met her future husband, EmmanuelRobert Ross (Manny), in medical school, butat the time she was not impressed with anyof the American medical students: “My firstimpression of them as a group, based on howthey handled the corpse, was not a good one.They made jokes about the dead man’s body,jumped rope with his intestines and teasedme about the size of his testicles. It wasn’tfunny. I thought they were disrespectful, in-sensitive cowboys” (Kubler-Ross 1997, 94).

Despite that, she and Manny datedthrough medical school, and they marriedin 1958, a year after graduating. They wentto the United States and both worked as in-terns at Glen Cove Community Hospital onLong Island, New York. She then took a res-ident position in psychiatry at ManhattanState Hospital because she needed a job.

The situation at Manhattan State Hospitalwas appalling to her. Mentally ill patientswere used for experiments with psychoticdrugs, beaten and punished, or totally ig-nored. She began listening to the patientsand responding to their needs, and in turnthey responded with better behavior. Men-tal patients had to learn to do chores likemaking their beds and they would be re-warded with such incentives as going out-side for a walk. She had another job offer af-ter her first year at the hospital but decidedto stay. She obtained releases for many func-tional patients and helped others finds jobsoutside the hospital.

She started an open-house program, find-ing families in the neighborhood whowould visit the patients and develop rela-tionships with them. Patients began to lookforward to these visits, and a large percent-age of them got well and were released.

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Such numbers of recoveries were unprece-dented at the hospital.

After two miscarriages in as many years,Kubler-Ross gave birth, in 1960, to her firstchild, Kenneth Lawrence. She had only onemore year of residency, and it was too late tochange her acquired psychiatry specialty.Montefiore Hospital accepted her, and notcontent to be only a wife and mother, shewent back to work. At Montefiore, sheworked with many terminally ill patients,talking frankly to them about death.

Kubler-Ross lost her own father duringthis time. He was very ill in Switzerland, andthe doctors would not grant his request todie at home. Kubler-Ross arrived and signedpapers releasing the hospital from responsi-bility. She and her mother then took her fa-ther home, where he died peacefully in 1960.

After she finished her residency in 1962,she and her husband obtained jobs in Denverat the Colorado School of Medicine. It washere that she gave her first lecture on death.

In 1963 she had a second, premature, child,Barbara Lee. After the birth, Manny took ajob in Chicago and she underwent psycho-analysis for three years as a requirement ofher training at the Psychoanalytic Institute.She worked at Billings Hospital, which is af-filiated with the University of Chicago, as aphysician and assistant professor of psychia-try from 1965 to 1970. She disagreed with thetraditional practices of the psychiatrists inher department at Billings, whose treatmentsrelied mainly on drugs. She felt that psychia-trists should focus more on the individualpatient’s personality and family life.

She began regular lecturing on death in1967; at each lecture, she was accompaniedby a terminally ill patient who was willingto talk to the audience about his or her feel-ings. Priests, nurses, rabbis, counselors, so-cial workers, and students crowded in tofind out about a subject no one else wantedto deal with. Physicians did not often attendbecause as a group, they looked upon deathas failure to cure the patient. In 1969, a copyof an article she had written for the ChicagoTheological Seminary on the purpose of herdeath-and-dying seminars found its way toan editor at Macmillan in New York. In re-sponse to a call from Macmillan, she wrote

her On Death and Dying in a little over threemonths. In the book, Kubler-Ross describesthe five stages of dying: denial, anger, bar-gaining, depression, and acceptance. Mac-millan published the book that same year. Itcontinues to be popular today and is re-quired reading for numerous college anduniversity courses. It is also useful for ther-apists, clergy, social workers, and familiesdealing with death issues.

Soon after the publication of On Death andDying, Life magazine highlighted one of herseminars. The Life article featured a younggirl named Eva who was dying of leukemia.In response to the piece, hundreds of peopleand organizations asked Kubler-Ross togive lectures. She was suddenly famous, theworld’s expert on death and dying.

Over the next few years, Kubler-Ross hadsome paranormal experiences that alienatedsome of her followers. “She had been com-missioned, she felt, to use her renown to de-clare to anyone who would listen that manindeed possessed a spirit and that his spiritsurvived death—which she now refers to asthe ‘transition’” (Gill 1980, 313). She contin-ued to write about death and life afterdeath. In 1983 she was asked to help withAIDS, an endeavor that totally absorbedher. Again, she felt that caring and uncondi-tional love would be more helpful than sci-ence. She conducted thousands of AIDSworkshops all over the world.

Kubler-Ross currently lives in Arizona.Some critics argue she has no scientificproof or clinical trials to support her claimsof success with psychotic patients and theterminally ill. As a result of her work, how-ever, there is more awareness today of theright of the dying to determine their owndestiny and a hospice movement to supportthis right. Many physicians now also sup-port patients’ rights to not avail themselvesof life-sustaining medical equipment.

References: Gill, Derek L. T., Quest: The Lifeof Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, New York: Harper &Row (1980); Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, OnDeath and Dying, New York: Macmillan(1969); Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, The Wheel ofLife: A Memoir of Living and Dying, NewYork: Scribner (1997).

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Lachapelle, Marie-LouiseDuges

1769–1821

Marie-Louise Lachapelle became the chiefmidwife at the Hotel Dieu in Paris. She wasinstrumental in training many midwives.

Born in Paris on January 1, 1769, she wasthe daughter of Louis Duges and MarieJonet Duges. Her mother was a midwife andher father, a health officer. Lachapelle beganassisting her mother, who was the headmidwife at the Hotel Dieu, at an early age.

She married in 1792 and had a daughter;her husband died a few years later. She be-gan working with her mother at the HotelDieu to support herself, becoming head ofthe maternity department after her motherdied in 1795.

She developed excellent techniques in de-livering babies even in difficult circum-stances, techniques that she later recordedin a published work. Some of her trainingcame from Franz Carl Naegele at the Uni-versity of Heidelberg in Germany. He was afamous obstetrician of his day and re-spected her talent a great deal.

Lachapelle did much to raise the stan-dards and proficiencies of midwives in thenineteenth century. She died on October 4,1821.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S.Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sciences,Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1996);Uglow, Jennifer S., International Dictionary of

Women’s Biography, New York: Continuum;Macmillan (1982).

LaFlesche Picotte, Susan1865–1915

Susan LaFlesche Picotte was the first Na-tive American woman to earn a medical de-gree. She returned to her reservation toserve the needs of the Indians she identifiedwith, as well as others who were in need ofmedical attention. Speaking both her nativetongue and English, she was able to bridgesome of the cultural differences betweenher people and those in surrounding com-munities. Born on June 17, 1865, on theOmaha Reservation in Nebraska, she wasthe youngest of five children of ChiefJoseph LaFlesche and his wife, Mary. Shereceived much encouragement from herfamily to advance her education as a repre-sentative of the Omahas. Chief LaFleschehad already learned that to progress, the In-dians had to adapt to a changing world thatwas more and more populated by whites.He realized that education was the key andwould enable Indians to contribute to thechanging society.

Susan did well in school. Her oldest sister,Susette, was a teacher, and she made all hersisters speak English when they were to-gether. She attended both the Elizabeth In-stitute for Young Ladies (New Jersey) andthe Hampton Institute in Virginia, whereshe graduated with honors in 1886. With fi-nancial assistance from the Women’s Na-tional Indian Association, she entered the

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Medical College of Pennsylvania and grad-uated in 1889.

She served an internship at the Women’sHospital in Philadelphia, affiliated with theWomen’s Medical College of Pennsylvania,treating outpatients, observing surgery, andpreparing medications. She also went onrounds with the resident physician to somevery poor neighborhoods. This was valu-able experience, since she had had little clin-ical training while in medical school.

In order to serve the Indians of her tribe,she applied for a physician position withthe Omaha Agency Indian School. The com-missioner of Indian Affairs believed in Indi-ans becoming educated and serving theirpeople, and she got the job. She quickly re-turned to the Omahas, becoming a medicalleader and organizer. She served membersof the Omaha tribe for over four years re-gardless of the problems with getting sup-plies, low pay, difficult physical conditions,and the obstacles of travel.

“Making home visits was no easy task.Omahas were scattered over an undevel-oped, undulating terrain that was thirtymiles long by fifteen miles wide. Most of theso-called roads were little more than poordirt tracks, which were so bad that a singlehorse could not pull a wagon on them”(Tong 1999, 94). During this time, she spokewhenever she could to groups off the reser-vation about the Omahas and her work withthem. She was a good speaker who did notalienate whites, and she knew she had towork with them in order to improve condi-tions for Native Americans.

In the 1890s, La Flesche worked unceas-ingly to end drinking among the Indians. Ithad led to illness and death and was de-structive to family and community relation-ships. Her efforts were fruitless, and she be-came quite frustrated. She blamed thewhites for making alcohol available, and al-though some religious groups supportedher efforts to enforce the law against pro-viding alcohol to Indians, cooperation fromlaw enforcement was not forthcoming. Shecontinued to fight against drinking, as herfather before her had done.

She married Henry Picotte, half Sioux andhalf French, and had two sons, Caryl and

Pierre, who both were able to attend col-lege. After her husband’s death in 1905, shesettled in Walthill in the year of its found-ing, 1906, and continued to speak for thebetterment of Indians everywhere. Shehelped organize the County Medical Soci-ety, served on the local health board, andstood firm on eradicating alcohol on reser-vations and instilling good sanitation andnutrition practices.

Her final efforts were toward getting a lo-cal hospital. She helped raise funds, a longand hard task. “A few years before herdeath, Susan asserted that she believed ‘inprevention of diseases and hygienic care’more than she did ‘in giving or prescribingmedicine.’ She said her ‘constant aim’ was‘to teach these two things, particularly toyoung mothers,’ and her ‘greatest desire inhaving the hospital built was to save the lit-tle children” (Tong 1999, 177).

This goal may well have arisen becauseshe had seen many infants and children diefrom disease while she was waiting formedical supplies.

In 1913 she attended the opening of thehospital at Walthill, which remained a vitalpart of health care in the area until 1947. OnSeptember 18, 1915, La Flesche succumbedto a long bout with a cancerous bone infec-tion. In that year, hospital officials gave thehospital her name. She was buried in thenearby Bancroft cemetery next to her hus-band, Henry.

References: Tong, Benson, Susan LaFleschePicotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and Re-former, Norman: University of OklahomaPress (1999).

Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill1895–1981

Rebecca Lancefield was a bacteriologist and researcher. She was a pioneer in classi-fying and identifying the various strains ofstreptococci.

Born in Ft. Wadsworth, New York, on Jan-uary 5, 1895, she was the daughter ofColonel William E. Craighill and MaryWortley Byram Craighill and had five sis-

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ters. She attended Wellesley College, gradu-ating in 1916 with a degree in zoology. Afterher father died, she taught for a year to helpsupport her sisters. Seemingly headed for ateaching career at Teachers College in NewYork, she persuaded the administrators tolet her pursue a master’s in bacteriology.

She excelled and took a part-time positionwith the Rockefeller Institute, working withOswald Theodore Avery and Alphonse Ray-mond Dochez, who were studying strepto-coccal bronchopneumonia for the surgeongeneral of the United States. She left to fin-ish her master’s and married Donald Lance-field. Her husband finished his Ph.D. in1921, and they both went to Oregon for afew years to work. Later they returned toNew York, and Lancefield went back towork for the Rockefeller Institute, whereshe would stay for the rest of her career.

While she was there, her laboratory grewin reputation, becoming the world leader inidentifying different strains of strep. She de-veloped a unique classification system thatis still used today.

Lancefield had one daughter, Jane. Shedied on March 3, 1981.

References: Elliott, S. D., “Obituary: Re-becca Craighill Lancefield, 1895–1981,” Jour-nal of General Microbiology 126, pt. 1 (Sep-tember 1981): 1–4; McCarty, Maclyn,“Rebecca Craighill Lancefield,” BiographicalMemoirs, vol. 57, Washington, DC: NationalAcademy of Sciences (1987); Shearer, Ben-jamin, and Barbara S. Shearer, NotableWomen in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic-tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996).

Lazarus, Hilda1890–198?

Hilda Lazarus was an Indian physician whoserved for many years as the director of theVellore Christian Medical College when itbecame coeducational in 1947 and set a newprecedent for Indian medical education. Shewas instrumental in making the transitionto coeducation acceptable.

Born January 23, 1890, in India, Lazarus

was one of twelve children, nine of whichsurvived to adulthood. Her grandfatherwas one of the earliest Brahmins to convertto Christianity. Her parents were well edu-cated, and her father served as principal ofthe London Mission High School, Visakha-patnam. Despite frequent illnesses as achild, Lazarus was a good student whostudied physiology at a local college in or-der to prepare for medical school. She haddecided early on that she wanted to be aphysician and obtained her M.D. from theUniversity of Madras in 1917.

She began her career with the Women’sMedical Service and served briefly at theLady Hardinge Medical College Hospital inNew Delhi. After a few months she wastransferred to the Dufferin Hospital in Cal-cutta and had to deal with multiple lan-guages in treating patients as well as atremendous workload.

There I had to attend to all emergen-cies, all special paying patients, outpa-tients, and a ward of twenty beds, aswell as being responsible for all statis-tics. The only languages I was ac-quainted with were English, Telugu,and Tamil, but here I was obliged tolecture to midwives in Hindi, to dealwith Bengalis, and to study Urdu. Itwas compulsory for every officer ofthe Women’s Medical Service to passin Urdu before confirmation of service.I managed this with credit in two anda half months and then began to studyBengali, in order to understand the pa-tients and help them to understandme. (cited in Hellstedt 1978, 39)

She moved on to work in Surat and laterin Visakhapatnam. She kept learning the re-quired languages of the areas in order toserve patients better as well as to train mid-wives and nurses who worked at the localhospitals and clinics. For a few years shealso worked at the Lady Willingdon Med-ical School in Madras, and then returned toVisakhapatnam in 1922 when she was hiredto help the hospital there overcome finan-cial difficulties. She had good organiza-tional and administrative skills and was

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well qualified to assume in 1940 the positionof principal of the Lady Hardinge MedicalCollege in New Delhi. She held this positionfor three years and later became chief of theWomen’s Medical Service for India. She re-mained in this post until 1947 and then be-came the superintendent of Vellore MedicalCollege as it entered a transitional phase ofcoeducation.

She remained active in the administrationof hospitals after she retired from Vellore in1950. She also served for a time as professorat the Andrha Medical College in Visakha-patnam and worked to better the facilities.

References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor,Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra-phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC:Hemisphere (1978); Lazarus, Hilda, “Mes-sage from India,” Journal of the AmericanMedical Women’s Association 3, no. 6 (June1948): 250; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

L’Esperance, Elise Depew Strang

1878–1959

Elise L’Esperance opened the first clinic inthe United States for cancer detection.

Born in Yorktown, New York, in 1878, shewas the third daughter of Albert Strang andKate Depew. Her father wanted a physicianin the family and, not having a son to followin his footsteps, encouraged his thirddaughter to pursue medical studies.

Elise attended school in Albany, NewYork, at St. Agnes Episcopal School beforeattending the Women’s Medical College ofthe New York Infirmary for Women andChildren. She graduated in 1900 with hermedical degree and married David A. L’Es-perance.

L’Esperance served as a pediatrician inboth New York and Detroit but decided

more clinical research was needed on manyof the child illnesses she saw and treated.She left private practice after several yearsto join the Tuberculosis Research Commis-sion in New York.

Her interest in pathology developed whenshe later worked with James Ewing at Cor-nell University Medical School. She studiedtumors and cancerous cells and realized can-cer could be detected in its early stages. In1917, she moved on to the New York Infir-mary for Women and Children. She workedthere for over thirty years while also work-ing as an instructor at various hospitals andas an assistant professor at Cornell.

When her mother died in 1930, sheopened the Kate Depew Strang TumorClinic with the help of her sister, MayStrang, at the New York Infirmary. Theclinic focused on cancer detection in womenand children as opposed to treatment of theillness. L’Esperance felt strongly that malig-nant cancers could many times be pre-vented if physicians knew what to look for.Her clinic later expanded to include malepatients and became so successful that sheopened another one in 1940.

She became an expert on cervical cancer,and research at her clinic led to the Papsmear for detecting cervical cancer and theproctoscope for detecting colon and rectalcancer. She encouraged women physiciansto stay in the field and was a leader in edu-cating women about their health, the impor-tance of routine examinations, and cancerprevention. She passed away in PelhamManor, New York, on January 21, 1959.

References: Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth, “L’Es-perance, Elise Strang,” American National Bi-ography, vol. 13, New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press (1999); Shearer, Benjamin F. andBarbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the LifeSciences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996).

Levi-Montalcini, Rita1909–

Rita Levi-Montalcini was the 1986 NobelPrize recipient, along with Stanley Cohen,

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for discovering the nerve growth factor(NGF), which is vital for the growth andstimulation of nerve cells.

Born in Turin, Italy, on April 22, 1909, toAdele Levi and Adamo Levi, an electricalengineer, Rita, who had a twin sister andtwo other siblings, decided early on that shewanted to study medicine. She was disap-pointed in her early education because itlacked what she would need in the way ofscience studies.

She took it upon herself to study under tu-tors in Greek, Latin, and math for severalmonths before she took her medical schoolentrance exams. She passed and, along witha cousin, attended the University of Turin,receiving her M.D. in 1936. She stayed andworked as an assistant to Giuseppe Levi, atthe time a well-known professor of histology.

Levi “inspired Rita’s expert skill in thestudy of tissue structure. Under his direc-tion at the Institute of Anatomy, she mas-tered a new technique that involved stain-ing chick neurons with chrome silver tohighlight the nerve cells in infinitesimal de-tail” (Van der Does and Simon 1999, 142).She continued studying chick embryos andtheir nervous systems by dissecting themand examining motor neurons.

Neither Levi nor Levi-Montalcini couldhold an official position at the university be-cause the Fascist regime in Italy was quitestrong at the time and they were Jews. Herfamily went south when the Nazis invaded.

As the war closed in on her family, theyhad to flee again, this time going to Florencewith false identification.

Once the war was over, Levi-Montalcinivowed to work with the survivors as a doc-tor. She worked with the Allied health ser-vice, persevering during a typhoid epi-demic. “The risk of contagion, to which Iwas at every moment exposed, diminishedmy never entirely alleviated sense of guiltfor not having taken a more active part inthe partisan resistance” (Levi-Montalcini1988, 108).

While treating a young girl, Levi-Montal-cini became attached to her and her parents.The girl’s death caused Levi-Montalcini todoubt her competence as a physician: “Mysense of impotence in this case contributed

to the decision I later took not to practice theprofession. I lacked, in fact, the detachmentthat allows a doctor to face the suffering ofa patient without creating an emotional in-volvement damaging to both parties” (Levi-Montalcini 1988, 108). She later devoted herenergies to research on the nervous system.

She went to the United States in 1947 towork with Viktor Hamburger at Washing-ton University in St. Louis. She served as anassociate professor in zoology and in 1958as a professor of neurobiology. It was dur-ing this time that she worked on identifyingthe nerve growth factor (NGF). She andHamburger published some papers to-gether, but she wasn’t able to isolate andidentify NGF until Stanley Cohen came toSt. Louis and worked with her. Togetherthey would discover NGF.

They began by studying mouse tumorsand later snake venom. Both producedmany nerve fibers. It wasn’t until Cohen de-

Rita Levi-Montalcini (Herb Weitman/U.S. NationalLibrary of Medicine)

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duced that the saliva gland produced nervegrowth factor that they were able to purifyit. Levi-Montalcini continued to work onNGF 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.

She left in 1961 to return to Rome and es-tablished the Laboratory of Cellular Biol-ogy. She continued her work there, and astime passed, her discovery attracted moreattention. By the mid-1980s, many neurobi-ologists were aware of the importance ofgrowth factors. It became clear “that thenerve growth factor keeps cells from dyingin their early embryonic stages. Withoutnerve growth factors, half of some kinds ofcells would die; with NGF, they survive.NGF affects particular kinds of cells,whether they are in the central nervous, theperipheral nervous system, or the brain. Italso appears to link the immune and thenervous systems of the body” (McGrayne1998, 220).

In 1986, she and Cohen received the No-bel Prize in physiology or medicine for theirdiscovery. Some scientists were surprisedthat Viktor Hamburger was excluded. Levi-Montalcini’s defense of the Nobel commit-tee’s decision to give the award to her andCohen strained her relationship with Ham-burger, who received the national Medal ofScience in 1989.

She had served in Rome as the director ofthe Institute of Cell Biology from 1969 to1979. After winning the Nobel Prize, she be-came a national celebrity and continued towork as much as she could on NGF, latertaking an interest in degenerative diseases.She served as president of the Italian Multi-ple Sclerosis Association for many years.

References: Levi-Montalcini, Rita, In Praiseof Imperfections: My Life and Work, New York:Basic Books (1988); McGrayne, SharonBertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Science: TheirLives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries,Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Shearer, Ben-jamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer, NotableWomen in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dic-tionary, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996); Van der Does, Louise Q., and Rita J.

Simon, Renaissance Women in Science, Lan-ham, MD: University Press of America(1999).

Longshore, Hannah Myers1819–1901

Hannah Longshore was the first female fac-ulty member in a medical college of theUnited States and the first to practice inPhiladelphia. Longshore was an early pio-neer in women’s medical education in theUnited States.

She was born on May 30, 1819, in SandySpring, Maryland, to Samuel Myers andPaulina Oden Myers. She married ThomasE. Longshore in 1841 and had two children.Her brother-in-law, Joseph Longshore, tu-tored Hannah privately to prepare her forentrance to the Female Medical College ofPennsylvania (renamed the Women’s Med-ical College of Pennsylvania in 1867).Joseph Longshore was a physician and,with some other male doctors, had played avital role in the establishment of the college.Hannah graduated in 1851 and became ademonstrator of anatomy there, the firstwoman in the United States to hold a fac-ulty position in a medical school.

Hannah also taught for a year at the NewEngland Female Medical College in Boston.After Joseph Longshore was ostracized bythe faculty at the Female Medical College ofPennsylvania for wanting to teach watercures and other eclectic therapies, hefounded the Pennsylvania Medical Univer-sity. Hannah taught anatomy there from1853 to 1857.

Her private practice thrived to the pointthat she eventually gave up teaching andlecturing to spend all her time with the 300families under her care. She died on October18, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

See also: Medical College of PennsylvaniaReferences: Kaufman, M., “Longshore,Hannah E. Myers,” Dictionary of AmericanMedical Biography, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1984); Ogilvie, Marilyn, andJoy Harvey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary

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of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000).

Lopez, Rita Lobato Velho1866–19?

Rita Lopez was the first woman doctor whograduated from a medical school in Brazil.She received her degree in 1887 from theUniversity of Bahia.


Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl1870–1967

Esther Lovejoy was the first woman to heada city health department. She raised the is-sue of public health in the schools and es-tablished school health inspections, becamea leader of women in medicine by establish-ing the Medical Women’s International As-sociation, and was instrumental in docu-menting numerous medical women’sevents and accomplishments.

She was born November 16, 1870, inSeabeck, Washington. Her parents, Edwardand Annie Quinton Clayson, moved aroundto make a living. Esther first lived in a log-ging camp where her father worked, then ina hotel her parents managed, and later on afarm. Her early education was in Seabeck;later she had a professor as a tutor. Sheworked to earn money for medical school.

She attended the University of OregonMedical School and became the secondwoman graduate in 1894. She married EmilPohl, a surgeon, later that year, and didpostgraduate work at the West Side PostGraduate School in Chicago, where shestudied obstetrics and gynecology. In 1898,they went to Alaska, where her brotherslived, to set up practice, and they were in-strumental in setting up Union Hospital.

Her brother Fred Clayson mysteriouslydisappeared while she lived there, and twomen he had been traveling with were found

murdered. Some of the local people sus-pected her brother of murdering them for adog sledge. Speculation mounted, and a fewmonths after the snow had melted, herbrother’s body was also found—shot likethe others. The mystery was partly solved,but Esther could no longer bear to stay inAlaska. She moved and set up a privatepractice in Portland, Oregon, and commutedto Skagway in order to visit her husband.

When their son was born in 1901, Emilmoved to Portland as well and set up apractice. Lovejoy became involved with thePortland Board of Health in 1905, becomingthe first woman to head such a departmentin 1907. She witnessed numerous child ill-nesses due to unhealthy school conditionsand contaminated milk. Frederick, her onlychild, died in 1908 from what she believedto be the result of contaminated milk. Shefought and won the battle for advanced san-itation standards, and a milk ordinance waseventually passed. Her husband died threeyears after she lost her son. In 1913, she mar-ried George Lovejoy; they divorced in 1920.

Much of her later career focused on orga-nizational activities in order to promotewomen as able physicians and to providechannels for women to lend aid to those inneed. This work led to the establishment ofthe American Women’s Hospital Service(AWH) in 1917, which she helped direct.With her organizational skills, fundraisingability, and tireless effort, the AWH was ableto work in numerous countries in coopera-tion with the Red Cross. She also helpedfound the Medical Women’s InternationalAssociation to help women physicians andalso soldiers and victims of war, famine,and epidemics around the world. She wrotea great deal about women in the medicalfield and their contributions.

Lovejoy died in New York on August 17,1967.

References: Bass, Elizabeth, “Esther PohlLovejoy, MD,” Journal of the American Med-ical Women’s Association 6, no. 9 (September1951): 354–355; Burt, Olive Woolley, Physi-cian to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy, NewYork: J. Messner (1973); Dodds, G. B.,“Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,” Dictionary of Ameri-

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can Medical Biography, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1984); Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,Women Doctors of the World, New York:Macmillan (1957); Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth,“Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,” American NationalBiography, vol. 14, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1999).

Luisi, Paulina1875–1950

Paulina Luisi was the first female physicianof Uruguay. She devoted most of her life toridding Uruguay of the slave trade inwomen and children.

Born in 1875, Luisi graduated from theUniversity of Uruguay Medical School in1908 and became both a teacher and a sur-geon. Early on she became involved in thefight against the trade in women and chil-dren. She represented her country at theLeague of Nations, wrote on the importanceof hygiene, and was active in the women’srights movement in her country. She died inMontevideo in 1950.

References: “Outstanding Uruguayan Wo-men,” http://www.correo.com.uy/ filatelia/frames/MujeresDestacadas_ingles.htm;Sapriza, Graciela, “Clivajes de la Memoria:Para una Biografía de Paulina Luisi,” inUruguayos Notables, Montevideo: FundaciónBankBoston (1999).

Lyon, Mary Frances1925–

Mary Lyon is a geneticist who proposed thewell-known Lyon hypothesis, which statesthat females have two X chromosomes, oneinactivated early in an embryo’s life. Thishypothesis has led to a better understand-ing of sex-linked diseases and opened thedoor to research on numerous genetic issuesand hereditary traits.

She was born in Norwich, England, onMay 15, 1925, to Louise Frances Kirby Lyon

and Clifford James Lyon. She grew up invarious locations in England and graduatedfrom Cambridge with a degree in zoology in1946.

Lyon was fascinated by the emergingfield of embryology, an interest that led toher work in genetics. She studied underR. A. Fisher and Conrad H. Waddington inEngland, receiving both her M.A. and herPh.D. in 1950. Upon completion of herPh.D., Waddington offered her a position atthe Medical Research Council in the UnitedKingdom, where she has carried out most ofher work and where she formed her Lyonhypothesis.

References: Grinstein, Louise S., Carol A.Biermann, and Rose K. Rose, eds., Women inthe Biological Sciences: A BiobibliographicSourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1997); Parry, Melanie, Chambers BiographicalDictionary, Edinburgh: Chambers (1997).

Mary Frances Lyon (Godfrey Argent Studio)

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Mabie, Catharine Louise Roe1872–1963

Catharine Mabie was an early medical mis-sionary to the Congo. She battled tuberculo-sis, infections, sleeping sickness, and super-stition to become a trusted physician amongvarious tribes.

Born in Rock Island, Illinois, she was de-termined early on to become a missionary.She frequented Methodist revivals and wasbaptized in a Baptist church. When she wasonly ten she ventured out to neighborhoodsin Chicago in an effort to reach troubledyouth with religion.

She received her medical training and de-gree at Rush Medical College, where, shefelt, most of her professors were not biasedabout women in class.

Saturday mornings from 8 to 1:30 allclasses were in surgical clinic. At theopening session several men whocould not take it were carried out butnever one of the girls. We girls were avery small minority and not welcomedby the men students. For the most partour professors were neutral. Ouranatomy professor, however, definitelydid not like having us in his class anddissecting room. He made a point oftrying to make us jittery, asking us todemonstrate difficult complex combi-nations of muscular action and reac-tion. One by one he called us into hisoffice for oral examinations. One ofmine on the twelve pairs of cranialnerves lasted well over an hour. Luck-

ily I had concentrated on them, both indissecting them and in Gray’sAnatomy, so I got off with a goodgrade. (Mabie 1952, 21)

Upon her graduation, the Woman’s Bap-tist Foreign Missionary Society (WBFMS)appointed her to serve in the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (formerly known asthe Belgian Congo and later as Zaire) in1898. She did much of her work at the BanzaManteke Hospital. Mabie was deeply in-volved in trying to change local attitudestoward illness and healing:

The Congo knows very little aboutanatomy, and has no sane notionswhatever concerning physiology, hy-giene, pathology, or therapeutics. Withhis animistic notions he attributes allhis physical and mental ailments tospirit interference through an interme-diary or to direct interposition. Indreams his own spirit wanders apartfrom the body, and if too rudely awak-ened may fail to return. To dream ofthe dead gives rise to great anxiety,and much importance is attached tointerpretation of dreams. Whenever se-rious illness occurs, the person be-witching the patient is sought, and be-fore the white man interfered trial ofwitches was frequent and usually fa-tal. Delirium is greatly feared; anotherspirit than the sufferers is in posses-sion and speaking strange things.Epileptic seizures, insanity, and allmental aberrations are diagnosed asdue to direct spirit possession. Witch-

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doctors and fetishes were their chiefreliance in sickness. (Mabie 1917, 23)

Mabie died in 1963.

References: Anderson, Gerald H., Biograph-ical Dictionary of Christian Missions, NewYork: Macmillan Reference USA (1998);Franklin, James Henry, Ministers of Mercy,New York: Missionary Education Move-ment of the United States and Canada(1919); Hume, Edward Hicks, Doctors Coura-geous, New York: Harper (1950); Mabie,Catharine Louise Roe, Congo Cameos,Philadelphia: Judson Press (1952); Mabie,Catharine L., Our Work on the Congo: A Bookfor Mission Study Classes and for General In-formation, Philadelphia: American BaptistPublication Society (1917), as reproduced inthe History of Women Collection, no. 7541.1,New Haven, CT: Research Publications(1976).

Macklin, Madge Thurlow1893–1962

Madge Macklin was a leading genetics re-searcher of the early twentieth century. Sheadvocated tirelessly for the inclusion of acurriculum that included medical genetics atall medical schools. She also wrote vocifer-ously on eugenics and the repercussions of adecline in the offspring of the intellectuallyfit. She was a controversial spokesperson forsterilization of the mentally ill.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, onFebruary 6, 1893, to Margaret De Grofft andWilliam Harrison Thurlow, she attendedGoucher College in Baltimore and receivedan A.B. degree in 1914. She was briefly anoutspoken suffragist before going to JohnsHopkins Medical School and receiving hermedical degree in 1919. While in medicalschool she met Charles Macklin, a Canadiananatomist. They married in 1918.

Both Macklin and her husband went tothe University of Western Ontario in Lon-don, Canada, in 1921 when Charles was of-fered a position as head of the Departmentof History and Embryology. Madge workedfor low pay teaching both histology and em-

bryology. Her early publications, some withher husband, concerned anatomy, but by1926 she had become very interested inmedical genetics. She studied heredity in re-lation to mental retardation and to cancerand other diseases.

She utilized data from a Canadian mentalhospital to validate her belief in eugenicsand the consequences of persons with men-tal illness procreating. She wrote several pa-pers on the topic and later became the di-rector of the Eugenics Society of Canada. Atthe same time, she began advocating med-ical genetics as a valid part of the curricu-lum in all medical schools.

Her views were not well received bysome, particularly late in the 1930s and the1940s, as the public became aware ofHitler’s attempts to exterminate the men-tally ill and create an elite race. Because ofher views, she lost her position at the Uni-versity of Western Ontario in 1945.

In 1946 she obtained a position as a cancerresearcher at Ohio State University, the firstmedical school to have a medical geneticscourse. Her research there focused onheredity and breast cancer. Her husband re-mained at the University of Western On-tario, and she commuted back and forth formany years. They had three daughters.

Macklin died in Toronto on March 14,1962.

References: Rechnitzer, Peter A., “Macklin,Madge Thurlow,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 14, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999); Shearer, Benjamin S., and Bar-bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sci-ences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1996).

Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean1899–1968

Jean Macnamara was an Australian scientistwho did research on polio, helping to dis-cover that there was more than one strain ofthe polio virus. In an unrelated interest, shewas also instrumental in lobbying for use ofthe controversial virus myxomatosis to con-trol Australia’s rabbit population.

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Born in Beechworth, Victoria, on April 1,1899, she gained a medical education fromMelbourne University, graduating in 1922and becoming one of the first female resi-dents at Melbourne Hospital. Several Mel-bourne hospitals had for years refused totake on women, blaming their lack of toilets;Melbourne Hospital installed toilets.

Jean encountered many polio victims andworked to alleviate the crippling effects ofinfantile paralysis with traditional methodsthat sometimes were at odds with the ex-perimental treatments of Elizabeth Kenny.In the poliomyelitis epidemic of 1925 she in-troduced a serum with limited success. Shethen traveled to the United States andCanada to do further research. Back in Aus-tralia she worked with Sir Macfarlane Bur-net, and together they discovered there wasmore than one strain of the polio virus. Thisdiscovery would eventually help in the de-velopment of the Salk vaccine. She also is re-sponsible for introducing the first artificialrespirator in Australia.

She married Ivan Connor, a dermatolo-gist, in 1934, and they had two daughters,Joan and Merran. She traveled throughoutEurope, the United States, Australia, NewZealand, and Canada to speak about myxo-matosis to control rabbits and also about po-lio treatments. She passed away on October13, 1968.

See also: Kenny, ElizabethReferences: Crystal, David, The CambridgeBiographical Encyclopedia, Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press (1998); Muir, Hazel,Larousse Dictionary of Scientists, Edinburgh:Larousse (1994); Sherratt, Tim, “No Stand-ing Back: Dame Jean Macnamara,” Aus-tralasian Science 13, no. 4 (Summer 1993): 64;Zwar, Desmond, The Dame: The Life andTimes of Dame Jean Macnamara, Medical Pio-neer, South Melbourne: Macmillan (1984).

Mahoney, Mary Eliza1845–1926

Mary Mahoney was the first black profes-sional nurse in the United States. She was aleader in nursing and was instrumental in

organizing black nurses and pursuing equalopportunities for black women interested innursing as a profession. She was central tothe success of the National Association ofColored Graduate Nurses (NACGN).

Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, onMay 7, 1845, she was the daughter ofCharles Mahoney and Mary Jane StewartMahoney. She had one brother, Frank, andtwo sisters, Ellen and Louise. Louise died atan early age.

For a time she attended the Phillips StreetSchool in Boston. She worked for severalfamilies as a private nurse before she en-tered the School of Nursing at the New En-gland Hospital for Women and Children.She did well and received her diploma onAugust 1, 1879. Linda Richards had re-ceived her diploma in 1873, becoming thefirst professional nurse in the United States.

Like most black nurses of her era, Ma-honey entered private-duty nursing be-cause most hospitals would not hire blacknurses. She realized early on that blacknurses must organize in order to have avoice in nursing affairs. She was able to be-come a member of the Nurses AssociatedAlumnae (later the American Nurses Asso-ciation); however, she realized many otherblacks could not become members becausea requirement for joining that organizationwas membership in their state nursing asso-ciations, which were often closed to blacks.

She was a gifted speaker, welcoming all tothe first convention of the NACGN in 1908,and a good organizer. She remained activein the NACGN all her life. In 1911 she be-came the supervisor at the Howard OrphanAsylum for Black Children, located on LongIsland in Kings Park. She worked until 1922,when she retired.

Mahoney never married. She died of pro-gressive breast cancer on January 4, 1926.She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery inEverett, Massachusetts. Her grave was un-covered and restored during a ceremony onAugust 15, 1973, and a monument wasplaced at the gravesite. She was inductedinto the Nursing Hall of Fame in 1976, andan award is still given in her name to honornurses who have made significant contribu-tions to the field.

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See also: Richards, LindaReferences: Davis, Althea T., Early BlackAmerican Leaders in Nursing: Architects for In-tegration and Equality, Boston: Jones andBartlett (1999); Hine, Darlene Clark, BlackWomen in America: An Historical Encyclope-dia, Brooklyn, NY: Carlson (1993); Miller,Helen S., Mary Eliza Mahoney, 1845–1926:America’s First Black Professional Nurse, At-lanta: Wright (1986).

Malahlele, Mary Susan

Mary Malahlele of the Bapedi Nation wasthe first female native South African physi-cian. She received her degree at the Univer-sity of the Witwatersrand in 1947 with an in-terest in African children’s diseases andworked for McCord Hospital in Durban.

References: Hume, Edward Hicks, DoctorsCourageous, New York: Harper (1950); Love-joy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of the World,New York: Macmillan (1957).

Mandl, Ines1917–

Ines Mandl was an early biochemist. Herunderstanding of chemistry and its applica-tion to biomedical problems helped ad-vance knowledge in the areas of enzymesand pulmonary emphysema.

Born on April 19, 1917, in Vienna, Austria,she was the daughter of Ernst Mandl andIda Bassan Hochmuth. She attended bothstate-supported schools and a privateschool and then, as was customary, married.

In 1938 she and her family moved to En-gland because the National Socialists wereon the rise in Austria. When World War IIbroke out, they moved to Ireland. Ineswent to the National University of Irelandin Cork and graduated with a degree inchemistry, specializing in biochemistry. Shethen followed her parents to the UnitedStates and later met a fellow Jew, Carl Neu-berg, who was doing research in the newfield of biochemistry. She joined him atNew York University doing research and,

with his encouragement, enrolled at thePolytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. There,she earned a master’s in science and in1949 became the first woman to earn a doc-torate at that institution.

She published with Neuberg on researchwith fructose and sugar derivatives andcontinued to stay in touch with him aftershe went to work at Columbia University.She joined Delafield Hospital as director ofthe obstetrics and gynecology labs and be-gan focusing on human tissue and the en-zymes involved in its breakdown, as well asthe enzymes that are present in tumorsfound in the reproductive system.

She later studied the effects of tobacco onthe lungs and found that smoke damagedelastin and thus led to the deterioration oflung tissue. She was known worldwide as apioneer in applying chemistry to many bio-medical problems. She received the GarvanMedal in 1982.

References: Shearer, Benjamin F., and Bar-bara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the Physi-cal Sciences, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1997).

Manley, Audrey Forbes1934–

A physician and college president, AudreyManley has been a leading black medicaladministrator. She served as the acting sur-geon general in 1995.

Born on March 25, 1934, in Jackson, Mis-sissippi, she obtained her bachelor’s degreefrom Spelman College in Atlanta in 1955and continued on toward her medical de-gree at Meharry Medical College. She com-pleted her residency at Cook County Chil-dren’s Hospital in Chicago. She became thefirst African American woman to becomechief resident of that hospital.

Manley also sought neonatology trainingat the University of Illinois Abraham Lin-coln School of Medicine. She also earned adegree in public health from Johns HopkinsUniversity. She has been a professor at sev-eral medical schools, but her chief contribu-tions have been in the field of public health.

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She rose to become the deputy assistant sec-retary for health within the U.S. Departmentof Health and Human Services.

Manley has encouraged women and mi-norities to go into education and careers inthe sciences. She is currently the presidentof Spelman College.

References: Manley, Albert E., A Legacy Con-tinues: The Manley Years at Spelman College,1953–1976, Lanham, MD: University Pressof America (1995); “Manley, AudreyForbes,” Who’s Who of American Women, 22ded., New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who’sWho (2000).

McClintock, Barbara1902–1992

Barbara McClintock received the 1983 NobelPrize in physiology or medicine for discov-ering that genes could move from one placeto another on plants, thus changing futuregenerations. Although researchers had longbelieved the “jumping genes” theory, therewas no hard evidence of the phenomenonuntil McClintock proved it to be true.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June16, 1902, McClintock was the third of threedaughters of Sara Handy and Dr. ThomasHenry McClintock. She always had a dis-tant relationship with her mother, who hadwanted a boy when Barbara was born and,with the son born after Barbara, had foursmall children to raise. When Barbara wasyoung, her mother sent her to spend a lot oftime with an aunt and uncle in rural Massa-chusetts, where she enjoyed collecting in-sects and studying them, fixing machinery,and going about with her uncle, who soldfish. Her father raised his daughters no dif-ferently than he did his son. Both parentssupported Barbara’s activities even whenthey differed from the norm. She was an in-dependent child who spent a lot of time out-doors and alone.

Barbara did well in school and loved sci-ence and math at Erasmus Hall High Schoolin Brooklyn, New York. When she wasready for college, she told her mother shewanted to go to Cornell. Her father was

away in the Army Medical Corps, and hermother refused. When her father returned,he allowed her to enroll in Cornell’s Collegeof Agriculture. She graduated in 1923 afterhaving already done graduate work andstayed on at Cornell to earn an M.S. in 1925and a Ph.D. in 1927. She majored in cytologyand minored in genetics and zoology.

Barbara’s mother was worried she wouldnever marry and become a professor in-stead. McClintock felt marriage would be amistake because she was such a dominantperson, and she never wed.

McClintock worked long hours while atCornell and later at the University of Mis-souri. Before she obtained her Ph.D., she“developed a method of studying individualchromosomes of Indian corn (maize) under amicroscope. This discovery allowed concur-rent study of the chromosomes and the phys-ical traits of maize” (Shampo and Kyle 1995,448). McClintock published on the geneticsof corn in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

While at the University of Missouri shediscovered that after X rays break chromo-somes, the chromosomes repair themselves,sometimes fusing together in rings. Thisdiscovery came well before the study ofDNA in the 1950s, at which time some sci-entists were observing the damage-and-repair process and others still believed thatchromosomes were stable. McClintock re-ceived a Guggenheim Fellowship and usedit to visit Germany in 1933. She was so dis-tressed to find the scientific community indisarray as a result of Hitler’s ridding theuniversities of the Jews that she immedi-ately returned to Cornell. With the depres-sion on, she was able to secure two years atCornell only with the help of the RockefellerFoundation.

Unable to obtain a full-time faculty posi-tion at Cornell because of her gender, shetook a faculty position, her first, at the Uni-versity of Missouri in 1936. She was uncon-ventional (she did not wear dresses, did notwork well in organized settings, and did notlike to teach as well as she liked doing re-search), and did not last long there. In 1942,she obtained a position with the CarnegieFoundation working at Cold Spring Harbor,an environment that suited her tempera-

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ment and her work ethic. She stayed thereover forty years.

It was at Cold Spring Harbor that shemade the discovery of “jumping genes,” ortransposable elements. She announced herfinding in 1951 and later published her re-search, but the scientific community wasskeptical and she got little notice. She con-tinued working on other projects, and in1983, she won the Nobel Prize for her workthirty years prior.

Part of the reason for the delayed recogni-tion was that the Nobel Prize was not givenfor botany research until it was clear thework had significance for human well-being. “The discovery of transposable ge-netic systems and genetic regulation antici-pated the findings of bacterial geneticists by15 years and explained how the resistanceto antibiotic drugs can be passed from onetype of bacteria to another through ‘jump-ing genes’” (Shampo and Kyle 1995, 148).

Her “ideas, like her discoveries, trulyspan the century of genetics. Some weretimely and quickly recognized. Others werewell ahead of their time, but eventuallycaught on. Some still pull us into the future”(Fedoroff 1992, 3). Barbara McClintock diedon September 2, 1992.

References: Comfort, Nathaniel C., The Tan-gled Field: Barbara McClintock’s Search for thePatterns of Genetic Control, Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press (2001); Fedoroff,Nina, and David Botstein, eds., The DynamicGenome: Barbara McClintock’s Ideas in theCentury of Genetics, Cold Spring Harbor, NY:Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press(1992); Keller, Evelyn Fox, A Feeling for theOrganism: The Life and Work of Barbara Mc-Clintock, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman(1983); McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, NobelPrize Women in Science, Secaucus, NJ: Carol(1998); Shampo, Marc A., and Robert A.Kyle, “Barbara McClintock—Nobel Laure-ate Geneticist,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 70,no. 5 (1995): 448; Van der Does, Louise Q.,and Rita J. Simon, Renaissance Women in Sci-ence, Lanham, MD: University Press ofAmerica (1999).

McGee, Anita Newcomb1864–1940

Anita McGee was the founder of the U.S.Army Nurse Corps. She heightened publicawareness of the importance of an orga-nized nursing unit for the military.

Born in Washington, D.C., on November4, 1864, McGee was the daughter of Caro-line Hassler and Simon Newcomb. Her fa-ther served as an astronomer at the NavalObservatory. She received her early educa-tion, along with two sisters, at privateschools and with tutors. She spent sometime in Europe with her mother and studiedvarious subjects, including languages andart. She took some classes at the Universityof Geneva and also Cambridge University.

She did a great deal of research on herforebears and became one of the early mem-bers of the Daughters of the American Rev-

Anita Newcomb McGee (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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olution (DAR). She also wrote articles for anencyclopedia, was active in politics, andhad an interest in science. In 1888 she mar-ried William John McGee; they had threechildren. She decided to attend medicalschool the year after her marriage and en-rolled at Columbian College (now calledGeorge Washington University).

During her last year, the college decidedto refuse admittance to future female appli-cants. She fought this decision but to noavail; women were not admitted after shegraduated. She went on to intern at theWashington, D.C., Women’s Clinic and lateropened a private practice. Following thedeath of her son in 1895, she joined the staffof the Women’s Dispensary.

War with Spain seemed inevitable in1898, and McGee used her influence to per-suade the army to allow the DAR to assist inplacing trained nurses in the military andsetting criteria for nurses’ qualifications.However, her work with organizing nursesput her in a negative light with the RedCross, which felt slighted when it was notselected to be in charge of military nurses.

McGee was instrumental following thewar in drafting legislation to form theNurse Corps as a part of the Army MedicalCorps. She was determined to see nurses aspart of both the Army Medical Corps andthe reserves. “In addition to this permanentforce, definite provision should be made forwar reserves. The Army and NationalGuard will supply corps men for the ardu-ous field service, but they cannot maintain alarge enough corps to fill the needs of waremergency, with its large Army and largepercentage of sick, and neither can they turnrecruits into competent nurses in a fewweeks” (McGee 1977, 6).

She was active in the Russo-Japanese War,training nurses and inspecting hospitalsoverseas. She believed that nurses deserveda higher professional status and that themilitary deserved nurses as well qualifiedas those who served civilians.

Her husband died in 1912, and she spenttime with her children and lecturing on var-ious health topics. She died on October 5,1940, and was buried with honors at Arling-ton National Cemetery.

References: McGee, Anita Newcomb, TheNurse Corps of the Army, Carlisle, PA: Associ-ation of Military Surgeons (1902), reprintedin History of Women Collection, no. 10001, NewHaven, CT: Research Publications (1977);Reeves, Connie L., “McGee, Anita New-comb,” American National Biography, vol. 15,New York: Oxford University Press (1999).

McKinnon, Emily H. S.1873–1968

Emily McKinnon was the first female to be-come a physician in New Zealand. Shegraduated from the University of Otago in1896. More information on her life is at theAlexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.


Medical Act of 1858

The British Parliament passed the MedicalAct of 1858 to restrict the medical professionto those who were perceived to be qualified.The law excluded women from British med-ical schools. The act was overturned by theRussell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876, whichgave women the same rights as men to entermedical schools and earn their M.D. degrees.

See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa; RussellGurney Enabling Act of 1876References: Waddington, Ivan, The MedicalProfession in the Industrial Revolution, Dublin:Gill and Macmillan (1984).

Medical College of Pennsylvania

1850–

The Medical College of Pennsylvania wasoriginally founded by Quakers in Philadel-phia in 1850 as the Female Medical Collegeof Pennsylvania. In 1867, it became knownas the Women’s Medical College of Pennsyl-

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vania. In 1969, it became coeducational.During the 1920s and 1930s it was the onlymedical college for women that survived.Struggling financially at times, it stayed acourse that would ensure a permanent placein Philadelphia history and in the history ofwomen in medicine around the world.

References: Peitzman, Steven J., A New andUntried Course: Women’s Medical College andMedical College of Pennsylvania, 1850–1998,New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UniversityPress (2000).

Medical Women’sInternational Association

(MWIA)1919–

The Medical Women’s International Associ-ation, created by members of the American

Medical Women’s Association and their for-eign guests in October 1919, was the first or-ganization to unify women physiciansworldwide. The Medical Women’s Federa-tion of Great Britain was the only otherlarge association in existence at the time; itwas organized in 1917.

The association grew out of a recognizedneed for international cooperation on healthcare and medical education for women.Women health care workers had been over-whelmed during World War I by the condi-tions in some countries, especially regard-ing the health of women and children andgeneral nutrition. The war opened theworld’s eyes to the needs of the underde-veloped countries.

Today the MWIA has over 20,000 mem-bers in seventy countries. The majority ofmembers are from affiliated national associ-ations; a small number of members are indi-vidual women who come from countriesthat do not have a national association.

Medical College of Pennsylvania (Lucius Crowell/U.S. National Library of Medicine)

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They continue to strive for equal opportuni-ties in medical education for women, to dis-seminate information on various health is-sues, and to attempt to overcome genderdiscrimination in the medical field.

The MWIA has maintained an affiliationwith the World Health Organization (WHO)since 1954 and has recently collaboratedwith WHO on women’s health, AIDS, andimmunization. It has also worked withUNESCO and other national and interna-tional agencies in providing information onvarious health care issues. MWIA’s homeoffice is in Dortmund, Germany.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenPhysicians and Surgeons: National and Interna-tional Organizations, Livingston, NY: Liv-ingston Press (1939), http://www.who.int/ina-ngo/ngo/ngo143.htm.

Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed1874–1964

Dorothy Mendenhall was a physician whohelped discover the cells important for thediagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease. Both she, anAmerican, and Carl Sternberg, from Aus-tria, gave the most thorough descriptions ofthe cells (Sternberg in 1898 and Mendenhallin 1902), now called Reed-Sternberg cells.

Mendenhall was born on September 22,1874, in Columbus, Ohio. Her parents wereWilliam Pratt Reed and Grace Kimball. Thefamily had a certain amount of financial se-curity even though her father, a shoe manu-facturer, passed away when she was a child.She was able to obtain a good education at home.

She went to Smith College in Northamp-ton, Massachusetts, in 1891. She became in-terested in biology and discovered that amedical career was possible through JohnsHopkins. She obtained her degree fromSmith and then went to the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology to better her under-standing of chemistry. She also began a cor-respondence with Dr. William Welch ofJohns Hopkins and later enrolled. One ofher classmates was Florence Sabin. “Thestudy of medicine itself and its many nu-

ances satisfied her need to be challengedmentally that went all the way back to thedays when she had been tutored by AnnaGunning. It incorporated her love of biol-ogy that she had discovered at Smith and al-lowed her to escape from the social pres-sures placed on her while she was at home”(Halamay 2000, 54).

Her mother had not managed the fi-nances of the family well enough to supporther well in college, and she became more in-terested in a career. After her sojourn atJohns Hopkins, where she discovered theReed-Sternberg cells, she worked for fouryears at Babies Hospital in New York underDr. Emmett Holt.

She married Charles Elwood Mendenhallin 1906, and they had four children. The firstdied in childbirth, and this tragedy affectedMendenhall for the rest of her life. Sheblamed the death on poor obstetrical careand afterward worked on exploring theproblems of infant mortality and the impor-tance of nutrition. She became an activepublic health physician, working for theU.S. Department of Agriculture, the Chil-dren’s Bureau, and the Wisconsin StateBoard of Health.

Mendenhall was a rarity in her time. Forthe most part, a woman either had a careeror had a husband and children. “DorothyReed Mendenhall represented a third typethat is not present in the usual depiction ofearly twentieth century women. She was aprofessional woman who married and hadchildren, and who managed to pursue a ca-reer after her marriage. A study of her life al-lows us to see that some women did existduring the late nineteenth and early twenti-eth centuries who, even in the face of vehe-ment opposition, used innovation and inge-nuity to carve out new lives and, in so doing,found fulfillment” (Halamay 2000, 137).

Mendenhall published several reportsabout children’s health and childbirth is-sues and remained active until her retire-ment. She died in Chester, Connecticut, onJuly 31, 1964.

References: Halamay, Kate Elizabeth, “‘ILike Everything about Medicine, Ex-cept . . .’: Dorothy Reed Mendenhall and the

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Issues Confronting Women Physicians inthe Early Twentieth Century,” Ph.D. disser-tation, Smith College (2000); Mauch, PeterM., et al., Hodgkin’s Disease, Philadelphia:Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins (1999);Morantz-Sanchez, Regina, “Mendenhall,Dorothy Reed,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 15, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999).

Mendoza-Gauzon, Marie Paz18?–19?

Marie Mendoza-Gauzon was the first fe-male physician of the Philippines. She grad-uated from the College of Medicine at theUniversity of the Philippines in 1912 andmarried Dr. P. Gauzon, who was head ofPhilippine General Hospital’s Departmentof Surgery. She served as a professor ofpathology at the university.


Mergler, Marie Josepha1851–1901

Marie Mergler was an early gynecologicalsurgeon who became dean of the Women’sMedical College of Chicago in 1899. Her ex-ample and teaching influenced a number ofwomen pursuing medical careers in the latenineteenth century. She was well-knownand respected among the male physicians ofher day. She was born in Mainstockheim,Bavaria. Her family moved to Illinois whenshe was a child. Her mother was Henriettavon Ritterhausen and her father, a physi-cian, was Francis R. Mergler.

She gained an education from her fatherduring her childhood and eventually helpedhim in his medical work. She trained for ateaching career, however, because of the nu-merous obstacles facing women who wanteda medical career. She taught high school for atime before deciding to enter the Women’sMedical College of Chicago in 1877. Shegraduated with honors and was allowed to

compete with men for a position at the CookCounty Insane Asylum. She did well, but thehospital board prevented her from taking theposition. She then chose to do postgraduatework in Zurich, Switzerland.

She later became an assistant in Chicagoto William H. Byford, a gynecologist. Thefollowing year she gained a position at theWomen’s Medical College and graduallyrose to become its dean. She also worked atCook County Hospital, the Women’s Hospi-tal of Chicago, Wesley Hospital, and theChicago Hospital for Women and Children.Mergler died in Los Angeles, California, onMay 17, 1901.

References: Fine, Eva, “Mergler, MarieJosepha,” American National Biography, vol.15, New York: Oxford University Press(1999); Southgate, M. Therese, “Women inMedicine II,” in John Walton, Paul B. Bee-son, and Ronald Bodley Scott, eds., The Ox-ford Companion to Medicine, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press (1986).

Miller, Jean Baker1927–

A pioneering psychiatrist, Jean Miller brokenew ground in understanding women andtheir psychological needs with the publica-tion in 1976 of Toward a New Psychology ofWomen. She continues her work today at theJean Baker Miller Institute at Wellesley Col-lege in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

She was born in New York City on Sep-tember 29, 1927. She graduated from SarahLawrence College in Bronxville, New York,in 1948 with a B.A. and then went to Co-lumbia University, where she obtained herM.D. in 1952. She was an intern and later aresident at Montefiore Hospital and thenstudied and was a resident in psychiatry atBellevue Medical Center. Miller expressedsome of the feelings that prompted her towrite her first book:

Well, for years I was practicing psy-chotherapy, and also teaching psychia-try, and it seemed to me that some-thing was fundamentally wrong with

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the formulations about women, whichwere based upon traditional psychoan-alytic theories. I thought that theywere wrong, but I didn’t have a frame-work for an alternate way of thinking.Also, in addition to thinking that theseformulations were wrong, I always feltthat the women whom I was seeing inmy practice had a lot of strengths.These capabilities, such as making re-lationships and knowing how to dothat, or helping the whole family sur-vive and flourish a little, were extraor-dinarily valuable. However, in our cul-ture, the women themselves couldnever really perceive them as beingstrengths, and so these strengths didnot help them anywhere near as muchas they should. (Welch 1995, 336–337)

Toward a New Psychology of Women reexam-ined women’s roles as workers, mothers, andwives, as well as women’s strengths. Shesays that these strengths derive in part fromwomen’s subservient roles throughout his-tory and that they can be used toward be-coming proactive participants rather thanpassive victims. Her book “has had a pro-found impact on the development of psycho-logical theory and practice concerning gen-der roles. The book has helped to deconstructand reconstruct the questions and methodsof psychological research and has played amajor role in the development of new psy-chology, not only of women but of humanbehavior generally” (Antler 1988, 63).

Miller has been a professor or lecturer atmany institutions with long stays at the Up-state Medical Center at the State Universityof New York, Albert Einstein College of Med-icine, Harvard Medical School, WellesleyCollege, and Boston University School ofMedicine. Miller currently is the director ofthe Jean Baker Miller Training Institute inWellesley, Massachusetts, and clinical profes-sor of psychiatry at Boston University Schoolof Medicine. She is married and has two chil-dren. She has continued her writing and hasemphasized that “studying women’s lives of-fers us a crucial key to thinking about socie-tal transformation—and that this transforma-tion is essential” (Miller and Stiver 1997, 62).

References: Antler, Joyce, “Book Review: To-ward a New Psychology of Women,” Social Pol-icy 18, no. 3 (Winter 1988): 63–64; Bowman,John S., The Cambridge Dictionary of AmericanBiography, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Uni-versity Press (1995); Kester-Shelton, Pamela,ed., Feminist Writers, Detroit: St. James Press(1996); Miller, Jean Baker, Toward a New Psy-chology of Women, Boston: Beacon Press(1976); Miller, Jean Baker, and Irene PierceStiver, The Healing Connection: How WomenForm Relationships in Therapy and in Life,Boston: Beacon Press (1997); Welch, Amy S.,“Learning from Women,” Women and Therapy17, nos. 3–4 (1995): 335–346.

Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa1876–1952

Lillie Minoka-Hill was the second NativeAmerican woman to become a physician.She served the Oneida community in Wis-consin for many years.

She was born August 30, 1876, on the St.Regis Reservation in New York. Her motherwas a Mohawk and her father was JoshuaAllen, a physician. She received an educa-tion at Grahame Institute in Philadelphiabefore attending the Women’s Medical Col-lege of Pennsylvania, obtaining her medicaldegree in 1899. She interned at the Women’sHospital in Philadelphia and then had a pri-vate practice.

She married Charles Abram Hill in 1905and had six children. They moved toOneida, Wisconsin, where Minoka-Hillmaintained an informal practice for manydecades. After the death of her husband in1916, she had to work harder as a physician,attending to friends, relatives, and neigh-bors and taking whatever they could affordto pay. In 1934 she took the state medicalexam and passed it, allowing her to receivegovernment reimbursement for some of herdesperately needed services.

Minoka-Hill had a great deal of respectfor traditional Indian medicinal cures butalso used Western medications and healthcare practices to further the welfare of thepeople she served. She passed away onMarch 18, 1952, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

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References: Apple, R. D., “Minoka-Hill, Lil-lie Rosa,” Dictionary of American Medical Biog-raphy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1984);Perry, Marilyn Elizabeth, “Minoka-Hill, LillieRosa,” American National Biography, vol. 15,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);Thomas, David Hurst, Betty Ballantine, andIan Ballantine, The Native Americans: An Illus-trated History, Atlanta: Turner (1993).

Mission Work

Church missions provided women in themedical field with another professional op-portunity. As the twentieth century ap-proached, there were still few professionsopen to women. Nursing and teaching werethe most common, with physician work apossibility for a small number of womenwho had the tenacity to gain admission to amedical school and the endurance to gradu-ate and become licensed. The women’smovement fueled the fight late in the nine-teenth century, and the various religionsproved a good ally because they were begin-ning to see the need for female medical mis-sionaries about the same time. Thus therewas finally another route for women to takeif they had a medical degree but could notfind employment. This opportunity alsoconvinced some schools that educatingwomen in the medical field had real merit.

Church leaders had early on perceivedthe need to spread Christianity to foreignlands. By the 1800s, the push was comingfrom Europe and the United States. In the1880s the American Medical Missionary So-ciety (AMMS) published a pamphlet, AGreat Field for Women, in which the societyurged women to become medical mission-aries. Realizing that some cultures forbadewomen to seek out male physicians for ad-vice, they turned to women for help. “Thesemillions of women cannot be reached bymale missionaries. The doors are shut andlocked against such. Nor can Christianwomen, ordinarily, gain entrance to them.But the female Medical Missionary is able todo it, for her professional acquisition is akey. She can unlock the doors and secure forherself a welcome” (AMMS 1977).

Mission work had gone on for centuriesin large part due to the Catholic Church. Atthe close of the eighteenth century, however,Catholic missions were somewhat at astandstill for various reasons. In the six-teenth through the eighteenth centuries,there was some movement on the part ofProtestants as well. “Zealous Protestantmissionaries, fueled by the Pietist move-ment of continental Europe and the evan-gelical awakenings in England and NorthAmerica, had established pockets of believ-ers in the coastlands of Asia, India, Africa,and the Middle East. These areas alreadywere occupied by significant communitiesof Roman and Orthodox Catholics” (Terry,Smith, and Anderson 1998, 199).

In Canton, China, Protestant medical mis-sionary work was well under way before1850. The Canton Hospital, which openedin 1835, was China’s first Western medicalestablishment. By 1879 local Cantonesewomen were taking classes at the nearbyCanton Medical Missionary Hospital. Thegoals of the missions were varied, but inCanton the church was open to educatingthe local females in medical care as well ashaving able female physicians treat nativefemales.

When a rift between two of the headphysicians split loyalties there in 1899, thewomen were left out. This prompted MaryFulton to work to establish an educationalsetting for the local women. In 1902 it tookthe name Hackett Medical College due to a donation from Mr. E.A.K. Hackett ofIndiana.

In Persia the Church Missionary Societyof the Church of England realized early onthat offering medical treatment was the bestmeans of establishing a relationship withIranian women. “During the period be-tween 1891 and 1934 many women workedas missionary nurses and doctors in Iran”(Ward and Stanley 2000, 97). The fact thatIranian women could not consult males formedical treatment gave early impetus topromoting medical education for women.“Female workers were necessary in order togain easier access to Iranian women wholived largely in seclusion. As the number ofwomen missionaries began to increase, the

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tasks they carried out were divided intothree distinct categories: education, medi-cine, and evangelism” (Ward and Stanley2000, 96). Physician Emmeline Stuart ar-rived in 1897 and very effectively oversawthe female medical staff in Persia, where thesociety opened hospitals and set some stan-dards for the future.

Ida Scudder made enormous headway inIndia when she opened a school for nursingin 1909 in Vellore in southern India; the Vel-lore Medical College followed in 1918. Bothwere extremely successful at training Indianwomen to become nurses and physicians.Missionaries like Scudder who found them-selves in rural areas and had to work withlocal governments to get things done had tobe accomplished in diplomacy as well ashealth care. In 1950 the Vellore Medical Col-lege began accepting male students and be-came affiliated with Madras University.

In Egypt, Mary Louisa Whately estab-lished a medical mission after establishingtwo schools for Muslim children. In Africa,David Livingstone’s explorations of thecontinent and medical missionary workgreatly aided all missionaries. The largegrowth in African missions was due in largepart to the desire of African Americans re-cently freed during the American Civil Warto reach out to their ancestors in Africa. An-other factor that helped within the missioncommunity as a whole was the formation ofseveral women’s missionary groups. Beforethey became active, most church donationsfor evangelical work in foreign fields weredesignated for preaching. Pastors’ wivesworked in health care, but few singlewomen had substantial support. “Before theformation of these women’s organizations,mission funds had been collected by minis-ters and other church leaders, most ofwhom emphasized parish work or homemissions to the Indians or freedmen. Whatmoney was spent on foreign missions wasunder the control of exclusively male for-eign mission boards that were uniformlyuneasy about the radical new idea of send-ing independent, unmarried women outinto the mission field” (Tucker 1990, 363).

Hospitals grew in number in India,China, Africa, Japan, and the Middle East as

the nineteenth century unfolded. At the be-ginning of the twentieth century, the mis-sionary movement was well aware of thegrowing need for women with physiciancredentials. Many women left their owncountries to serve as medical missionaries;others stayed home to serve the under-served populations in the countries wherethey lived.

See also: Fulton, Mary Hannah; Guang-zhou, China; Scudder, Ida Sophia; Whately,Mary LouisaReferences: American Medical MissionarySociety (AMMS), A Great Field for Women,Chicago: American Medical Missionary So-ciety (1880?), reprinted in History of Women,reel 939, no. 8277, Woodbridge, CT: Re-search Publications (1977); Drake, Fred W.,Ruth V. Hemenway, MD: A Memoir of Revolu-tionary China, 1924–1941, Amherst: Univer-sity of Massachusetts Press (1977); Fleming,Leslie A., Women’s Work for Women: Mission-aries and Social Change in Asia, Boulder, CO:Westview Press (1989); Jeffrey, MaryPauline, Dr. Ida: India; The Life Story of Ida S.Scudder, New York: Fleming H. Revell(1938); Jordan, Louis Garnett, Up the Ladderin Foreign Missions, Nashville, TN: NationalBaptist Publishing Board (1903); Laurie,Rev. Thomas, Women and the Gospel in Per-sia, New York: Fleming H. Revell (1887);Rubinstein, Murray A., The Origins of theAnglo-American Missionary Enterprise inChina, 1807–1840, Lanham, MD: ScarecrowPress (1996); Terry, John Mark, Ebbie Smith,and Justice Anderson, Missiology: An Intro-duction to the Foundations, History, andStrategies of World Missions, Nashville, TN:Broadman and Holman (1998); Tucker, SaraW., “Opportunities for Women: The Devel-opment of Professional Women’s Medicineat Canton, China, 1879–1901,” Women’sStudies International Forum 13, no. 4 (1990):357–368; Ward, Kevin, and Brian Stanley,The Church Mission Society and World Chris-tianity, 1799–1999, Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans (2000); Whately, Eliz-abeth Jane, The Life and Work of Mary LouisaWhately, London: Religious Tract Society(1890).

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Montoya, Matilde

Matilde Montoya was the first female physi-cian of Mexico. She graduated from the Uni-versity of Mexico in 1887.


Morani, Alma Dea1907–2001

Alma Morani was the first female plasticsurgeon in the United States. She had tofight to go to medical school and to be ableto practice surgery. She began early in hercareer to speak up for women in medicine.

Born in New York City, she attended NewYork University and later the Women’sMedical College of Pennsylvania, earningher M.D. in 1931. She interned in Newark,New Jersey, at St. James Hospital, followedby a residency in surgery at Women’s Med-ical Hospital in Philadelphia. She served atRoxborough Memorial Hospital in Philadel-phia for over forty years and was a profes-sor at the Medical College of Pennsylvaniafor fifty years.

Morani had a desire early on “to take up

plastic surgery—against tremendous odds.‘What I wanted to be doing was the surgeryof repair, not the surgery of despair’” (“Pro-file” 1983, 137). Morani died on January 27,2001.

References: Morani, A. D., “Reflections,”Clinics in Plastic Surgery 10, no. 4 (October1983): 669–670; “Profile: Alma Dea Morani,MD,” Journal of the American MedicalWomen’s Association 38, no. 5 (September–October 1983): 137; Who’s Who in America,1990–1991, 46th ed., Wilmette, IL: MarquisWho’s Who (1990).

Murray, Flora

Flora Murray was a British physician andsurgeon charged with the first British mili-tary unit of medical women during WorldWar I. She established, with the help of Dr.Louisa Garrett Anderson, daughter of Dr.Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the Women’sHospital Corps in Paris to prepare for thewounded of World War I.

Born in England, she worked at the hos-pital on Endell Street in Paris, where sheand the other women physicians carried aheavy workload: “The surgeons spent alltheir mornings in the wards, and most oftheir afternoons in the operating theatre,where it was not unusual to have a list oftwenty or thirty cases on each operatingday” (Murray 1920, 162).

She and the other women treated soldiersfrom many countries. “Racial characteristicswere very evident. The English were slowand phlegmatic, satisfied with theaters, bil-liards and the football news. The Scots werefriends with the librarian and always push-ing to get well enough to see London. TheIrish brought grace and charm into theward” (Murray 1920, 149).

See also: Anderson, Elizabeth GarrettReferences: Murray, Flora, Women as ArmySurgeons: Being the History of the Women’sHospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux and EndellStreet, September 1914–October 1919, London:Hodder and Stoughton (1920).Alma Dea Morani (U.S. National Library of

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Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal1928–

An authority on genetic diseases, ElizabethNeufeld became the first female to head adepartment at UCLA’s School of Medicine.Her major contributions have been in re-search on inherited disorders such as Hurlerand Sanfilippo syndromes.

She was born in Paris, France, on Septem-ber 27, 1928, to Jacques and Elvira Fondal,Russian refugees. The family moved to NewYork while she was still a child, and she at-tended a New York high school before go-ing on to Queens College and obtaining aB.S. degree in 1948. She later worked in BarHarbor, Maine, at the Jackson MemorialLaboratory and decided on graduate studyat the University of Rochester.

She later moved to Baltimore and brieflyworked at the McCollum-Pratt Institute ofJohns Hopkins University before enteringthe University of California, Berkeley, tostudy for her Ph.D. in 1952. She received herdoctorate in comparative biochemistry in1956.

She worked as a biochemist for the Na-tional Institute of Arthritis and MetabolicDiseases in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1963to 1973. It is associated with the National In-stitutes of Health (NIH). She worked in var-ious other positions at NIH, focusing on re-search in genetic diseases. Her workinvolved the study of arthritis, metabolism,diabetes, and kidney diseases as well as raredisorders such as Hurler syndrome, Sanfil-ippo syndrome, and other mucopolysaccha-ride (MPS) disorders.

In 1994 Neufeld received the NationalMedal of Science. Currently she is chair ofthe Biological Chemistry Department atUCLA’s School of Medicine. She married in1951 and has two children. Her research onrare diseases has prompted others in themedical community to find cures for MPSdisorders. She continues to teach and doresearch.

References: American Men and Women of Sci-ence, 20th ed., vol. 5, New York: Bowker(1998); Grinstein, Louise S., Carol A. Bier-mann, and Rose K. Rose, Women in the Bio-logical Sciences: A Biobibliographic Sourcebook,Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (1997);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,Notable Women in the Life Sciences, Westport,CT: Greenwood Press (1996).

New England Female Medical College

1848–1874

The New England Female Medical Collegewas founded in Boston in 1848 by SamuelGregory, who initiated the effort to providethis educational institute for women becausehe believed that male midwives and physi-cians were offensive to women in labor.

Because Gregory had limited funds, hebegan by organizing a class with two malephysicians teaching twelve women. Most of these women were preparing to becomemidwives. Because of initial difficultiesregarding the new institution’s charter, for a time the college collaborated with fac-

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ulty from the Female Medical College ofPennsylvania.

By 1852 the college offered women a fullcourse of studies and a medical degree andwas officially recognized as the New En-gland Female Medical College. The first fe-male professor was Hannah Longshore. In1859, Marie Zakrzewska came from NewYork to plan and run a hospital and serve asprofessor of obstetrics and diseases ofwomen and children.

The first hospital operated only a fewyears. On July 1, 1862, with a permanent lo-cation found for the hospital, Zakrzewskabecame the attending physician at the NewEngland Hospital for Women and Children.

The hospital was an extremely beneficialadjunct to the college because it providedthe students with clinical training. Nursesalso trained there.

Numerous financial woes, administrativestruggles between the board and faculty, atroubling relationship between Zakrzewskaand Gregory, and arguments over some ofthe educational requirements were all typi-cal of nineteenth-century medical educa-tion. The college continued despite leanyears during and immediately following theCivil War but merged officially with BostonUniversity in 1874. Today it is Dimock Com-munity Health Center, one of Beth IsraelDeaconess Medical Center’s communityhealth centers.

See also: Longshore, Hannah Myers; Zakr-zewska, Marie ElizabethReferences: Waite, Frederick Clayton, His-tory of the New England Female Medical Col-lege, Boston: Boston University School ofMedicine (1950).

New England Hospital1862–1969

Founded initially as the New England Hos-pital for Women and Children in Boston in1862, the New England Hospital, whichchanged its name in 1949, was one of thefirst hospitals for women and childrenstaffed by female physicians. Few of thewomen’s medical colleges at the time had

clinical training facilities, and Marie Zakr-zewska, the hospital’s founder, gave womenphysicians the opportunity to gain clinicalexperience. She also wanted to providewomen and children with a place to betreated by women physicians.

As more men’s medical colleges began toopen their doors to women, some ques-tioned the need for the hospital’s continuedexistence. Elizabeth Blackwell, whom Zakr-zewska had trained with at the New YorkInfirmary for Women and Children, hadseen no further need for her medical schoolonce Cornell opened its doors in 1899. Sheclosed the Women’s Medical College of theNew York Infirmary and saw this step as apositive one. Many women agreed. The tra-ditional schools were bigger and had betterfacilities. Women who had fought for inte-gration saw victory at hand.

Some held to the idea of a women’s hospi-tal for women. Zakrzewska was a proponentuntil her death in 1902, and her hospital con-tinued to appeal to women through the try-ing years following the Flexner Report, whichcaused many of the all-female medical col-leges to close because of a lack of credentials.

New England Hospital (Library of Congress)

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Though more and more women ques-tioned the need for separatism, and manywould have preferred the hospital to hiremen as well as women, the hospital re-mained as its founder had intended for over100 years. It will always be remembered bythose interested in the history of women inmedicine. “Indeed, the general shift fromsexual separatism to integration, the emer-gence of a modern medical profession, andthe erosion of Victorian moralism by the riseof a science of society in America were en-acted in the lives of the women doctors atthe New England Hospital. These impor-tant social changes constantly presented thewomen doctors with new problems andchallenged them to find novel solutions. Asthe story of the women doctors at the NewEngland Hospital so vividly shows, awoman’s struggle to become a doctor wasbut the first step in her more enduringstruggle to be a doctor” (Drachman 1984,15). The hospital closed in 1969.

See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; Flexner Re-port; Zakrzewska, Marie ElizabethReferences: Drachman, Virginia G., Hospitalwith a Heart: Women Doctors and the Paradoxof Separatism at the New England Hospital,1862–1969, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress (1984).

New Hospital for Women and Children

1872–

Founded by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,this hospital grew out of a dispensary shestarted in 1866 in London. The hospital con-tinued to grow over the years, serving as aplace where women physicians could gainexperience. It is still in existence today,known as the Elizabeth Garrett AndersonHospital.

See also: Anderson, Elizabeth GarrettReferences: Manton, Jo, Elizabeth GarrettAnderson, New York: Dutton (1965).

Nielsen, Nielsine Mathilde1850–1916

The first woman physician in Denmark,Nielsine Nielsen read about women practic-ing medicine in the United States and ap-plied to the University of Copenhagen,graduating in 1885. She continued her med-ical education in London, Bern, and Paris.She returned to Denmark and developed alarge gynecology practice.


Nightingale, Florence1820–1910

Undoubtedly the most famous nurse inworld history, Florence Nightingale set aprecedent of nursing excellence, efficiency,duty, honor, and love of humanity. Shewrote extensively, founded hospitals world-wide, inspired millions of young women,and cared for thousands of people aroundthe world who were victims of pestilence,war, malnutrition, and abuse. The field ofmilitary nursing was officially born afterher undaunted performance during theCrimean War.

She was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12,1820. Her parents, William Edward Nightin-gale and Frances Smith Nightingale, werewealthy landowners. As a child, Florencewas frequently ill. She grew up in the familyhomes in Derbyshire, Hampshire, and Lon-don. She had one sister, Frances Parthenope,who was a year older than Florence.

Nightingale’s father was a well-educatedman who felt women’s minds could hold aneducation as well as a man’s. He tutoredFlorence at home in many subjects includ-ing science, mathematics, history, and phi-losophy. He and her mother had also en-couraged Florence’s love of animals, andshe had a gift for nursing them when theywere injured.

When she was a young woman, in 1837,she received what she felt was a call from


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God to serve humanity and the workingclasses. Initially her parents were not sup-portive of her turning her attention awayfrom the more traditional aspirations offinding a suitable husband and raising afamily. They also were concerned about thedangers to her health of working among the sick.

She enrolled in the Deaconess Institutionat Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in Germany in1851. This Protestant institution reflected allher beliefs. She had already learned muchby visiting the sick near her family’s homesand hospitals in other countries. Sheworked among the poor with Pastor Flied-ner, often accompanying him on his rounds.

In the few years following her Kaisers-werth days, Nightingale worked in Franceand England, first traveling to Paris andworking with the Sisters of St. Vincent dePaul. She also observed surgeries in the hos-pitals. Back in England she became the su-perintendent at the Establishment for Gen-tlewomen during Illness, reorganizing thehome to provide better care. “The Homehad been languishing through mismanage-ment and lack of funds, and its new super-intendent set to work with characteristicmethod. She got donations from her friends,inspired old subscribers with a new confi-dence, and managed to get the institutionon its feet again, but not without a seriousstrain of overwork” (Tooley 1914, 85).

When the Crimean War broke out in 1854,William Howard Russell, who wrote for theLondon Times, called for more nurses totend to British soldiers. French women werealready in the field helping French soldiers,but the British had no organization and notrained staff. Nightingale offered her ser-vices to the British secretary of war, SydneyHerbert, who at the same time was writinga letter to her seeking her services. She ac-cepted a position as the superintendent ofnurses and had a group ready by the end ofthe week.

Nightingale’s thirty-eight nurses werefrom both Catholic and Protestant back-grounds; their home churches were inagreement that all would have to obeyNightingale as their superior in the field.“The Roman Catholic bishop at once agreed

to the regulations laid down, and signed apaper agreeing that the sisters of mercy join-ing the expedition should give entire obedi-ence to Miss Nightingale, and that theyshould not enter into religious discussionexcept with the soldiers of their own faith.Mutual arrangement was made that the Ro-man Catholic sisters should attend on thesoldiers of their own faith, and the Protes-tant sisters on those of their faith” (Tooley1914, 118).

The expedition set out for Turkey on Octo-ber 21, 1854, from London en route to Scutari.Upon arrival at the hospital, Nightingale

made her first round of the wards atScutari. The beds were reeking withinfection and the ‘sheets,’ she relates,‘were of canvas, and so coarse that thewounded men begged to be left intheir blankets. It was indeed impossi-ble to put men in such a state of ema-ciation into those sheets. There was nobedroom furniture of any kind, andonly empty beer or wine bottles for

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candlesticks.’ In addition to the mis-eries entailed by overcrowding, themen lying on the floors of the corri-dors were tormented by vermin andtheir limbs attacked by rats as they layhelpless in their pain. (Tooley 1914,126–127)

The medical men already there felt thewomen would be more of a hindrance thana help. Less than a day later the woundedsoldiers from the Battle of Inkerman beganarriving, overwhelming a staff that had nothad the time to clean and organize. In thecrowded conditions, the wounded wereplaced in the mud outside the hospital.

Nightingale set about tending thewounded and assigning tasks to everyonewho could help, including untrained,wounded soldiers. Some got drunk on thebrandy that was for the patients. Many ofthe men were dragged to the “dead house”while they were still alive.

Nightingale saw, however, that it was notso much the incompetence of those tendingthe sick that led to the state of general de-spair but the lack of organization. She beganorganizing the staff, securing medical sup-plies, and instituting a regimen to ensuresanitary conditions. Later in her famousNotes on Nursing, she would again stress or-ganization and cleanliness. If a nurse “al-low[s] her sick to remain unwashed, or theirclothing to remain on them after being satu-rated with perspiration or other excretion,she is interfering injuriously with the naturalprocesses of health just as effectually as if shewere to give the patient a dose of slow poi-son by the mouth” (Nightingale 1975, 93).

The doctors chose their surgical patientsbased on their chances of survival, separat-ing those patients they felt would die. Manyof the latter survived under Nightingale’scare. She made her rounds at night carryinga little lamp, and many later referred to heras the Lady with the Lamp.

By 1855, the hospital at Scutari was func-tioning well. Nightingale’s parents hadgiven some financial help, Nightingale hadused her own monies, and the British gov-ernment was forthcoming with suppliesonce she had explained the hospital’s needs.

She had set up a kitchen and laundry andsanitation guidelines. She would later teachthat organization and management have ahuge role in nursing care: “All the results ofgood nursing, as detailed in these notes,may be spoiled or utterly negatived by onedefect, viz.: in petty management, or inother words, by not knowing how to man-age that what you do when you are there,shall be done when you are not there”(Nightingale 1975, 35).

On May 2, 1855, Nightingale left Scutari,Turkey, and set sail for the Crimea and Bala-clava. It was her duty as superintendent toinspect all hospitals, and she was anxious tosee how the wounded in other hospitalswere faring. She was by now a householdword in England, and in the Crimea, sol-diers had heard about her work at Scutari.

She inspected some hospitals but then sud-denly became ill. Word spread quickly thatshe was dying; even the press in England re-ported this. However, she recovered enoughto decide to stay on in her war duties.

On September 9, 1855, Sebastopol fell,and the Russians retreated. With the end ofthe war, Nightingale remained with the re-maining wounded who needed treatment.

Nightingale’s detailed notes and letters onconditions in the field led to many reformsas time went on and benefited many futuresoldiers in Britain and around the world.

Florence Nightingale knew how to getresults. Against the backdrop of theVictorian era, when most women ofhigh birth were relegated to the draw-ing room, she changed the face ofhealth care forever. She championedsanitary practices, such as hand wash-ing and improving sanitation in healthcare institutions. She launched socialand health care reforms in Englandand abroad. She performed statisti-cally based research and used innova-tive pie chart diagrams to illustrate herdata. (“Tracing Nightingale’s Steps”2001, 44)

Upon returning to England, Nightingalewas “haunted by the memories of the thou-sands of soldiers who had died because of

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the glaring deficiencies and unpreparednessof the army’s Medical Department. Of the97,800 soldiers who had fought in theCrimean War, 4,500 had died of battle-related causes, but nearly four times asmany—17,600—had died of disease and ex-posure” (Dossey 2000, 186).

Following the Crimea, she turned her at-tention to India. After the Sepoy Rebellion,there were many reports of unsanitary con-ditions in India, and British soldiers wereagain subject to poor medical care in thefield. From her home, Nightingale gatheredstatistics for reports to the government. In ashort time, her reports led to a reduction inthe mortality rate of the wounded. Eventu-ally her efforts aided in the establishment ofa sanitary department with great authorityin India.

In 1860 the Nightingale Home and Train-ing School opened as part of St. Thomas’sHospital. It had been one of Nightingale’sgoals from the beginning to provide bettertraining for nurses that included settingfractures, preparing medications, and basicchemistry as well as instilling a profession-alism that had been lacking in the field ofnursing. Her training facility did not growquickly, but her methods rapidly caught onin Australia, Canada, and the United States,and over the years nursing schools werebuilt around her teachings.

Often ill, some believe from a fever shehad contracted in the Crimea, Nightingalecontinued to plan and write from her home.She proposed many changes that eventuallybecame a reality, for example separate facil-ities for the insane, children, and those withinfectious diseases. Many of her initiativesare now protocols in hospitals, nursingschools, and nursing homes. She continuedher advocacy for better health care for alland a sound education for nurses. In 1907she received the Order of Merit from KingEdward VII; she was the first female sohonored. She also received the NorwegianRed Cross, the Cross of Merit from Ger-many, and the gold medal of Secours auxGlessés from France, among other honors.She passed away on August 13, 1910.

References: Andrews, Mary Raymond

Shipman, A Lost Commander: Florence Night-ingale, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran(1929); Baly, Monica E., Florence Nightingaleand the Nursing Legacy, London: CroomHelm (1986); Cook, Sir Edward, The Life ofFlorence Nightingale, London: Macmillan(1925); Dossey, Barbara Montgomery, Flo-rence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer,Springhouse, PA: Springhouse (2000);Nightingale, Florence, Notes on Nursing:What It Is, and What It Is Not, New York: D.Appleton (1860), reprinted in History ofWomen, reel 343, no. 2366, New Haven, CT:Research Publications (1975); Snodgrass,Ellen, Historical Dictionary of Nursing, SantaBarbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999); Tooley,Sarah A., The Life of Florence Nightingale,London: Cassell (1914); “Tracing Nightin-gale’s Steps,” Nursing 31, no. 1 (January2001): 44; Woodham-Smith, Cecil, FlorenceNightingale, 1820–1910, London: Constable(1950).

Novello, Antonia Coello1944–

Antonia Novello was the first woman to be-come the surgeon general of the UnitedStates. She was also the first Hispanic toserve in that capacity. Her focus on AIDSawareness, injury prevention in children,and health care for minorities contributed topublic awareness of the challenges to come.

Born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, on August23, 1944, she was the eldest of the three chil-dren of Antonio Coello and Ana DeliaCoello. She was born with an abnormallylarge colon that malfunctioned until shewas eighteen and had surgery to correct it.Before and after the operation, her ailmentled to numerous hospital stays.

Novello’s mother and her aunt, who wasa nurse, encouraged her in her ambition tobecome a pediatrician, a goal she hadformed in part to keep other children fromsuffering so long with a similar ailment. Herpediatrician and her gastroenterologist,who, she felt, were good examples of caringphysicians, also influenced her.

Novello attended the University ofPuerto Rico in Rio Piedras and graduated in

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1965 with a B.S. She earned her medical de-gree in 1970 from the University of PuertoRico’s Medical School in San Juan. She mar-ried a navy flight surgeon, Joseph Novello,and they both went to the University ofMichigan in Ann Arbor to continue theirmedical studies. She concentrated on pedi-atrics and nephrology.

Novello also earned a master’s degree inpublic health from Johns Hopkins Univer-sity in 1982. In 1976 she had opened a pri-vate practice in Springfield, Virginia, butshe empathized with her patients and theirparents to the degree that she felt she had tomove on and closed the practice after twoyears. In 1978 she joined the National Insti-tutes of Health and quickly rose in the ranksto become the deputy director of the Na-tional Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment.

During the 1980s she was very active intackling some issues of major concern to mi-norities, children, and women. She foughtfor better warning labels on tobacco prod-ucts, better education on AIDS prevention,and health care for the Hispanic commu-nity. She also played a major role in the re-alization of the National Organ TransplantAct of 1984, which would lead to better or-ganization and a network for acquiring or-gans needed for transplantation.

She became the fourteenth surgeon gen-eral of the United States and thus the “doctorfor all Americans” on March 9, 1990, after be-ing nominated by President George Bush in1989. She broadened her focus to many otherpublic health concerns, including domesticabuse and underage drinking. She brought aclever, intelligent, well-informed persona tothe mission of the surgeon general.

Novello served until Joycelyn Elders wasappointed in 1993 after being nominated byPresident Bill Clinton. She is currently theNew York state health commissioner andhas recently been involved with state effortsto keep the West Nile virus under control.

References: Associated Press, “NY BattlePlan: Less Spraying; Plan’s Emphasis onPrevention,” Newsday (New York) (25 April2001): A17; “Novello, Antonia,” Current Bi-ography 53, no. 5 (May 1992): 45–49.

Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane1942–

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard received theNobel Prize in physiology or medicine in1995 along with Edward B. Lewis and Eric F.Wieschaus for discovering how genes con-trol early embryo development.

Born October 20, 1942, during World WarII, she is the daughter of an architect, RolfVolhard, and Brigitte Haas Volhard ofFrankfurt, Germany. She is the second offive children.

She loved nature and knew she wanted tobe a biologist by the time she was twelve.She didn’t do well in some subjects inschool but excelled at science while attend-ing Frankfurt’s Schiller School. She had aninterest in evolution and genetics. School inpost–World War II Germany involved dis-cussion of Hitler, anti-Semitism, and guilt.Many children like Nusslein-Volhard wereshocked and horrified by what had takenplace.

Her father died just before she entered the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University inFrankfurt. She stayed there two years beforemoving to the University of Tübingen,which had just started a biochemistry pro-gram. She received her diploma in 1968 inbiochemistry and continued her studiesthere in order to earn a Ph.D. in biologywith a concentration in genetics in 1973.

While studying for her Ph.D., she workedas a research associate at the Max Planck In-stitute, where she wanted to study cells andthe role genetics plays in embryo develop-ment. She spent hours in the lab studyingthe mutation of fruit flies, their eggs, andother characteristics, believing these studieswould be key to dealing with more difficultquestions.

In 1978 she moved to Heidelberg to headthe European Molecular Biology Laboratory(EMBL). She and Eric Wieschaus studiedrandom gene mutations in the drosophila,or fruit fly, and were able to identify fifteengenes that control early embryo develop-ment. “The genes identified by Nusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus also influence for-mation of the body axis and specializationof individual segments of the development

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of the human embryo. About 40 percent ofidiopathic congenital malformations may bedue to mutations in genes discovered byNusslein-Volhard and Wieschaus” (Raju2000, 81).

Nusslein-Volhard moved on to zebrafish, thinking they might be able to solvemore of the puzzle of cell development.

When Leonard Zon, associate professorof pediatrics at Children’s Hospital inBoston studied dozens of Nusslein-Vol-hard’s mutants that failed to form redblood cells in the usual fashion, hefound that some of the mutants hadthe fish equivalent of various humanblood disorders, including thalassemiaand a type of congenital anemia. “Weowe Janni a tremendous debt,” Zonsays; “Her zebra fish mutants haveprovided not only a fantastic systemfor studying the whole process ofblood formation, they’re also providingcritical insights into human disease. Wecould never have gotten to this levelwithout her.” (Ackerman 1997, 42)

Nusslein-Volhard is divorced and has nochildren. She is currently the director of theMax Planck Institute for Developmental Bi-ology’s Genetics Division in Tübingen.

References: Ackerman, Jennifer, “Journeyto the Center of the Egg,” New York Times,sec. 6 (12 October 1997): 42; McGrayne,Sharon Bertsch, Nobel Prize Women in Sci-ence, Secaucus, NJ: Carol (1998); Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, and Jorn Kratzschmar,eds., Of Fish, Fly, Worm, and Man: Lessonsfrom Developmental Biology for Human GeneFunction and Disease, Berlin: Springer (2000);Raju, T. N., “The Nobel Chronicles,” Lancet356, no. 9223 (1 July 2000): 81.

Nutting, Mary Adelaide1858–1948

Mary Nutting contributed to a higher stan-dard of nursing practice in the UnitedStates. She was the first nurse to become auniversity professor.

Mary was born in Frost Village, Quebec,on November 1, 1858. The family soonmoved to Waterloo, where she grew up. Shewas the daughter of a seamstress, HarrietSophia Peasley Nutting, and a county clerk,Vespasian Nutting. She had three olderbrothers, Charles, Arthur, and Jim, and oneyounger sister, Harriette Armine.

They were poor but received an educa-tion at the local schools. The oldest, Charles,eventually graduated from law school atMcGill University. The girls attended theShefford Academy. Mary Adelaide also at-tended Bute House, a private school inMontreal, and developed some proficiencyin music. Later the girls’ mother movedwith them to Ottawa, where her son Jimwas already settled and working and shefelt they would have more opportunities.Vespasian chose to stay behind.

They enjoyed Ottawa, but their financialsituation was still grim. Mary Adelaidetaught music and did seamstress work asshe could find it. She nursed her motherduring a brief illness that took her life in1884. Increasingly lonely and in search of ajob, Mary Adelaide remembered readingabout Florence Nightingale and discoveredthere was a training school for nurses atJohns Hopkins. She applied and was ac-cepted in 1889. She excelled in nursing andgraduated in 1891 at the top of her class.Once the medical school opened in 1893,there was a great need for expanded hospi-tal activity, and upon Isabel Hampton’s res-ignation, Nutting became the assistant su-perintendent of nurses.

In 1894 she became full superintendentand worked to change students’ nursing re-sponsibilities. As in many schools and ashad been the case in Nutting’s student days,student nurses were many times over-worked as nurses in associated hospitals in-stead of being given the needed time forstudy.

In a speech in 1896 to the American Soci-ety of Superintendents of Training Schoolsfor Nurses, she stressed that it was time for

“people [to realize] that trainingschools were educational institutions.”She pointed out the dangers of reduc-

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ing students to servitude. Fearlesslyshe asserted that in many instances itwas not for the purpose of givingmore and better training that theywere kept on duty so long, but ratherthat the amount of service to the hos-pital might be increased and the work-ing force of the institutions be kept ata minimum. As a rule the number ofstudent nurses was less than propor-tionate to the number of patients. Suchattempts at economy were detrimentalto student nurses and patients alike.(Marshall 1972, 73)

She advocated eight to nine work hoursper day as a maximum. She used statisticaldata from national surveys to show thatmany student nurses were working fifteenand seventeen hours in some cases and thenwere expected to study and go to class. Asshe became more efficient in administrativeand organizational matters, she worked toobtain an endowment for the trainingschool, thus separating its budget from thehospital’s. She also enlarged the curriculumto three years instead of two because nursesneeded to be familiar with an ever-increas-ing number of medical specialties.

Nutting was instrumental in changing thepublic’s and the physician’s view of nurs-ing. She provided leadership in establishingit as a profession with many requirements,thus giving more weight to a nursing de-gree. She realized that practical experience

was requisite but not without the funda-mentals of instruction.

She served on many committees andboards concerned with nursing educationand helped draft the first nursing-practicelaw in Maryland in 1904. She became a pro-fessor of nursing in 1907 at Teachers Col-lege in New York, which needed an au-thority to teach courses to graduate nurses.She remained at Teachers College until herretirement.

One of her greatest and timeliest achieve-ments was completing and publishing theStandard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing in1917 for the National League of Nursing Ed-ucation (NLNE) just as the United Stateswas getting involved in World War I. Ithelped nursing to move forward in obtain-ing professional status. Nursing schools inmany parts of the United States scrutinizedand implemented her methods. Nuttingpassed away on October 3, 1948, in WhitePlains, New York.

See also: Robb, Isabel HamptonReferences: Drachman, V., “Nutting,M[ary] Adelaide,” in Martin Kaufman, Stu-art Galishoff, and Todd L. Savitt, eds., Dic-tionary of American Medical Biography, West-port, CT: Greenwood Press (1984); Marshall,Helen E., Mary Adelaide Nutting: Pioneer ofModern Nursing, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop-kins University Press (1972); Snodgrass,Mary Ellen, Historical Encyclopedia of Nurs-ing, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

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Ockett, Molly1750?–1816

An early Abenaki healer in Maine, MollyOckett was the only medical help availablefor most people. She used herbs and en-couraged mineral waters for ailing whitesand Indians alike.

Not much is known about her life, butnumerous stories abound about her, manyfictitious. A noted criminal of the day,Henry Tufts, included her good deeds in hisautobiography, which historians believe tobe an accurate description of life in the re-gion and of the people, both whites and In-dians. Ockett treated Tufts for a knifewound around 1772, for which he was for-ever grateful. She died in 1816 and is buriedin Andover, Maine.

References: Lecompte, Nancy, “The Last ofthe Androscoggins: Molly Ockett, AbenakiHealing Woman” (August 1997), http://www.avcnet.org/ne-do-ba/bio_moly.html;Tufts, Henry, The Autobiography of a Criminal,New York: Duffield (1930).

Ogino, Ginko1851–1913

Ginko Ogino was the first woman licensedto practice Western medicine in Japan. Shepersevered against continual rejections ofher efforts to gain a medical education.

Born in Saitama Prefecture, she gradu-ated from the Women’s Normal School,now known as Ochanomizu Women’s Uni-

versity, and also from a private medicalschool, Kojuin. The latter was an all-maleschool, and she had difficulty gaining en-trance. After she graduated, the govern-ment resisted allowing her to take the ex-aminations that were a prerequisite tolegally practicing medicine. After threeyears, in 1885, she was allowed to take theexaminations and passed. She worked at theMeiji Girls’ School and later went toHokkaido to practice.

She contracted a venereal disease fromher first husband that left her unable to bearchildren. She divorced him on thesegrounds and later married Shikata Shizen.She returned to Tokyo after his death anddied in 1913.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000); “Ogino Ginko,” Ko-dansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 6, Tokyo:Kodansha (1983).

Osborn, June Elaine1937–

June Osborn is an epidemiologist, pediatri-cian, and professor. She has continued tolead and advise in the AIDS awareness andprevention movement and assists in publicpolicy development regarding AIDS treat-ment both nationally and internationally.

Born on May 28, 1937, in Endicott, NewYork, she attended Oberlin College in Ohio,

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receiving a B.A. in 1957. She continued on tomedical school at Case Western ReserveUniversity and earned her medical degreein 1961. She has worked in several capaci-ties at various medical schools and hospitalsaround the United States, concentrating inpediatrics and epidemiology as well as be-ing deeply involved in all issues surround-ing HIV and AIDS.

She has published numerous scientificand public policy papers. Her early workfocuses on many research areas, particularlythose concerned with vaccines and im-munology. In the past couple of decades shehas concentrated more on AIDS as a socialas well as a medical problem.

Osborn has urged education about HIV.“We’ve seen a shocking disinclination to be-

come involved at all in the care of peoplewith HIV. ‘Risk’ is cited as an excuse, but therisk is far lower from HIV than from manyother hazards in the health care workplace.Ignorance is offered as another excuse—butthe proper response to ignorance on the partof a professional is to learn, not to walkaway” (Osborn 1992, 64). Osborn is cur-rently president of the Josiah Macy, Jr.Foundation in New York.

References: American Men and Women of Sci-ence, 20th ed., New York: Bowker (1998); Os-born, June Elaine, “AIDS and the Politics ofCompassion,” Hospitals 66, no. 18 (20 Sep-tember 1992): 64; Osborn, June Elaine, “In-fections,” Journal of Urban Health 75, no. 2(June 1998): 251–257.

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Paget, Mary Rosalind1855–1948

Mary Rosalind Paget was an English nurseand midwife who in 1881 founded the Mid-wives Institute, later known as the RoyalCollege of Midwives. The health of Englandlay in increasing the birth rate, and midwivesdid not have proper training. The Royal Col-lege of Midwives continues to operate. Pagetwas born on January 4, 1855, in Greenbank,Liverpool, to Elizabeth Rathbone Paget andJohn Paget, a police magistrate. Early on sheseemed to be pulled toward public service,and she went to Westminster Hospital totrain as a nurse. In 1882 she went to the Lon-don Hospital and later to the British Lying-InHospital. It was during this initial trainingthat she became very concerned with infantsand the inadequate training opportunitiesfor those practicing as midwives.

She and a small group of women foundedthe Midwives Institute in 1881, and sheworked hard to get the House of Commonsto pass a bill requiring the registration andcertification of midwives. This effort metwith resistance for several years from thosewho believed the legislation would preventbirthing mothers from getting help fromneighbors. The bill finally passed as theMidwives Act of 1902. The Central Mid-wives Board was established, which Pagetserved on for years. She was also the firstqueen’s nurse, appointed by Queen Victoriain 1891.

Many in the decades before World War Iconcerned themselves with the moral char-acter of unwed mothers and mothers of low

socioeconomic status. Paget fought hard toensure equal care for women and childrenregardless of the mother’s socioeconomic,professional, or marital status. “When sev-eral Queen’s nurses expressed confusionabout whether or not they should attendonly respectable married women, RosalindPaget was clear that the health and safety ofthe mother and child were paramount andthat the mother’s marital status was irrele-vant” (Hannam 1997, 91).

She founded and was the editor of Nurs-ing Notes (later Midwives’ Chronicles) formany years. She played a large part in ad-vancing women’s midwifery skills, fightingfor better pay, and ensuring better prenatalcare. Paget never married. She passed awayon August 19, 1948, in Bolney, Sussex.

References: Hannam, June, “RosalindPaget: The Midwife, the Women’s Move-ment and Reform before 1914,” in HilaryMarland and Anne Marie Rafferty, eds.,Midwives, Society, and Childbirth: Debates andControversies in the Modern Period, London:Routledge (1997); Pye, E. M., “Paget, Dame(Mary) Rosalind,” Dictionary of National Bi-ography, 1941–1950, London: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1959); Snodgrass, Mary Jane,Historical Encyclopedia of Nursing, Santa Bar-bara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1999).

Pak, Esther Kim1877–1910

Esther Pak was the first woman physician topractice Western medicine in Korea. She

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graduated from the Women’s Medical Col-lege of Baltimore in 1900, afterward return-ing to Korea to work with women and chil-dren. She has served as an inspiration forother young women who wanted to becomephysicians.

References: “Doctor Esther Kim Pak,”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;Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of theWorld, New York: Macmillan (1957); Pak,Rhoda Kim, “Medical Women in Korea,”Journal of the American Medical Women’s As-sociation 5, no. 3 (March 1950): 116–117.

Parrish, Rebecca1869–1952

Rebecca Parish was the first female physi-cian to practice in the Philippines. After re-ceiving a medical education at the MedicalCollege of Indiana, she traveled to thePhilippines in order to work as a Methodistmedical missionary. She served there from1905 to 1933. In 1906, she established a dis-pensary in Manila, where leprosy wasprevalent because of the tropical climate.“Health is always a problem in the tropics;water is not safe, unless artesian wells aredrilled. In the old days, with decaying fruitsand vegetables, insects, especially mosqui-toes, insufficient fresh milk for the babies,and the prevalence of cholera, smallpox,malaria, leprosy, dysentery, and tropical ul-cers and eruptions, there was a serioushealth question” (Parrish 1936, 26). After atime she received money from an Americanphilanthropist and established the MaryJohnston Hospital for women and children.It became an important medical facility overthe next several decades and was restoredafter damage restricted its operation duringWorld War II. Parrish died in Indianapolis,Indiana, on August 22, 1952.

References: “Dr. Rebecca Parrish: MedicalMissionary,” New York Times (24 August1952): 89; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doc-tors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,

eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience, New York: Routledge (2000); Par-rish, Rebecca, Orient Seas and Lands Afar,New York: Fleming H. Revell (1936).

Pearce, Louise1885–1959

Louise Pearce was a physician and patholo-gist who helped develop the drug try-parsamide in order to treat trypanosomiasis(sleeping sickness). She tested it on humansin the Belgian Congo in 1920 and 1921 andobtained great success that was recognizedwith the Order of the Crown of Belgiumaward.

She was born in Winchester, Massachu-setts, on March 5, 1885, to Charles EllisPearce and Susan Elizabeth Hoyt Pearce.She received her education at the Girls’ Col-legiate School in Los Angeles and then wentto Stanford University and earned a bache-lor’s in physiology and histology in 1907.She went to Boston University’s School ofMedicine and taught before she was admit-ted to the Johns Hopkins University Schoolof Medicine in 1909. She received her med-ical degree in 1912 and proceeded to theRockefeller Institute, where she remainedmost of her career.

She and two other researchers, Walter A.Jacobs and Wade Hampton Brown, workedtogether to find a treatment for sleepingsickness. They found that tryparsamide waseffective in treating rabbits with the disease.She then traveled to the Belgian Congo andtreated humans with tryparsamide, and itwas effective in overcoming the Trypanosomaparasite in the bloodstream. She treated pa-tients with mild to severe cases in a clinic inLeopoldville and was given access to a gov-ernment laboratory. Pearce’s treatment wasan important milestone in battling the ill-ness, which is carried by the tsetse fly and isstill an enormous problem today. It can bedeadly if untreated. The Rockefeller Instituteeventually patented the tryparsamide com-pound and worked on improving it.

Pearce also studied syphilis, cancer, andhereditary diseases while at the RockefellerInstitute and later as she continued her re-

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search while serving as the president of theWomen’s Medical College of Pennsylvaniafrom 1946 to 1951. She lived with the novel-ist Ida White in Skillman, New Jersey, whenshe retired. She died in New York City in1959.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994); Love-joy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors of the World,New York: Macmillan (1957); Ogilvie, Mari-lyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., The BiographicalDictionary of Women in Science, New York:Routledge (2000); Rose, Kenneth W., A Surveyof Source at the Rockefeller Archive Center for theStudy of Twentieth Century Africa, North Tarry-town, NY: Rockefeller Archive Center (1996).

Perez, Ernestina

Along with Eloiza Diaz, Ernestina Perez at-tended the University of Chile. She wasamong the first women to obtain medicaldegrees in Latin America. Perez graduatedin 1887 and practiced in Chile working veryhard during the cholera epidemic followinggraduation. She continued her interest inthe advances of medicine by travelingabroad in order to keep up with currentmedical practices.

See also: Diaz Inzunza, EloizaReferences: De Vargas, Tegualda Ponce,“Women Doctors of Chile,” Journal of theAmerican Medical Women’s Association 7, no.10 (October 1952): 389; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,Women Doctors of the World, New York:Macmillan (1957).

Perozo, Evangelina Rodriguez1898?–19?

Evangelina Perozo was the first woman tograduate from the oldest university inNorth America, the University of SantoDomingo. She graduated in 1919 and be-came the first woman physician of the Do-minican Republic.

References: Heureaux, Mercedes A., “Old-est University in America,” Journal of theAmerican Medical Woman’s Association 10, no.7 (July 1955): 249; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,Women Doctors of the World, New York:Macmillan (1957).

Petermann, Mary Locke1908–1975

Mary Petermann was instrumental in isolat-ing ribosomes. Her work helped researchersto better understand protein synthesis andRNA. Born in Laurium, Michigan, on Feb-ruary 26, 1908, Petermann attended SmithCollege and majored in chemistry, then pur-sued graduate study at the University ofWisconsin. She obtained her Ph.D. in 1939 inphysiological chemistry. She was an earlypioneer in the study of the relationship ofchemistry and physiology in animals andhumans.

Most of her career was spent in New YorkCity at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Can-cer Research. She also served as a professorat nearby Cornell University’s Medical Col-lege for many years. Her research focusedon ribosomes, which “catalyze protein syn-thesis in all of the organisms in our bio-sphere; indeed, they are at one and the sametime universal, essential, and complicated.The ribosomal proteins and the ribosomalnucleic acids provide the specific bindingsites (for messenger RNA, transfer RNA,and initiation and elongation factors) andthe catalytic activities required for the syn-thesis of a protein” (Wool 1997, 623).

Petermann was able to isolate animal ri-bosomes and better characterize them. Shealso studied the physical and chemicalproperties of proteins. In 1963 she receivedthe Sloan Award in cancer research, andthree years later the American Chemical So-ciety honored her with the Garvan Medal.She died December 13, 1975.

References: American Men and Women of Sci-ence, 12th ed., New York: Bowker (1972);Bailey, Martha J., American Women in Sci-ence: A Biographical Dictionary, Santa Bar-bara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994); “Petermann,

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Mary PhD.” [obit], New York Times (16 De-cember 1975): 42, col. 3; Wool, Ira G., “Ribo-somes,” Encyclopedia of Human Biology, 2ded., vol. 7, San Diego: Academic Press(1997).

Pickett, Lucy Weston1904–1997

Lucy Pickett was an award-winningchemist. She did research on X-ray crystal-lography and studied organic molecules us-ing spectroscopy.

Born on January 19, 1904, in Beverly, Mas-sachusetts, she was the daughter of LucyWeston and George Ernst Pickett. She at-tended school in Beverly and went on toMount Holyoke College in South Hadley,Massachusetts, graduating in 1925 withhonors and a degree in both math andchemistry. She continued her chemistrystudies and in 1927 obtained a master’sfrom Mount Holyoke.

Pickett taught for a year at Goucher Col-lege in Maryland before entering the Ph.D.program at the University of Illinois, whichshe completed in 1930. Her early work in-cluded the effects of X rays on chemical re-actions and the use of X rays in determiningmolecular structure. She was invited to be-come a member of the faculty at MountHolyoke upon completion of her doctorateand remained there her entire career.

She went to Europe briefly and studied X-ray crystallography with Sir WilliamBragg. When she returned to MountHolyoke, she joined an active research teamthat included Mary Sherrill and EmmaPerry Carr and began exploring molecularstructures using spectroscopy. She was ableto work with some very gifted scientistsduring her day, including Robert S. Mul-liken and Linus Pauling.

For recognition for her work in spec-troscopy she received the Garvan Medalfrom the American Chemical Society in1957. She also established a fund upon herretirement to bring noted speakers to cam-pus. She passed away on November 23,1997, in Bradenton, Florida.

References: “Expert on Cell Surfaces to De-liver Lucy W. Pickett Lecture November20,” College Street Journal (Mount HolyokeCollege) (17 November 2000), http://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(1997).

Pittman, Margaret1901–1995

Margaret Pittman helped standardize vac-cines for typhoid, cholera, and whoopingcough. She contributed as well to the under-standing of the bacteria that cause meningi-tis.

Pittman was born in Prairie Grove,Arkansas, in 1901. She attended HendrixCollege in Conway, Arkansas, and receivedan A.B. degree in 1923. She did graduatework at the University of Chicago and re-ceived her master’s in 1926, followed by aPh.D. in 1929. Her primary interest wasbacteriology.

She worked for the Public Health Serviceand the National Institutes of Health, study-ing influenza types and helping to developvaccines. “In her work with Haemophilus in-fluenzae type b, Dr. Pittman was the first toidentify capsular type b as one of the sixtypes of H. influenzae responsible for mostchildhood meningitis. As a result of Dr.Pittman’s work in H. aegyptius, with NIAIDdirector Dorland Davis, the cause of epi-demic conjunctivitis was identified. Work-ing with Salmonella typhi, she made keyobservations that led to the development ofa Vi-based vaccine. Dr. Pittman is believedto have been the first woman laboratorychief at the NIH” (“NIH Lectures” 2002).

Pittman was recognized internationallyas an expert in bacteriology. She was a fre-quent consultant for government agenciesand international organizations. She died in1995.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994); Kroll,

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J. Simon, and Robert Booy, “Haemophilus in-fluenzae: Capsule Vaccine and CapsulationGenetics,” Molecular Medicine Today 2, no. 4(April 1996): 160–165; “NIH Lectures,”http://www1.od.nih.gov/oir/sourcebook/ir-communictns/lecture-info. htm#Pitt(2002);Proffitt, Pamela, Notable Women Scientists, De-troit: Gale Group (1999).

Pool, Judith Graham1919–1975

Judith Pool was a major figure in the treat-ment of hemophilia and in establishing astandard procedure for isolating the antihe-mophilic factor in blood. Her method forblood transfusions greatly advanced ther-apy for hemophiliacs and was adoptedwidely as a standard around the world.

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 laterdecades she studied blood coagulation andlooked for better ways to transfuse bloodfor those suffering with hemophilia.

She worked on many scientific commit-tees and was

a member of several working groupsdealing with the translation of re-search findings to practical applica-tion, including preparation of factorVIII concentrates, assay proceduresand standards for factor VIII, andanalysis of inhibitors. Her analyticalmind combined with good judgmentmade her a valued member of allgroups with whom she worked. Herability to sort out complex findingsand to come out with clear statementswith questions for future investigationwas an attribute much admired.(Brinkhous 1976, 269)

Pool died on July 13, 1975.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO(1994); Brinkhous, K. M., “Judith GrahamPool, Ph.D. (1919–1975): An Appreciation,”

Thrombosis and Haemostasis 35, no. 2 (30April 1976): 269–271.

Possanner-Ehrenthal, Garbrielle

Garbrielle Possanner-Ehrenthal was the firstwoman physician in Austria. She graduatedfrom the University of Zurich in 1893 andwas an assistant to Professor FriedrichSchauta, who held graduate clinics in ob-stetrics and gynecology in Vienna that wereattended by medical students the worldover. Much of her work was with poorwomen and children.


Preston, Ann1813–1872

Ann Preston became the first female to holdthe position of dean of a medical school. Shegraduated from the Female Medical Collegeof Pennsylvania in 1851 and successfully lob-bied for equal medical education for women,particularly clinical experience, which wasbeing denied to so many. She helped establisha hospital connected to the college in 1861.

Born on December 1, 1813, in West Grove,Pennsylvania, she was the daughter ofAmos and Margaret Smith Preston. Shehelped her mother, who was in poor health,raise the seven siblings that had survivedinfancy: Joseph, Simpson, Smith, Levi,Charles, Rebecca, and Howard. Joseph wasthe oldest and Ann was only two yearsyounger, so many of the early chores fell toher. Her father had a large agriculture anddairy trade that kept the family busy.

Strong Quakers, the family was well re-spected in the area. Her father was influen-tial in the community and concerned aboutthe social issues of the day. The family wasactive in the abolition and temperancemovements of the day, and their home wasmany times used to hide runaway slaves.

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When it was time for her to consider hereducation, Preston became interested inhealth and hygiene for young ladies andgave lectures in her community. With someencouragement, she decided to apply formedical school. No one would accept heruntil she applied at the new Female MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,which Quakers had founded. She gradu-ated and became a professor there.

Preston realized early on that her educa-tion was not adequate. The lack of a traininghospital in which to observe and practicewas a hindrance to many women physi-cians. She “had long recognized that clinicalobservations and instruction were neces-sary adjuncts to didactic lectures and theo-retical treatises” (Foster 1984, 316). This iswhy she so diligently worked for awomen’s hospital when it was apparentmost hospitals in the United States were notgoing to allow women to work as physi-cians. She accomplished her task, and theWomen’s Hospital of Philadelphia openedon December 16, 1861, with Emeline Cleve-land as the resident physician.

The Female Medical College had tem-porarily closed due to financial woes cre-ated by the Civil War outbreak. About thesame time, Preston suffered greatly from about of rheumatic fever and exhaustion, ail-ments that would plague her all her life. Shewas confined for three months at the insaneasylum of Pennsylvania Hospital in order torest and recuperate. She recovered fully andreturned to work.

Shortly thereafter, there was a rift in thecollege over Edwin Fussell’s refusal toaward a student, Mary Putnam Jacobi, amedical degree. Preston disagreed with hisdecision, as did most of the faculty, since Ja-cobi had the necessary qualifications. Fol-lowing this incident, Fussell resigned, and in1865 Preston was named dean of the college.

She continued to speak out for equal edu-cation for women and also encouragedwomen of all races to work at receiving aneducation. Without her support, RebeccaCole, the first black woman to graduatefrom the college, may never have become aphysician.

In 1867 the Pennsylvania legislature wasasked to change the name “Female” to“Women’s.” The latter seemed more accept-able at the time, and Preston supported thechange. She continued to speak out forwomen despite opposition from males suchas those belonging to the Medical Society ofPhiladelphia. In a letter published in theMedical and Surgical Reporter in 1867 she de-fused all their previous arguments, whichwere typical of the period, and asserted thatwomen would insist on their entry into themedical field “in the sacred name of ourcommon humanity, against the injusticewhich places difficulties in our way, not be-cause we are ignorant, or pretentious, or in-competent, or unmindful of the code ofmedical or Christian ethics, but because weare women” (Preston 1867, 394).

Preston died on April 18, 1872, after hav-ing one of the strongest and most positiveinfluences on nineteenth-century womenphysicians and medical education. “Awoman of patience and determination, AnnPreston repeatedly withstood the hostilitiesvented upon her gender by the medical es-tablishment and worked tirelessly to pro-

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vide better opportunities and better trainingfor the women who would follow her intothe medical field” (Ford 1995, 1487).

See also: Cleveland, Emeline Horton; Cole,Rebecca; Jacobi, Mary Putnam; Medical Col-lege of PennsylvaniaReferences: Ford, Bonnie L., “Ann Preston,”in Frank N. Magill, ed., Great Lives from His-tory: American Women Series, vol. 4, Pasa-dena, CA: Salem Press (1995); Foster,Pauline Poole, Ann Preston, M.D. (1813–1872): A Biography; The Struggle to ObtainTraining and Acceptance for Women Physiciansin Mid-Nineteenth Century America, Pitts-burgh: University of Pennsylvania Press(1984); Ohles, Frederik, Shirley M. Ohles,and John G. Ramsay, Biographical Dictionaryof Modern American Educators, Westport, CT:Greenwood Press (1997); Preston, Ann,“The Status of Women-Physicians,” Medicaland Surgical Reporter 16, no. 18 (4 May 1867):391–394, reprinted in American Periodical Se-ries II 1800–1850, new series, reel 1200;Wells, Susan, Out of the Dead House: Nine-teenth-Century Women Physicians and theWriting of Medicine, Madison: University ofWisconsin Press (2000).

Public Health and WomenWhat is a health which merely makespeople ripe to be damaged, abused, andshot at again?

—Ernst Bloch

Early in the twentieth century, few womenwith a medical education had the option ofworking in private practice or in hospitalsor clinics. The emerging field of publichealth offered opportunities for many.

Pasteur’s late-nineteenth-century discov-eries on contagious diseases and their causeswere the beginning of serious public healthinitiatives. In 1946 the World Health Organi-zation was established in Geneva, Switzer-land, and the Communicable Disease Center(now known as the Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention) was born in the UnitedStates. The Pan American Health Organiza-tion evolved through various names from1902 on. They all emerged from the growing

knowledge that disease had wiped out en-tire populations in the past and that the newmedicines would not be effective unless theywere distributed equitably and efficiently.

During the Civil War, women volun-teered to help with the wounded. Oncehome, many put their energies into their lo-cal communities. “Institutions for the deaf,blind, insane, and orphaned had been builtor expanded during the 1850s, givingwomen many opportunities to become in-volved in social welfare efforts and net-works of voluntary associations” (Sivulka1999, 2). Their gender still restricted them,however, to unpaid volunteer work.

In 1850, Lemuel Shattuck laid out somepublic health concerns in his Report of theSanitary Commission of Massachusetts, morecommonly known as the Shattuck Report.He made many recommendations concern-ing the containment of diseases, accuraterecords on causes of death, physicians whowere better trained in sanitation and hy-giene, and societal organization. Yet “therewas very little effective public health workgoing on in America in 1879” (Smillie 1955,443). “The whole trend of the century was tolimit the teaching of medical students to theintensely practical fields, of diagnosis andtreatment” (Smillie 1955, 444). Becausewomen physicians were finding little publicacceptance, they turned to the emergingfield of public health, just as they hadturned in the past to nursing as a way to en-ter the medical profession. Male physiciansof the time took little interest in the field,preferring the more lucrative private prac-tice, and thus women were welcome.

Following World War I, many womenfound that their competence in times of cri-sis was not rewarded with compensatedemployment. The frustration of womenwho worked during the war with the Scot-tish Women’s Hospitals, now disbanded, re-flected the feelings of many: “For many ofthe women there was no option but to re-turn to the constrained middle-class exis-tence they had known before the war. RoseWest, who fearlessly drove over Macedo-nian mountain tracks as head of MotorTransport for the America unit, was not al-lowed to have her own car when she got


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home” (Leneman 1994, 213). Thus womenagain turned their attention to social issuesand their energies to charitable work.

Sara Josephine Baker, a physician whotried private practice but could not make aliving at it, contributed much as a publichealth administrator to the welfare of thepoor in early-twentieth-century New YorkCity. Baker realized that legislation recog-nizing the right of every individual tohealth care was as important as the need forphysicians.

Even after legislation was passed, how-ever, numerous problems with organizationremained. Dr. Leslie Haden-Guest, a Britishphysician and social reformer, wrote in 1912that there were no “standards of cleanlinessand decency with regard to premises andmethods of serving the meals. I have myselfseen school dinner centres in London, atwhich the food was served out of a bucket,and hundreds of plates and bowls ‘washedup’ between batches of children in onesmall tub of filthy water!” (Haden-Guest,1912, 3–4). Many public health educatorsagree that five women were giants in thefield in the twentieth century: Alice Hamil-ton, Sara Josephine Baker, Lillian Wald,Clara Barton, and Dorothea Dix. Ellen Swal-low Richards had done much work in thelate nineteenth century on sanitary issuesand food safety as well (Smillie 1955, 479).

Another huge issue of the early twentiethcentury was the modern birth controlmovement, initiated by Margaret Sanger.Prior to her efforts, it was against the law forphysicians and others to provide informa-tion on contraception. A public healthnurse, Sanger was aware of the detrimentaleffects of frequent childbirth on both chil-dren and mothers.

These women were all pioneers in thefield when public health education was nottaken very seriously in medical schools.Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, the fatherof the public health movement in the earlytwentieth-century United States, wrote,

Public Health is not a concrete intellec-tual discipline, but a field of social ac-tivity. It includes applications of chem-istry and bacteriology, of engineering

and statistics, of physiology andpathology and epidemiology, and insome measure of sociology, and itbuilds upon these basic sciences acomprehensive program of commu-nity service. . . . Preventive medicinemust come, as a reality and not a piousphase, through a fundamental changein the attitude of the physician andthrough a fundamental change in theattitude of the medical school wherehe is trained. (Winslow 1923, 1, 64)

Eventually there were graduate degrees of-fered in public health. In 1917, Baker be-came the first female to hold such a doctor-ate degree.

In spite of increasing evidence, much of itgathered firsthand by Florence Nightingale,that sanitation and hygiene played a crucialrole in health and growing recognition of theimportance of the public health field, privatepractice or surgery continued to commandgreater respect. Public health was a “mar-ginal” area of medicine (Glaser 1987, 98).

Although physicians today are increas-ingly aware of phrases such as “population-based health care,” which refers to bettercost management in order to adequatelyserve their communities, they need to bebetter informed in prevention and publichealth issues.

Unfortunately, the medical and publichealth communities have worked sepa-rately from each other since the turn ofthe century. Medicine has taken a bio-medical or bioengineering approach tomedical care, stressing the achievementof health through disease reduction.The public health profession stronglydraws from a social model of healthcare that emphasizes health promotionand disease prevention and under-stands health determinates as economicand cultural, as well as molecular andbiochemical. Many clinicians have littleunderstanding of basic public healthtools, and many public health practi-tioners have little experience in makingtheir knowledge relevant to the clinicaldomain. (Ambrose 1997, 1722)


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As the AIDS epidemic continues to over-whelm some countries and as bioterrorismcontinues to be a serious threat to popula-tions, those persons who go into the fieldwill feel a higher obligation than ever, andthe women who broke new ground withdiscoveries, data gathering, and administra-tive skills will possibly be more appreciated.

See also: Baker, Sara Josephine; Barton,Clara; Dix, Dorothea Lynde; Hamilton, Al-ice; Nightingale, Florence; Richards, EllenHenrietta Swallow; Sanger, Margaret; Wald,Lillian D.References: Ambrose, Paul, “Uniting PublicHealth and Medicine,” JAMA 278, no. 21 (3December 1997): 1722; Bloch, Ernst, ThePrinciple of Hope, vol. 2, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press (1986); Delmege, James Anthony,Towards National Health; or, Health and Hy-giene in England from Roman to VictorianTimes, New York: Macmillan (1932); “Fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion. Achievements in Public Health, 1900–1999: Family Planning,” JAMA 283, no. 3 (19January 2000): 326–327, 331; Glazer, PeninaMigdal, and Miriam Slater, Unequal Col-leagues: The Entrance of Women into the Pro-

fessions, 1890–1940, New Brunswick, NJ:Rutgers University Press (1987); Haden-Guest, Leslie, Votes for Women and the PublicHealth, London: Women’s Freedom League(1912); Leneman, Leah, In the Service of Life:The Story of Elsie Inglis and the ScottishWomen’s Hospitals, Edinburgh: Mercat Press(1994); Sivulka, Juliann, “From Domestic toMunicipal Housekeeper: The Influence ofthe Sanitary Reform Movement on Chang-ing Women’s Roles in America, 1860–1920,”Journal of American Culture 22, no. 4 (Winter1999): 1–7; Smillie, Wilson George, PublicHealth: Its Promise for the Future; A Chronicleof the Development of Public Health in theUnited States, 1607–1914, New York:Macmillan (1955); Tobey, James Alner, Ridersof the Plagues: The Story of the Conquest of Dis-ease, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons (1930);Williams, Ralph Chester, The United StatesPublic Health Service 1798–1950, Washington,DC: Commissioned Officers Association,U.S. Public Health Service (1951); Winslow,Charles-Edward Amory, The Evolution andSignificance of the Modern Public Health Cam-paign, New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress (1923).

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Quimby, Edith Hinkley1891–1982

Edith Quimby was a radiation physicistwho was a pioneer in the use of radioiso-topes for medical purposes as well as for ad-dressing safety issues in the handling of ra-dioactive materials. She helped bring aboutthe age of radiotherapy and nuclear medi-cine and enabled later generations to betterutilize these methods in cancer treatmentsand disease diagnosis.

Born on July 10, 1891, in Rockford, Illi-nois, she was the daughter of Harriet Hink-ley and Arthur S. Hinkley. As a child shelived in Illinois, Alabama, and Idaho. Shestudied mathematics and physics at Whit-man College in Walla Walla, Washington.

Quimby taught for a couple of years be-fore pursuing graduate studies in physics atthe University of California at Berkeley. Shegraduated in 1916 and continued to teach.She met and married her husband in 1915,and they both moved to New York Citywhen he accepted a position at Columbia.She became a researcher at the New YorkCity Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Al-lied Diseases and started studying X rays,correct dosages for the treatment of tumors,and radium, about which not much wasknown. From 1920 to 1940 she studied radi-ation and its effects on humans and pub-lished her findings. She measured theamount of radiation to which people werebeing exposed during medical treatment,and the best dosages for treating illnesswhile preventing unnecessary harm to thepatient.

In 1941, Quimby began teaching radiol-ogy at Cornell University Medical College,and by 1943 she had moved to ColumbiaUniversity and was looking into using ra-dium as a tool to conduct research on thecirculatory system, thyroid problems, andcancer. She used her knowledge in the de-velopment of the atomic bomb duringWorld War II when she worked on the Man-hattan Project.

Following the war she became more in-

Edith Hinkley Quimby (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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volved in the safety issues surrounding thehandling of radioactive materials. Even af-ter she retired, she continued to be a con-sultant and to write. She died in New YorkCity on October 11, 1982.

References: Bailey, Martha J., American

Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (1994);Carey, Charles W., Jr., “Quimby, Edith Hink-ley,” American National Biography, vol. 18,New York: Oxford University Press (1999).

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Ramsey, Mimi1953–

Mimi Ramsey is a nurse and an activist. Shewas instrumental in influencing the U.S.government to recognize the practice of fe-male genital mutilation (FGM) as childabuse and outlaw its use.

Ramsey was born in Ethiopia. Like manyother young girls in the region, she sufferedfrom the emotional trauma and physicalpain of FGM. After coming to the UnitedStates and after a time of dealing with herpersonal distress over the experience, shebecame a vocal advocate of outlawing thepractice, which was ongoing in the UnitedStates among African immigrants.

Many of the immigrant mothers whoare making these decisions about theirdaughters know little or nothing abouttheir own anatomy. They are told thatif the clitoris is left alone, it will growand drag on the ground; that if theirdaughters are left uncircumcised, theywill be wild, and will crave men; thatno man from their home country willmarry them uncircumcised (althoughmany African men say that they preferuncircumcised women for sex andmarriage); that circumcision aids inmenstruation and childbirth (althoughthe opposite is true in both cases); andthat it is a religious—usually Islamic—requirement (although none of the ma-jor Islamic texts calls directly forFGM). And so these women and theirhusbands come to the United States

filled with misinformation, and remainblindly dedicated to continuing thistorturous tradition. (Burstyn 1995, 30)

Ramsey has been of great help in counsel-ing many who have been through the expe-rience. The U.S. government banned thepractice in 1998. It is also banned in manyother countries but is still practiced widelyaround the world.

See also: Female Genital MutilationReferences: Burstyn, Linda, “Female Cir-cumcision Comes to America,” AtlanticMonthly 276, no. 4 (October 1995): 28–35;Jensen, Rita Henley, “Mimi Ramsey,” Ms. 6,no. 4 (January 1996): 50–52.

Remond, Sarah Parker1826–1894

An active abolitionist in the nineteenth cen-tury, Sarah Remond became a physician latein life. She went to Europe, where there wasmore acceptance of professional blackwomen, to pursue her studies. By leavingthe United States, she likely accomplishedmore as a physician and for women’s andblacks’ rights than if she had stayed in herhome country.

She was born in Salem, Massachusetts, onJune 6, 1826. Both her parents, John Remondand Nancy Lenox, were activists in themovement to abolish slavery and influ-enced her early on to become involved aswell. She attended local schools until blackswere forced out in 1835. Her family moved

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to Newport, Rhode Island, for a time afterthat, returning to Salem in 1841.

In the 1840s and 1850s, she lectured in theUnited States and Europe on women’srights and antislavery. Because of her Amer-ican background, audiences composed ofboth men and women were allowed to at-tend her lectures in England. She had greatpopularity with both the social elite and theworking class.

Her brother Charles, a well-known aboli-tionist, was a proponent of women’s rightsand encouraged her to participate activelyin the cause. “Sarah’s decision to join herbrother was a courageous one given the pre-vailing gender expectations held by manyblack men involved in abolitionism”(Brownlee 1997, 109).

She went to France and settled in Flo-rence, Italy, in 1866. She attended the SantaMaria Nuova Hospital from 1866 to 1868and became a professional medical practi-tioner. She was well respected as a blackphysician. She died on December 13, 1894,and is buried at the Protestant cemetery inRome.

References: Brownlee, Sibyl Ventress, “Outof the Abundance of the Heart: Sarah AnnParker Remond’s Quest for Freedom,”Ph.D. dissertation, Amherst (1997); Hunt,Karen Jean, “Remond, Sarah Parker,” Amer-ican National Biography, vol. 18, New York:Oxford University Press (1999); Porter,Dorothy, B., “Remond, Sarah Parker,” inRayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston,eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography,New York: Norton (1982).

Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow

1842–1911

Ellen Richards was a chemist who led theeffort for better sanitation in homes and iscommonly known as the mother of homeeconomics for the twentieth century. Herwork in educating institutions on sanita-tion, the proper handling of foods, and theimportance of water quality fueled the

emergence of ecology and home economicsas serious disciplines.

Born on December 3, 1842, in Dunstable,Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Pe-ter Swallow and Fanny Gould Taylor Swal-low. She went to school at Westford Acad-emy and entered Vassar College, which hadbeen founded in 1861 for women. She grad-uated in 1870 and decided to go to the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology for fur-ther studies in chemistry. She was the firstwoman admitted to MIT, but her tuitionwas waived because the university did notwant a woman on its roster. Richards at-tended as an “experimental” case. She grad-uated in 1873 with a B.S. in chemistry andbecame the first woman to graduate fromMIT. She became a laboratory assistant atMIT after the school discouraged her pur-suit of a Ph.D.; officials did not want thefirst Ph.D. in chemistry to go to a woman.

She married Robert Hallowell Richardsand continued her career at MIT, teachingsanitation chemistry. She conducted a hugesurvey of drinking water in Massachusettsin order to check for pollution. While teach-ing, she also was very active in advocatingequal educational rights for women, partic-ularly in the sciences. By the 1890s she wasdeveloping the field of home economics.

She was a very practical woman. Whenfriends considered a location for a home orsummer cottage, “Mrs. Richards’s contribu-tion, or shall we say her part of the house-warming, would almost invariably be athorough investigation of the water supply.When we consider how many people fallvictims to typhoid fever during their sum-mer outings, we realize how valuable thiscontribution was” (Hunt 1912, 106). Rich-ards continued her work until her death onMarch 30, 1911.

References: Hunt, Caroline Louisa, The Lifeof Ellen H. Richards, Boston: Whitcomb &Barrows (1912); Stage, Sarah, “Richards,Ellen Henrietta Swallow,” American NationalBiography, vol. 21, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1999).

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Richards, Linda (Melinda Ann Judson)

1841–1930

Linda Richards was the first trained nursein the United States. She was a pioneer innursing-education reforms and differed sig-nificantly from other reformers of her day.From her early experience, she felt nursesneeded to be self-sacrificing as well as com-petent. Unlike many of her colleagues, whofelt physicians were hostile to the nursingprofession, she was content with the currentsubjugation of nursing to the authority ofhospitals and physicians, whom shetrusted. She developed schools with an em-phasis on nurses in this subservient role.

Born on July 27, 1841, near Potsdam, NewYork, she was the daughter of Betsy Sinclairand Sanford Richards. Her family and shewere deeply religious, and she began byhelping the sick and poor in the community.Before long she was asked to help out inhospitals and was astonished to find suchlow standards in the nursing field. Shefound many nurses to be insensitive to pa-tients as well as poorly educated. She wasdetermined to change this state of affairsand embarked on a nursing career.

She graduated in 1873 from a nurses’training course at the New England Hospi-tal for Women and Children, thus becomingthe first trained nurse in the United States.The next year she was superintendent ofnurses at a Boston training school that laterbecame the Massachusetts General HospitalTraining School of Nursing. A few yearslater she founded the Boston City HospitalTraining School for Nurses and disturbedsome of her contemporaries by not givingauthority for the school to a board ofwomen, which had become the norm. In-stead she gave the hospital authority.

She went abroad in order to see the hos-pitals of Europe. In 1877 she met with Flo-rence Nightingale. “Miss Nightingaleshowed the truest interest in our Americantraining schools, and it was a marvel to mehow she went to the very bottom of every-thing concerning their needs and the rela-tive value of American methods in compar-

ison with those used in the English andScotch hospitals. How kindly were all hercriticisms, and how carefully did she ques-tion me concerning all I had seen while inEngland and Scotland! Her advice to meconcerning the future was absolutely in-valuable” (Richards 1915, 52–53).

From 1885 to 1890 she was very involvedin the mission field and founded a Japanesenurses’ training school in Kyoto. In hermany years of service to the nursing profes-sion, Richards oversaw four major hospitalsand many small hospitals and mental hos-pitals and was part of the Visiting Nurses’Service. Other nursing educators who werebeginning to form training schools also con-sulted her on a regular basis. Richards diedon April 16, 1930, at the New England Hos-pital for Women and Children in Boston.

References: Baer, Ellen D., “Richards,Linda,” American National Biography, vol. 18,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);

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Richards, Linda, Reminiscences of LindaRichards, America’s First Trained Nurse,Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows (1915).

Robb, Isabel Hampton1860–1910

Isabel Robb was a nursing leader and edu-cator who advocated an undergraduatenursing curriculum in universities as thebest way to train nurses. She believednurses should have an academic educationrather than learning in hospital wardsalone.

Born on August 26, 1860, in Welland, On-tario, she was the daughter of SamuelHampton and Sarah Mary Lay. She did verywell in school and taught upon completion.She was gifted early on at getting others towork together. She sought tutoring and wasvery ambitious to do something besidesteach. In 1881 she went to New York City totrain as a nurse. She graduated from Belle-vue Hospital Training School for Nurses in1883.

Her early experience was quite varied.She first worked at New York’s Women’sHospital, then traveled to Rome to work ata small hospital that provided care for trav-elers. She also worked for various wealthypatients, traveling with them if needed. Af-ter returning to the United States, she took aposition as superintendent of nurses at theIllinois Training School for Nurses at CookCounty Hospital, Chicago.

In 1889 she moved to the newly openedJohns Hopkins Training School for Nurses.She and her assistant, Lavinia Lloyd Dock,began to work toward raising the status ofthe nursing profession by instituting higherstandards and more stringent requirements.She and Dock helped with the organizationof the American Society of Superintendentsof Training Schools for Nurses of the UnitedStates and Canada.

She married Hunter Robb in 1894 and leftJohns Hopkins and worked at various nurs-ing occupations in Cleveland, Ohio, whereshe had three children, one who died in in-fancy. Five years later she was organizing a

graduate training program for nurses at Co-lumbia University in New York. She pub-lished books and lectured extensively. Shewas an able administrator, organizer, andwriter.

Robb felt nurses needed to possess per-sonal domestic skill.

Every woman before entering uponhospital work should be a thoroughlytrained housekeeper. Practical house-hold economy should be a part of herhome education, for in hospital wardsthe nurses are the stewards, the care-takers of the hospital property, andupon their thrift and careful orderingmust depend the economical outlay ofthe hospital funds. I cannot dwellupon this practical household econ-omy with too great emphasis, for ex-perience has shown me to a painfulextent how this branch of woman’swork is neglected or superficially un-derstood by so many women in allranks of life. A total lack of or appreci-

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ation for the principles that governsuch work will inevitably be followedby a deficiency in thoroughness andsystem. (Robb 1985, 28)

Robb’s devoted work for the nursing pro-fession was prematurely cut short when shedied in a streetcar accident in Cleveland onApril 15, 1910.

See also: Dock, Lavinia LloydReferences: Noel, Nancy L., “Robb, IsabelHampton,” American National Biography,vol. 18, New York: Oxford University Press(1999); Robb, Isabel Hampton, EducationalStandards for Nurses, New York: Garland([1907] 1985).

Rodriguez-Dulanto, Laura Esther

18?–19?

Laura Rodriguez-Dulanto was the first fe-male physician in Peru. She graduated fromthe University of San Marcos at Lima in 1900.


Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876

The Russell Gurney Enabling Act of 1876,passed by the British Parliament, over-turned the Medical Act of 1858, which ex-cluded women from medical schools. TheRussell Gurney Act gave women the samerights as men to enter medical schools andreceive a medical education. The bill wasproposed by Russell Gurney, a member ofParliament in London who supported equaleducation for both sexes, and Sophia Jex-Blake. Those who wanted women excludedfrom medical schools and the practice ofmedicine opposed the act. With its passage,Jex-Blake was able to finally obtain her li-cense to practice medicine from the IrishCollege of Physicians.

See also: Jex-Blake, Sophia Louisa; MedicalAct of 1858References: Roberts, Shirley, Sophia Jex-Blake: A Woman Pioneer in Nineteenth CenturyMedical Reform, London: Routledge (1993).

Ruys, A. Charlotte1898–1980?

Charlotte Ruys was a professor of microbi-ology. She served as dean of the medical fac-ulty at the University of Amsterdam.

Born December 21, 1898, in Dedemsvaart,the Netherlands, she was one of eight chil-dren. She was interested in medicine at anearly age and went to Utrecht University.During her final years there women wereexperiencing sexual harassment, so shechose to transfer to the University ofGroningen, where she graduated in 1924.

She worked for the Public Health Serviceas a physician beginning in 1928. “It waswonderful to be able to combine practiceand research,” she said of the experience.

My first real success was when I wasable to demonstrate that microscopicexamination of specimens fromchildren with vulvovaginitis often ledto a false diagnosis of gonorrhea. Instudying typhoid fever, we found thatcontaminated water was frequentlythe source of infection. The newmethods of typing bacteria madepossible a more thorough study of the epidemiology of many infectiousdiseases. In the 1930s I gave coursesof lectures on food hygiene to girlsstudying at a school of social science.(Hellstedt 1978, 165)

Ruys saw both world wars. During WorldWar II, medical supplies and even foodwere hard to come by. She tended both Ger-mans and Allied soldiers but was an activemember of the resistance movement.

“In February of 1945 I was arrested be-cause I was in contact with a radio transmit-ter of the Allies. A colleague bacteriologistand three others who were also arrested

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were shot a few days later. As I was awoman, I had to be shot in Germany. I wasin prison with two other women con-demned on the same charge. We were notmoved, as transport to Germany was im-possible; the Allies had blocked all theroads. The day after the German surrender,we were set free” (Hellstedt 1978, 166).

She married Guus Defresne in 1945 andthey were together until his death in 1961.Ruys served as dean of the medical facultyat the University of Amsterdam from 1949

to 1953 and later worked with the Govern-ment Advisory Commission for Health un-til 1966. She resigned from the university in1969 when she was seventy years old.

References: Hellstedt, Leone McGregor,Women Physicians of the World: Autobiogra-phies of Medical Pioneers, Washington, DC:Hemisphere (1978); Lovejoy, Esther Pohl,Women Doctors of the World, New York:Macmillan (1957).

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el Saadawi, Nawal1931–

Nawal el Saadawi is known for her writ-ings, which reveal the hardships manyyoung girls and women endure in someArab cultures. A physician and psychiatrist,Saadawi has been persecuted many timesfor her advocacy of women’s sexual rights,and she has worked to educate others on theharmful medical and emotional conse-quences of female circumcision.

She was born on October 27, 1931, in KafrTahla, Egypt, to el Sayed and Zeinab. Sheattended Cairo University and earned amedical degree in 1955 and a master’s inpublic health (M.P.H.) from Columbia Uni-versity in 1966. She used her education togain employment as the director of healtheducation with the Egyptian government’sMinistry of Health. In 1971 she was dis-missed from her job due to her outspokenviews on women’s rights.

In The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in theArab World, Saadawi gives a graphic de-scription of her and her sister being circum-cised when she was six years old. That ex-perience, as well as seeing innumerablelittle girls in her clinic who were sufferingfrom the physical and psychological effectsof circumcision—effects that sometimes in-cluded death—changed her focus. She lostinterest in a medical career and becamemore involved in speaking out against thecontinuing tragedy.

“As a rural doctor I lived close to villagepeople, shared their experiences, learntabout their lives, witnessed what the triple

scourge of poverty, ignorance and sicknessdid to them. Women bore a double burdensince they also suffered from the oppressionexercised on them by fathers and husbands,brothers and uncles and other men. I sawyoung girls burn themselves alive, or throwthemselves into the waters of the Nile anddrown, in order to escape a father’s or a hus-band’s tyranny” (Saadawi 1999, 290–291).

Saadawi found that one physician couldnot fix the bigger problem and turned towriting in order to better help those whosuffered.

“I was not attracted to the medical profes-sion. It seemed unable to do much in face ofthe sufferings imposed on people. I realizedhow sickness and poverty are linked to pol-itics, to money and power, that medicalpractice was removed from our everydaylife. Writing became a weapon with whichto fight the system, which draws its author-ity from the autocratic power exercised bythe ruler of the state, and that of the fatheror the husband in the family. The writtenword for me became an act of rebellionagainst injustice exercised in the name of re-ligion, or morals, or love” (Saadawi 1999,291–292).

Saadawi has most recently been a visitingprofessor at Duke University. She has twochildren.

References: Hiro, Dilip, Dictionary of theMiddle East, New York: St. Martin’s Press(1996); “Nawal El Saadawi,” ContemporaryAuthors Online, Gale Group (2001); Saadawi,Nawal, A Daughter of Isis: The Autobiographyof Nawal El Saadawi, London: Zed Books

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(1999); Saadawi, Nawal, The Hidden Face ofEve: Women in the Arab World, Boston, MA:Beacon Press (1982).

Sabin, Florence Rena1871–1953

Florence Sabin was the first woman electedto the National Academy of Sciences. Her ex-tensive research in embryology and histol-ogy led to the discovery that blood cells andthe lymphatic system develop in the veinsand not in the tissue of the embryo. She wasalso the first woman faculty member of JohnsHopkins University School of Medicine.

Born in Central City, Colorado, Novem-ber 9, 1871, she was the daughter of GeorgeK. Sabin and Serena Miner Sabin. Her fatherwas a mining engineer, and she had oneolder sister. Her mother died when she wasvery young, and she was raised in part byan uncle in Chicago, then moved to Ver-mont to attend the Vermont Academy inSaxton’s River.

She originally wanted to become a musi-cian but later decided to take collegepreparatory courses. Her sister, Mary, wentto Smith College in 1887, and Florencejoined her in 1889. She excelled at scienceand determined to be a doctor even thoughher father and sister were not supportive.She was encouraged by news that JohnsHopkins was going to allow women to enterits new medical school and tutored to earnthe tuition. She graduated from Smith Col-lege in 1893, and then taught for three years,entering medical school in 1897.

Women students had become the normby the time Sabin entered Johns Hopkins,and scholastic requirements were high. Shedid very well and was influenced and en-couraged by Franklin Mall, a well-knownanatomist at Johns Hopkins University. Shegained an internship upon completing herstudies and later became the first full-timewoman professor at Johns Hopkins. She didmuch research in embryology and histologyand was one of the earliest researchers touse supravital staining as a technique forstudying blood cells. She wrote extensivelyin the medical literature. One of her works,

the Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, pub-lished in 1901, served for many years as astandard medical textbook.

Her major contribution to medicine wasdiscovering that “the lymphatics arise fromveins by sprouts of endothelium, and nextthat these sprouts or buds connect with eachother as they grow outwards from the veinstoward the periphery, so that the entire sys-tem is derived from already existing vessels.Further, she showed that the peripheralends of the lymphatics are closed and thatthey neither open into the tissue spaces norare derived from them” (McMaster andHeidelberger 1960, 279). She left Johns Hop-kins in 1925 to join Simon Flexner at theRockefeller Institute. She was the firstwoman to head the American Association ofAnatomists and in 1925 was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences, the first fe-male to be so honored.

Sabin joined her sister in Colorado in 1938and eventually became immersed in public

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health issues. She became very well-knownin Colorado during her day as a publichealth proponent and did much to encour-age better funding, conditions, and legisla-tion. She died in Denver, Colorado, on Oc-tober 3, 1953. Her statue is in the U.S.Capitol.

See also: Johns Hopkins UniversityReferences: Bluemel, Elinor, Florence Sabin:Colorado Woman of the Century, Boulder, CO:University of Colorado Press (1959); De-laney, James J., Jr., “Roy Cleere and FlorenceSabin,” Colorado Medicine 80, no. 2 (February1983): 46–47; Harvey, Abner McGehee, “ANew School of Anatomy: The Story ofFranklin P. Mall, Florence R. Sabin and JohnB. MacCallum,” Johns Hopkins Medical Jour-nal 136, no. 2 (February 1975): 83–94; Mc-Master, Philip D., and Michael Heidel-berger, “Florence Rena Sabin,” BiographicalMemoirs 34, New York: National Academyof Sciences (1960); Morantz-Sanchez, Re-gina, “Sabin, Florence Rena,” American Na-tional Biography, vol. 19, New York: OxfordUniversity Press (1999).

Salber, Eva Juliet1916–1990

Eva Salber was a South African physicianwho worked with her husband in publicand community health care in South Africa,the United Kingdom, and the United States.She advocated ceaselessly for equal healthcare for minorities, those in rural communi-ties, and the elderly.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on Jan-uary 5, 1916, Salber was the daughter ofMoses Salber and Fanny Srolowitz Salber.She married Harry Tarley Phillips in 1939,and they had four children. She received hereducation at the University of Cape Town,earning a medical degree in 1955. Sheworked in South Africa at the Sir Henry El-liott Hospital in Umtata, the Cape TownFree Dispensary, and the Institute of Familyand Community Health in Durban. In Lon-don she worked at the Queen ElizabethHospital for Children.

In 1956 she went to the United States and

became naturalized in 1961. She worked inBoston at the Children’s Hospital MedicalCenter and the Martha Eliot Health Centerfor several years before moving to the DukeUniversity School of Medicine. Her inter-ests lay in rural health care and equal carefor the poor in both urban and rural set-tings. She taught her students with enthusi-asm and tried to give them a sense of whatpoor people had to go through to obtainproper care.

The discrimination Salber faced as awoman and a Jew did not deter her fromsuccess as both a physician and a mother. Inher autobiography she says, “I believe thatbeing a mother made me a gentler, moresympathetic doctor and that being a doctormade me a more loving and understandingmother. It isn’t easy for women to combinemotherhood and work outside the home,and we often feel guilty, but reviewing mylife enabled me to acknowledge that mywell-being depended not only on the love ofmy family but also on the satisfaction I gotin being useful to some of society’s disre-garded people” (Salber 1989, 273). Salberpassed away on November 18, 1990.

References: Salber, Eva Juliet, The Mind IsNot the Heart: Recollections of a Woman Physi-cian, Durham, NC: Duke University Press(1989); Salber, Eva Juliet, “Payment forHealth Care in the United States: A PersonalStatement,” Journal of Public Health Policy 4,no. 2 (June 1983): 202–206; Who’s Who ofAmerican Women, 17th ed., Chicago: Mar-quis Who’s Who (1991).

Salpêtrière Asylum1656–1970

Louis XIV established the Salpêtrière Asy-lum in order to house poor men and womenin Paris. It is best known for the work ofPhillippe Pinel in establishing more hu-mane methods for dealing with and treatingthe mentally ill who were placed there inthe late nineteenth century. It had signifi-cance for many women desiring medicaltraining because the Salpêtrière Asylum al-lowed them to work there when traditional

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hospitals turned them away. It became a tra-ditional hospital in 1970—Hospital de laPitié Salpêtrière (where Princess Diana diedin 1997).

References: Guillain, Georges, and PierreMathieu, La Salpêtrière, Paris, France: Mas-son (1925).

Sanger, Margaret1879–1966

Margaret Sanger was a nurse who crusadedearly in the twentieth century for women’srights to birth-control information. Shefought state and federal laws prohibitingcontraceptive information and forced theissue into the public. Her work as a visitingnurse to New York City’s poor gave her in-sight into the toll frequent childbirth had onfamilies.

She was born on September 14, 1879, inCorning, New York, to Michael HennesseyHiggins and Anne Purcell Higgins. She hadten siblings and felt that her mother’s deathat a young age was due to her having andcaring for so many children. Margaret de-cided early on that she wanted an educationand attended Claverack College, HudsonRiver Institute, and White Plains Hospital.She worked toward her registered-nurse de-gree but quit when she married. She and herhusband, William Sanger, moved to West-chester, New York, and had three children.

They returned to New York in 1911, andSanger became involved in the radical ac-tivism of New York that preceded WorldWar I. She began writing on topics such asvenereal disease, sex education, and contra-ception and had several run-ins with thepostal authorities, who considered her in-formation obscene. Such information was,in fact, obscene according to the laws of thetime.

Sanger later wrote,

The following spring found me stillseeking and more determined thanever to find out something about con-traception and its mysteries. Why wasit so difficult to obtain information on

this subject? Where was it hidden?Why would no one discuss it? It waslike the missing link in the evolutionof medical science. It was like the losttrail in the journey toward freedom.Seek it I would. If it was in existence itshould be found. I would never giveup until I had obtained it nor stop un-til the working women of my genera-tion in the country of my birth wereacquainted with its substance. (Sanger1932, 58)

Sanger was indicted in 1914 for violationof the obscenity laws. She did not feel shecould have a just trial, so she jumped bailand went to England. Her marriage toSanger ended the same year. In England,she prepared her defense and was influ-enced by Havelock Ellis, who was challeng-ing the views on sexuality long held by tra-ditional Victorian society.

She returned to face the charges againsther in 1915. “I was not afraid of the peniten-tiary. I was not afraid of anything except be-ing misunderstood. That I dreaded. I didnot want to go to jail for ‘obscenity,’ but I

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had no hesitation to go for a principle or asa challenge to the obscenity laws, providingmy case could be properly heard” (Sanger1932, 90).

Her daughter Peggy died that same year,and because she had the sympathy of muchof the public, the government decided notto prosecute her. She then decided to traveland lecture. Eventually she turned her focusaway from censorship issues and towardthe availability of contraceptives forwomen. She felt they would liberate womenphysically, emotionally, and economically.

She opened the first birth-control clinic inthe United States in October 1916. The au-thorities closed it several days later and ar-rested her. She continued to fight, and twoyears later physicians were able to prescribebirth control. She then aimed at ensuringwomen’s rights to sexual information andbirth control and at gaining government as-sistance for contraceptive services.

Over the next several decades Sanger or-ganized, increased public awareness of theissues, and sought international assistance.The medical profession was mixed on the is-sue. She eventually sought better femalecontraceptives and helped raise the fundsnecessary for Gregory Pincus to develop thefirst birth-control pill.

She has been synonymous with the birth-control movement for decades, but she alsowas motivated from the beginning to givewomen the chance to live the healthy livespossible if they were aware of a means oflimiting reproduction. Her efforts weregeared toward lengthening lives, enablingwomen to have careers, helping childrenhave better health, and affording men bettersocioeconomic situations by having fewerchildren to take care of. Sanger died on Sep-tember 6, 1966.

References: Katz, Esther, “Sanger, Mar-garet,” American National Biography, vol. 19,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);Sanger, Margaret, My Fight for Birth Control,London: Faber & Faber (1932).

Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode1918–

Cicely Saunders is the English founder ofthe current-day hospice movement. Themovement has revolutionized the wayhealth care workers, counselors, families,and physicians look at death and dying, pa-tients’ rights, and the options of the termi-nally ill.

Born in the borough of Barnet, in GreaterLondon, Saunders attended RoedeanSchool and later St. Anne’s College at theUniversity of Oxford. She trained at theNightingale School of Nursing as well as theSt. Thomas Medical School. She was a med-ical student from 1951 to 1957. During thistime, she witnessed the beneficial effects ofmany new drugs. She went on to St.Joseph’s Hospice in London, where sheworked until 1965. She saw firsthand thephysical and emotional needs of terminalpatients and their families and wrote andlectured a great deal.

In 1967 she founded St. Christopher’sHospice in Sydenham in an effort to helpthose with terminal illnesses die with dig-nity. She promoted sensitive nursing carefor the dying, pain control, and the conceptthat death is a part of living rather than amedical failure. She continued educatingothers, particularly health practitioners, onthe importance of palliative care.

Saunders feels it is very important to doresearch and have good physicians at St.Christopher’s Hospice. She “has alwaysbeen determined that St. Christopher’sshould be unrivalled medically; that inbuilding a hospice as a protest against theshortcomings of modern high technologyshe would not lose the benefits that moderntechnology has to offer. To fulfill this aim sheneeded not only the best clinical physicians,she also needed a research team to establishand develop the scientific foundations onwhich their teaching is based” (Du Boulay1984, 183). She became a DBE (Dame of theBritish Empire) in 1980 and received the Or-der of Merit in 1989. She lives in England.

References: Du Boulay, Shirley, Cicely Saun-ders: Founder of the Modern Hospice Move-

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ment, New York: Amaryllis Press (1984);Parry, Melanie, ed., Chambers BiographicalDictionary, Edinburgh: Chambers (1997);Saunders, Cicely, “A Personal TherapeuticJourney,” British Medical Journal 313, no.7072 (21–28 December 1996): 1599–1601.

Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird

1845–1930

Mary Ann Dacomb Scharlieb was the firstwoman in England to be appointed to amedical position at a general hospital(Royal Free Hospital in London) andfounded the Royal Victoria Hospital in In-dia around 1884.

Born in London on June 18, 1845, she re-ceived her early education in Manchester. Itwasn’t until after her marriage in 1865 toWilliam Scharlieb, and their move to India,that she became interested in medicine.Her husband was an attorney and whilehelping him with his practice, she foundherself assisting the local women withchildbirth after hearing about their reluc-tance to see male physicians if they hadproblems. She determined to study medi-cine and went to the Madras Medical Col-lege in India. Although she qualified for amedical license there, she returned to En-gland to gain more medical education, re-ceiving her M.D. from London Universityin 1888. She was the first woman to obtaina medical degree there, with the encour-agement of Florence Nightingale and Eliza-beth Garrett Anderson.

Eventually she began teaching at theMadras Medical College as well as continu-ing to build her own practice in India, be-coming an able surgeon. Her husband diedin 1891. Two of her three children becamedoctors. She died on November 21, 1930.

References: Cullis, W. C., “Scharlieb, DameMary Ann Dacomb,” Dictionary of NationalBiography, 1922–1930, Oxford: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1937); Haines, CatharineM. C., and Helen Stevens, InternationalWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to1950, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (2001);

Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, Reminis-cences, London: Williams and Norgate(1924), reproduced in the Gerritsen Collec-tion of Women’s History, no. 2518.2, San-ford, NC: Microfilming Corporation ofAmerica (1975–1977).

Scottish Women’s Hospitals1914–1919

Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis of Scotland foundedthe Scotland Women’s Hospitals (SWH).They were established in order for womento serve as physicians and allied healthpractitioners in World War I.

During World War I, women who hadtraining as physicians and nurses werebarred from serving in regular medicalunits. Inglis raised the money and in late1914 established the Scottish Women’s Hos-pitals, made up of numerous units thatserved all over Europe until the close ofWorld War I. The women of the ScottishWomen’s Hospitals not only served the wareffort but proved that an all-woman med-ical unit could get the job done. Many losttheir lives in service.

This characteristic common to themall, of strength, reliability, and effi-ciency, has been impressed on eachUnit largely by its chief medical offi-cer. These last tragic years disclose inthe ranks of the S.W.H., and many an-other organization, an unfailing sup-ply of women with force of character,largeness of mind, and powers of lead-ership, combined with professionalskill in various directions, who havedevotedly given their services to hu-manity in noble and unselfish labour.This must be a source of profound joyto all who love their country. (McLaren1919, 358)

The all-woman hospitals, using prisonersas orderlies, served Serb, Russian, French,Italian, German, British, Austrian, Turkish,Greek, Bulgarian, and Romanian soldiers

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and civilians. They traveled anywhere theywere needed. They dealt with difficult ter-rain in all weather conditions and drovethrough explosions and gunfire to set uphospital units. They were a dependable,very competent, and courageous group ofwomen who fought epidemics, typhus, tu-berculosis, and dysentery and performednumerous surgical operations.

See also: Inglis, Elsie MaudReferences: McLaren, Eva Shaw, A Historyof the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, London:Hodder & Stoughton (1919).

Scudder, Ida Sophia1870–1960

Ida Scudder was a pioneer medical mission-ary. She established a hospital and medicalcollege in Vellore, India, and served fordecades.

She was born in Ranipet, India, on De-cember 9, 1870, to medical missionary JohnScudder and Sophia Weld Scudder. Shegrew up in India and at times in the UnitedStates. In her early life she wanted to stay inthe United States and not become a mis-sionary like so many in her family beforeher, but she visited her parents in India in1890 and had a life-changing experience.

One night when she and her father werein the mission, three men came to ask forhelp for their wives, who were in labor. JohnScudder could not help because the Hindureligion forbade a man to see or examine awoman. Ida Scudder had no medical train-ing and did not go. During the evening allthree women died, and Ida Scudder deter-mined that God wanted her to serve thewomen of India as a physician.

Scudder went to the Women’s MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania in 1895 and even-tually decided to go to Cornell in New Yorkwhen it opened to women. She obtained hermedical degree in 1899 and went to India,deciding her father would be her best prac-tical teacher.

Throughout her long and arduoustraining as a medical student, Ida did

not swerve from her accepted purpose.India claimed a devotion that neverwavered. To return to India, qualifiedby skill and science to be of service toher people, was the one absorbing am-bition of this eager and impetuous, yetdisciplined woman. The dream of onewho had no sisters of her own wasthat the day would come when shemight be a sister to others who, inseclusion, suffered pain that might beabated and died preventable deaths.Her busy brain seethed with greatplans for the future. (Jeffery 1938, 57)

Before going to India, she raised moneyfor a hospital in Vellore. She was on her ownfairly soon after arriving, as her father diedwithin the first year. She found herself in avery rural area, and many patients were hes-itant to come to a woman doctor. Eventuallythey accepted her and sought out her help.

One of her endeavors was to help the ru-ral population find transportation. She be-gan a series of roadside clinics that becamevery popular. She was able to secure vehi-cles that typically

held ten people plus medicine boxes,powder bags, sterile dressings and in-struments. There were ten stops on theGudiyatham roadside and so greatwas the demand for medical attentionthat the car was often overcrowded.Waiting patients had to be taken to thehospital in Vellore for operations orbetter care and a chance visitor mightfind herself holding one or two pas-sengers in her lap while the servantboy returned to Vellore, standing onthe running board. Members of thestaff in Vellore Medical College arenow getting dusty on four roadsidesevery week. They scout, they preach,they prescribe, they operate on theroadsides, and they offer no apologies.(Jeffery 1938, 146)

Her biggest contribution was her dedica-tion to rural health care and the implemen-tation of the roadside clinics. Her faith andhard work inspired those who worked with

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her. The hospital in Vellore was built in ashort time after she arrived and opened in1902. As the workload increased she real-ized she would need to teach Indian womento care for the people. She opened a nursingschool and eventually the Vellore MedicalCollege.

Scudder stayed active in India most of herlife, working, teaching, and caring for thepeople there. The friends and the patientsshe cared for were her family. She died onMay 24, 1960, near her home in Kodaikanal.

References: Jeffery, Mary Pauline, Dr. Ida:India—The Life Story of Ida S. Scudder, NewYork: Fleming H. Revell (1938); Jumonville,Robert Stuart, “Scudder, Ida Sophia,” Amer-ican National Biography, vol. 20, New York:Oxford University Press (1999).

Seacole, Mary Jane Grant1805–1881

Mary Jane Seacole was a Jamaican whoserved as a nurse with the British during theCrimean War. She received the Order ofMerit posthumously in 1990.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to an AfricanAmerican woman and a Scottish soldier,Mary Jane became very successful runningboardinghouses for soldiers, as her motherhad done. While tending to the needs of herguests, she developed skills in treatingwounds and tropical diseases and even per-formed minor surgeries.

She had married Edwin Horatio Seacole,but after his early death, she and a brotherleft Jamaica and went to New Granada(now known as Colombia, Ecuador, Pan-ama, and Venezuela). She found herselftreating people suffering from cholera.When cholera broke out in epidemic pro-portions in Jamaica in 1853, she returnedand served people there in large part basedon her experiences in New Granada.

She traveled to Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas,and eventually to England, where sheserved in the Crimean War. She was a freeblack woman, unlike many of her contem-poraries, and was able to make a significantcontribution to the war effort.

Her autobiography was very successfulin the years following the war. She wrote ofthe siege of Sebastopol: “A line of sentriesforbade all strangers passing through with-out orders, even to Cathcart’s Hill; but oncemore I found that my reputation served as apermit, and the officers relaxed the rule inmy favour everywhere. So, early in the day,I was in my old spot, with my old appli-ances for the wounded and fatigued; littleexpecting, however, that this day would soclosely resemble the day of the last attack inits disastrous results” (Seacole 1988, 170).

Some soldiers referred to her long afterthe war ended as the Crimean Heroine. Shedied on May 14, 1881, of a stroke.

References: Brice-Finch, Jacqueline, “Sea-cole, Mary,” Oxford Companion to AfricanAmerican Literature, New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press (1997); Seacole, Mary, Wonder-ful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands,New York: Oxford University Press ([1857]1988); Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, Historical En-cyclopedia of Nursing, Santa Barbara, CA:ABC-CLIO (1999).

Seibert, Florence Barbara1897–1991

Florence Seibert was a scientist who helpeddevelop the tuberculin test. She also con-tributed to implementing better safety stan-dards for drug therapy.

Born on October 6, 1897, in Easton, Penn-sylvania, Seibert survived polio at age threeto graduate with high honors from highschool. She attended Goucher College inTowson, Maryland, and majored in chem-istry. After graduating in 1918 she workedduring World War I at Hammersley PaperMill as a chemist and then won a scholar-ship to Yale. She earned a doctorate in 1923in biochemistry.

During her doctoral work she discoveredthat patients receiving drug therapy coulddevelop fevers from contaminated distilledwater. She developed a new method for dis-tillation that killed all the bacteria. She con-tinued her research at the University ofChicago and then taught and conducted re-

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search at the Sprague Memorial Institute. Itwas there that she was involved in discov-ering “that the tuberculin protein, like otherproteins, was an excellent antigen; that is,when, as a foreign substance it was injectedinto the body it stimulated the body to pro-duce antibodies in the blood stream againstit. Antibodies are known to be able to com-bine with the antigens that induced themand in this way frequently produce immu-nity and protect the body against any toxicaction that the free antigens might have.Various aspects of these immunological re-actions were studied” (Seibert 1968, 46). Shelater went with Dr. Esmond R. Long to theHenry Phipps Institute at the University ofPennsylvania.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowshipand traveled to Sweden in 1937 to do re-search at Uppsala University. There she wasable to isolate tuberculosis protein mole-cules and use the material to develop theskin test for infection. The tuberculin skintest is still used today. The United Statesadopted it as a standard in 1941 and theWorld Health Organization, in 1952.

Seibert taught at the University of Penn-sylvania, becoming a full professor in 1955.She retired in 1958, at which time she be-came a consultant for the U.S. Public HealthService. She continued her research, focus-ing on cancer at the Cancer Research Labo-ratory in St. Petersburg, Florida. Seibertdied on August 23, 1991, in St. Petersburg.

References: Lambert, Bruce, “Dr. FlorenceB. Seibert, Inventor of Standard TB Test,Dies at 93,” New York Times, sec. 1 (31 Au-gust 1991): 12, col. 4; Seibert, Florence Bar-bara, Pebbles on the Hill of a Scientist, St. Pe-tersburg, FL: St. Petersburg Printing (1968);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,Notable Women in the Physical Sciences, West-port, CT: Greenwood Press (1997).

Sewall, Lucy Ellen1837–1890

Lucy Sewall was one of the few nineteenth-century female physicians who had a thriv-ing practice as well as hospital responsibili-ties. She spent the majority of herprofessional career in Boston at the New En-gland Hospital for Women and Children.

She was born in Boston, Massachusetts,on April 26, 1837, to Samuel E. Sewall andLouisa Maria Winslow. Her father was verysupportive of women’s rights, and she hada liberal education. In 1856 she met MarieZakrzewska and became interested in med-icine. She saw the need for female physi-cians, particularly their value for womenand children’s health.

She enrolled at the New England FemaleMedical College, and Zakrzewska also tu-tored her a great deal. She received hermedical degree in 1862 and then traveled toEurope to gain valuable practical experiencein clinics and hospitals. She returned toBoston in 1863 and became resident physi-cian at the New England Hospital forWomen and Children. She remained therethe rest of her life and became very popular,many patients wanting to see only her. Shealso worked at building the hospital’s train-ing program for other women who neededclinical experience.

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Sewall led the way for many otherwomen to seek a medical education. Shesuffered from poor health off and on her en-tire life and died on February 13, 1890, inBoston from heart disease.

See also: New England Hospital; Zakr-zewska, Marie ElizabethReferences: Kass, Amalie M., “Sewall, LucyEllen,” American National Biography, vol. 19,New York: Oxford University Press (1999);Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell, Sympa-thy and Science: Women Physicians in Ameri-can Medicine, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1985).

Shaibany, Homa1913?–19?

Homa Shaibany was the first woman sur-geon in Iran. She received a scholarshipfrom the Persian government to attendLondon University in 1930. She was one ofthe fortunate few foreigners to gain admit-tance to one of the only two colleges thatadmitted women. She proved to have ex-ceptional talent.

Shaibany was born in Tehran to thedaughter of a Cambridge graduate andwanted to study medicine in order to helpthe women of her country. She was edu-cated at a U.S. mission school before pro-ceeding to London University. During “herpre-clinical years she proved so brilliant inhuman anatomy and morphology, embryol-ogy, and neurology, that her professors ad-vised her to postpone clinical study andtake a degree in these subjects” (Fahimi1952, 272).

She subsequently stayed at London Uni-versity and received her B.Sc. in anatomyand morphology. She obtained clinical ex-perience in Dublin at the Rotunda Hospitaland earned her licentiate from the RoyalCollege of Physicians. Unfortunately shecould not return to Iran when she receivedher M.B.B.S. in 1939, since World War II hadstarted. She stayed in England, and sincethere was a need for physicians there, sheworked in the Redlands Hospital forWomen in Glasgow and then at the

Nuneaton Emergency Hospital. After it wasdestroyed by bombing, she worked at nu-merous other British hospitals and operatedduring wartime conditions of bombingsand heavy casualty loads.

After the armistice she remained in Lon-don at St. Leonard’s Hospital until 1948,when she returned to Persia to finallyserve her own country. She found muchopposition from men and no possibility toteach or obtain a post at a university. How-ever, she persevered because she knewMuslim women were forbidden to be seenby a male physician and thus needed herservices.

She was eventually aided and encour-aged by Princess Shamse, head of the Per-sian Red Cross. She established a hospitalfor the Red Cross and aided in its successfuloperation, always dealing with resentmentfrom male physicians.

References: Fahimi, Miriam, “Homa Shai-bany, M.B.B.S.: First Woman Surgeon ofIran,” Journal of the American MedicalWomen’s Association 7, no. 7 (July 1952): 272–273; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctors ofthe World, New York: Macmillan (1957).

Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921

The Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921 waspassed by Congress under pressure fromwomen physicians, particularly those of theU.S. Children’s Bureau, to better educatewomen about prenatal care, regulate mid-wifery, and establish health centers. Manymale physicians of the American MedicalAssociation were convinced that the Ameri-can Medical Women’s Association hadpressed for the act in order to show somepolitical weight, as women had just ob-tained the right to vote. They felt thatwomen were trying to control maternalhealth care and lobbied to overturn the act.The ensuing battle reflected both good in-tentions and political motivations, and Con-gress rescinded the act in 1929.

References: Barker, Kristin, “Women Physi-cians and the Gendered System of Profes-

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sions: An Analysis of the Sheppard-TownerAct of 1921,” Work and Occupations 25, no. 2(May 1998): 229–255.

Sherrill, Mary Lura1888–1968

Mary Sherrill worked on antimalarial drugsto replace quinine, which was impossiblefor countries in Southeast Asia to obtainduring World War II. Some of the new drugsthat came out of the research Sherrillheaded are still used instead of quinine inmany instances.

Born on July 14, 1888, in Salisbury, NorthCarolina, she was the daughter of Miles Sher-rill and Sarah Bost Sherrill. The youngest ofseven, she received her early education at thepublic schools before entering Randolph-Macon Women’s College. She received herbachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1909 and amaster’s in physics in 1911. She remained atRandolph-Macon for five years as a teacher.

In 1916 she went to the University ofChicago to work on her Ph.D. in chemistry.Before she obtained her degree she wasasked to work with the Chemical WarfareService during World War I. She eventuallyobtained her doctorate in 1923 while alsoworking at Mt. Holyoke College in SouthHadley, Massachusetts. She advanced to as-sociate professor in 1924, full professor in1931, and chair of the Department of Chem-istry in 1946. Her research at Mt. Holyokefocused on antimalarials to replace quinine.

She also studied briefly with the physicistJohannes D. van der Waals in Amsterdam inorder to learn more about synthesizing andpurifying organic compounds. She receivedthe Garvan Medal from the AmericanChemical Society in 1947. She retired in 1954and after several years moved back to NorthCarolina. She died in High Point, NorthCarolina, on October 27, 1968.

References: Grinstein, Louise S., CarolRose, K. Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich,Women in Chemistry and Physics: A Biobiblio-graphic Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1993); Shearer, Benjamin F., andBarbara S. Shearer, Notable Women in the

Physical Sciences, Westport, CT: GreenwoodPress (1997).

Siegemundin, Justine Dittrichin

1630–1705

Justine Siegemundin was a Silesian mid-wife. She wrote a text for midwives that washeavily utilized. She was self-taught andserved the royal family of Prussia.

References: Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Har-vey, eds., The Biographical Dictionary ofWomen in Science: Pioneering Lives from An-cient Times to the Mid-20th Century, NewYork: Routledge (2000).

Solis, Manuela18?–18?

Manuela Solis was the first female physicianin Spain. She graduated from the Universityof Valencia. She did graduate study in Parisand returned to Valencia and enjoyed a suc-cessful practice. She later moved to Madridand practiced obstetrics and gynecology.


Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de

fl. 1926–1957

Margarita Solis Quiroga was an early Mexi-can physician. She also served as a physiol-ogy and biology professor at the Universityof Mexico.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey,eds., The Biographical Dictionary of Women inScience: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times tothe Mid-20th Century, New York: Routledge(2000).

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Spaangberg-Holth, Marie1865–1942

Marie Spaangberg-Holth was the first fe-male physician in Norway. She led the wayfor others shortly after the University ofNorway opened its doors to women.

Born in 1865, Spaangberg-Holth receivedher medical degree from the University ofNorway in 1893 and went to Germany tostudy obstetrics and gynecology. She begana private practice the following year in Oslo.The government then appointed her towork within the Department of VenerealDiseases, where she treated women pri-marily for syphilis.

She married ophthalmologist Soren Holthin 1897 and focused on diseases of the eyefor the rest of her career. She raised threechildren. Spaangberg-Holth died in 1942.

References: Gundersen, Herdis, “MedicalWomen in Norway,” Journal of the AmericanMedical Women’s Association 6, no. 7 (July1951): 281; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957).

Spoerry, Anne1918–1999?

Anne Spoerry was a female doctor in Kenyawho became a regional legend. She piloteda small airplane, bringing medical servicesto a vast number of farmers in cooperationwith the African Medical Research Founda-tion (AMREF).

Born in 1918 to a Swiss-Alsatian family,she wanted to study medicine from an earlyage and went to Paris. Her studies were dis-rupted by the Nazi occupation of Paris, andshe and her brother François worked withthe French Resistance and ran a safe house.The Gestapo arrested them in 1943 and sentthem to Fresnes Prison and later on toRavensbruck, a concentration camp whereshe tried to utilize the few medical skills shehad to help the sick.

After liberation she had to recuperate be-fore furthering her medical studies. She re-

ceived a medical degree in tropical medi-cine after study in Paris and Switzerland. InKenya, while helping farmers who needed aphysician, the AMREF asked her to join andopen flying clinics in northeastern Kenya.She made her rounds over a five-week pe-riod and became very familiar with spearand gunshot wounds, various diseases, andinfection.

Spoerry sometimes had to take her pa-tients by plane to a hospital. One patientwas the only survivor of a family that hadbeen murdered. Once in the plane,

she began to yell at the top of hervoice. She then undid her seat belt andtried to throw herself out of the door. Ihad to keep the plane steady with onehand, while, with the other, trying tokeep her in her seat. I tried to reasonwith her but she did not speakSwahili. Finally I offered her some-thing to eat. I think it was a biscuitand this seemed to pacify her. . . .Three months later I passed throughNakuru. At the hospital a womancalled out to me. It was my patient,now fully recovered. She had acquireda little Swahili, sufficient for us tocarry on a conversation. I said: “Youare much better. Next month I shall becoming to take you home.” Shesmiled, a very sweet smile. This timeshe had no qualms about flying. (Spo-erry 1996, 137–138)

Spoerry strove to educate people on theimportance of good hygiene and immuniza-tions. Many in the area remember her asMama Daktari, Swahili for Mother Doctor.

References: “Anne Spoerry Tribute,” AMREFCurrent News, http://www.amref.org/ Spo-erry.html; Spoerry, Anne, They Call Me MamaDaktari, Norval, ON: Moulin (1996).

Stern, Lina Solomonova1878–1968

Lina Stern was a prolific writer on physiol-ogy and the first woman to be elected to the

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Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union.She discovered the hematoencephalic bar-rier, which acts as a filtering membrane inorder to protect spinal fluid and nervesfrom harmful substances.

Born in Latvia in 1878, Stern was taken toSwitzerland at an early age. She graduatedfrom the University of Geneva Medical Fac-ulty in 1903 and eventually became a fullprofessor of physiological chemistry there.

In 1925 she returned to the Soviet Unionand Moscow to work at the Moscow Med-ical Institute and later became the directorof the Moscow Institute of Physiology. Herstudies involved the central nervous systemand the effects of injecting medications intothe nerve centers of the brain in order to by-pass the hematoencephalic barrier. Thistreatment proved helpful for some illnessesand for shock victims during World War II.Stern died in 1968.

References: “Lina and the Brain,” Time 49,no. 9 (3 March 1947): 45; “Prof. Lina Stern,Physiologist, 89,” New York Times (9 March1968): 29.

Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney

1847–1918

Susan Steward was the first African Ameri-can physician in New York State. She waspersistent in obtaining a medical degree andbecame the third black woman to become aphysician in the United States.

Born in 1847 in Brooklyn, New York, shewas the daughter of Ann Springstead Smithand Sylvanus Smith. She was of mixedblack, Indian, and European descent. Shehad a prosperous family with nine siblingsand enjoyed music, learning to play the or-gan at an early age.

In 1867, she entered the New York Med-ical College for Women, which was a home-opathic institution that welcomed women.Prior to her entering college, two of herbrothers died during the Civil War, and awidespread cholera epidemic struck Brook-lyn, resulting in numerous deaths. Theseevents may have had an impact on her deci-sion to become a physician.

She worked hard to get through medicalschool and clinical training at Bellevue Hos-pital and graduated at the top of her class in1870. The private practice she opened aftergraduation grew very slowly at first, buteventually her reputation reached many inher community and she served both old andyoung as well as black and white.

Steward married William G. McKinneyand had two children. He was a minister,and she was active as the organist whileworking to raise a family and practice as aphysician. In 1892 her husband died.

In 1891, Steward cofounded the BrooklynWomen’s Homeopathic Hospital and Dis-pensary, which served African Americans.She then received more medical educationat the Long Island Medical College Hospi-tal. From 1892 until 1896 she worked for theNew York Medical College and Hospital forWomen.

She married a U.S. army chaplain, The-ophilus G. Steward, in 1896 and traveledwith him to both Montana and Wyomingand practiced medicine in both states. Sheeventually joined the faculty at Wilberforce

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University in Ohio, where she taught vari-ous health courses for over twenty years.She also was an excellent writer and oratorwho presented papers in the United Statesand overseas on various medical topics, es-pecially the needs of black women for equaleducation and opportunity.

Steward was unusually successful rela-tive to other black female physicians in thenineteenth century. Aspiring female physi-cians of the time greatly appreciated her in-tellectual gifts, musical talent, and oratoryskills. She died on March 7, 1918.

References: Hayden, Robert C., “Steward,Susan Maria Smith McKinney,” AmericanNational Biography, vol. 20, New York: Ox-ford University Press (1999); Hine, DarleneClark, and Kathleen Thompson, Facts on FileEncyclopedia of Black Women in America, vol.11, New York: Facts on File (1997); Sam-mons, Vivian Ovelton, Blacks in Science andMedicine, New York: Hemisphere (1990).

Stewart, Alice1906–

Alice Stewart is a British epidemiologistwho uncovered the dangers of low-level ra-diation, particularly as it affected childrenwith cancer. She has also fought for workersin high-risk occupations despite fierce op-position from the atomic energy industry.

Born in Sheffield, England, on October 4,1906, she is the daughter of two physicians.Her father, Albert Ernest Naish, was an in-ternist who taught at Sheffield Universityand her mother, Lucy Welburn Naish, wasan anatomy teacher there. She had sevensiblings and with her parents’ support at-tended Cambridge University to become aphysician. Three of her siblings also studiedmedicine.

She became a physician in 1931 and in1941 took a position at Oxford University.During World War II she aided the Britishgovernment in studying the harmful ef-fects on workers of handling TNT duringWorld War I. Following World War I, manymunitions workers developed blood disor-ders, including liver disease, and the gov-

ernment wanted to study the safety of themunitions plants before they opened againfor World War II. She concluded quicklythat the handling of such substances asTNT would indeed impede a person’s abil-ity to form blood. The British governmentsubsequently changed its manufacturingprocedures.

Stewart became a very well-known epi-demiologist and in 1956 turned her atten-tion to low levels of radiation, finding thatchildren who were exposed to more prena-tal X rays died from cancer at twice the rateof those who received lower exposures.These findings were met with great opposi-tion, but over the next two decades morestudies verified that her findings were ac-curate. She testified in the late 1980s in U.S.congressional committees that the Depart-ment of Energy procedures for assessing ra-diation exposure and hazards were not ad-equate.

She also is a strong advocate of gettingmedical students more involved in thestudy of diseases.

The medical profession is very gravely to blame for not putting more of its brain into epidemiology.I’m absolutely certain that the presentsystem of teaching epidemiology just puts medical students off. Theycome to it too late. They should be introduced to the subject before theyget gripped with the fascination ofclinical medicine—which should gripthem. I know the excitement someonehas coming from clinical medicine. But if you get to students beforethey’re seized with this passion andreach them with the excitement oflooking at disease through the lens of the group, if you could attune them to think of the larger pictureevery time they looked at an individual disease, you could get them to see the fascination of epidemiology. (Greene 1999, 225)

Alice Stewart continues to speak to stu-dents and scientists about many publichealth issues and has been steadfast in her

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fight for better safety measures for workersin the nuclear energy industry.

References: Greene, Gayle, The Woman WhoKnew Too Much: Alice Stewart and the Secretsof Radiation, Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press (1999); Kay, Virginia, “Stew-art, Alice,” Current Biography 61 no. 7 (July2000): 70–76; Schneider, Keith, “ScientistWho Managed to ‘Shock the World’ onAtomic Workers’ Health,” New York Times,sec. A (3 May 1990): 20, col. 1.

Stone, Emma Constance1856–1902

Emma Stone was the first Australian femalephysician. She worked with poor womenand children in Melbourne for many yearsand helped establish the Queen VictoriaHospital.

Stone was born on December 4, 1856. Herfather was a London contractor who hadsettled in Tasmania. She received her educa-tion in the United States at the Women’sMedical College of Pennsylvania inPhiladelphia and in Canada at the Univer-sity of Trinity College in Toronto. She re-ceived her M.D. in 1888 and obtained her li-centiate from the Society of Apothecaries in1889 in London, subsequently spendingmost of her life practicing medicine in Aus-tralia.

She worked with the poor most of her ca-reer and strove to raise the age for legalprostitution. She dedicated a large part ofher life to establishing a hospital for poorwomen and children in Victoria. She main-tained a private practice and worked at afree dispensary on a regular basis. Stonedied on December 29, 1902, at the age offorty-six.

References: “Obituary,” British Medical Jour-nal 1, no. 2197 (7 February 1903): 343;Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science,New York: Routledge (2000).

Stowe, Emily1831–1903

Emily Stowe was the first woman to prac-tice medicine in Canada. She championed awoman’s right to equal education in medi-cine, was an activist in the women’s move-ment in Canada, and was antagonistic to-ward the male medical establishment of herday.

Born to Solomon and Hannah Jenningson May 1, 1831, Stowe was the eldest of sixdaughters. One brother died in infancy. TheJenningses were of Quaker background andfelt that in many ways their daughters wereequal to men. They lived in Norwich, On-tario, and educated their children at home,with Emily doing much of the teachingwhen she was in her teens. In 1846 she hada chance to fill in at the local school andtaught many children of all ages.

After several years she desired more edu-cation herself. She was denied admission toVictoria College in Cobourg because shewas female. She proceeded to the ProvincialNormal School in Toronto in 1853 in orderto complete a teacher-training course, whichshe did in 1854. She excelled at academicsand became the first woman principal at anOntario public school.

She married John Stowe in 1856 and hadthree children, Ann Augusta, John Howard,and Frank Jennings. By 1863 John Stowewas very ill with pulmonary tuberculosisand was separated from the family, proba-bly in a sanatorium. During this time Emilydecided to become a physician and supportthe family.

After being rejected by some Canadianschools, Stowe entered the New York MedicalCollege and Hospital for Women, a homeo-pathic institution, and graduated in 1867. Sheset up a practice in Toronto without a license,feeling that she would have no chance atpassing the examinations required becausethe examiners were not supportive ofwomen. Also, like her great uncle Solomon,she felt it was all right to ignore the law if itwasn’t fair, being confident that in time itwould change. Her practice prospered.

John Stowe was well now and back withthe family. Emily had met Jennie Trout,

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whom she had influenced to go into medi-cine, and they attended lectures at theToronto School of Medicine. Trout decided togo to the Women’s Medical College of Penn-sylvania in 1872, and from that time forwardthere was friction between the Stowes andTrouts. This friction grew even more whenTrout became licensed before Stowe, andthey moved on in their careers and foundeddifferent medical schools for women.

Stowe was involved in a scandal in 1879involving the death of Sarah Lovell, whomshe had known and who had died from tak-ing poison to abort her unborn child. Stowedenied giving Lovell any poison and wasfound innocent in two separate trials con-cerning the death. Soon thereafter, officialsin the profession granted her a license topractice. Jennie Trout had gained her licensein 1875; she was the only woman licensed topractice medicine in Canada until Stowe ob-tained her license in 1880.

Stowe helped found the Ontario MedicalCollege for Women, which became theWomen’s College Hospital in Toronto.

She was a vocal and strong-willed propo-nent for women, especially those seekingmedical education. Stowe passed away onApril 30, 1903.

See also: Trout, Jennie KiddReferences: Duffin, Jacalyn, “The Death ofSarah Lovell and the Constrained Feminismof Emily Stowe,” Canadian Medical Associa-tion Journal 146, no. 6 (15 March 1992):881–888; Fryer, Mary Beacock, Emily Stowe:Doctor and Suffragist, Toronto: Hannah Insti-tute; Dundurn Press (1990).

Sundquist, Alma1880?–1940

Alma Sundquist was a Swedish physicianactive in the League of Nations. She special-ized in the treatment of venereal diseases ofwomen and children. Very active in estab-lishing the medical women’s organizationsof her day, she served as president of theMedical Women’s International Associationin 1934.

Born in Sweden around 1880, Sundquist

attended the Karolinska Institute of Stock-holm University and then organized andworked in free clinics in Stockholm. Herwork brought the problems of venereal dis-ease to the attention of the authorities, whoneeded to understand the importance ofpreventive methods and treatment. Sund-quist became a well-respected physician inher lifetime. She died in January 1940.

References: Journal of the American MedicalWomen’s Association 6, no. 1 (January 1951):33–34; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, Women Doctorsof the World, New York: Macmillan (1957);Ogilvie, Marilyn, and Joy Harvey, eds., TheBiographical Dictionary of Women in Science,New York: Routledge (2000).

Swain, Clara A.1834–1910

Clara Swain was the first medical mission-ary to Asia in 1869. She worked diligentlyfor the Methodists, who sent her from theUnited States to treat patients in India, teachmedicine to women, and eventually open alarge hospital to take care of the needs of thepeople of Bareilly.

Born on July 18, 1834, Swain was thedaughter of John Swain and ClarissaSeavey. She was born in Elmira, New York,but her family moved to Castile when shewas very young. She graduated from theCanandaigua Seminary and taught schoolfor many years.

Many relatives encouraged her to becomea nurse because she had a gift for caring forothers who were ill. She decided to becomea physician and worked at the Castile Sani-tarium at the invitation of Dr. CordeliaGreene, who had founded the institution,until she earned her medical degree at theWomen’s Medical College of Pennsylvaniain 1869.

During the 1860s many traditionalchurches were organizing to preach, teach,and lend medical aid in foreign countries.Swain’s church had raised money to sup-port a small mission in India, and Swain,who had just graduated and who was veryreligious, decided to serve.

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In 1869, she left with another woman forIndia. She opened a small clinic and foundherself very busy. The first year she madehundreds of visits to zenanas, the femalepart of Indian homes, and to other patientsoutside the clinic.

She began teaching classes in anatomyand diseases the next year, and later some ofthe women became licensed physicians. Asmore and more people came to the clinic,Swain realized they would need a hospital.

A donor gave her an estate with overforty acres to build a dispensary, and in 1874the first women’s hospital opened in India.“At first we find it a little difficult to per-suade the women to let us examine them,even to get at their pulse or to see theirtongue, but this reluctance soon wears off,and some of the women now in the hospitalhave lost a good deal of their shyness andmeet us freely” (Swain 1977, 89).

The Indian men were also very grateful fora female physician. “Quite a number of na-tive gentlemen have called to pay their re-spects, as they say. Some of them have toldme that they appreciate my having left mynative land and all my friends to come hereto care for their women who can never see aphysician of the other sex” (Swain 1977, 29).

As she was increasingly called on by thesick, she herself became ill and had to travelto the United States to recover. She contin-ued to return to India and was asked to be-come the physician to the women of thepalace for the rajah of Khetri. She remainedin the palace for many years. Swain died onChristmas Day, 1910.

References: Beatty, William K., “Swain,Clara A.,” American National Biography, vol.

21, New York: Oxford University Press(1999); Swain, Clara A., A Glimpse of India:Being a Collection of Extracts from the Letters ofDr. Clara A. Swain, First Medical Missionary toIndia of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Soci-ety of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Amer-ica, New York: J. Pott (1909), reprinted inHistory of Women Collection, no. 6170, NewHaven, CT: Research Publications (1977).

Sylvain, Yvonne1907–1989

Yvonne Sylvain was the first female physi-cian of Haiti. She is one of the most re-spected and admired Haitian women of alltime. “She is an esthete and an aristocrat, adaughter of an elite, extraordinarily edu-cated and accomplished family whose rootsgo back deep into Haiti’s violent and stub-bornly independent history. She is the bestknown woman in Haiti today” (“DoctorNumber One” 1955, 93).

She received her medical degree in 1940from the University of Haiti. She was thefirst woman accepted into the medicalschool, and following graduation sheworked in clinics in Port-au-Prince, madehouse calls, educated people on hygiene andbirth control, and worked on gaining propertherapies for cancer. She lived her life toserve others. She was active in the women’ssuffrage movement. Sylvain died in 1989.

References: “Doctor Number One,” Holiday17, no. 2 (February 1955): 92; Lovejoy, EstherPohl, Women Doctors of the World, New York:Macmillan (1957).

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Taussig, Helen Brooke1898–1986

Helen Taussig was a pioneer in pediatriccardiology. Her work with Alfred Blalockled to the “blue-baby operation,” which rev-olutionized cardiac surgery and gave hopeto hundreds of parents who had childrenwith cardiac problems. She also was instru-mental in avoiding a national tragedy byhelping to keep thalidomide off the market.This drug causes phocomelia, or shortenedlimbs.

One of four children, she was born May24, 1898, in Cambridge, Maine. Her mother,Edith Guild, died when she was still a child.Her father, Frank W. Taussig, was a verywell-known professor who helped establishthe Harvard Graduate School of BusinessAdministration and is regarded as one ofthe founding fathers of economics in theUnited States. She received an education atthe Cambridge School for Girls and went onto Radcliffe in 1917. After two years she wasready to get out from under her father’sshadow and transferred to the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley.

Upon graduation in 1921 she told her fa-ther she wanted to become a doctor. He ad-vised her to go into public health, but shewasn’t interested. She chose to go to JohnsHopkins, which admitted women, to studycardiology. She obtained her M.D. degree in1927 and stayed at Johns Hopkins Hospitalto train in cardiology and pediatrics.

In 1930 she began her career as head ofthe Children’s Heart Clinic at Johns Hop-kins University and would remain there un-

til her retirement in 1963. She determinedearly on that something could be done forchildren suffering from tetralogy of Fallot,which results in a lack of oxygen in theblood. She was one of the first doctors to re-ally understand congenital heart malforma-tions.

Because a person with one congenitalanomaly not infrequently has others,some of Taussig’s children with tetral-ogy of Fallot also had a persistent duc-tus. As she studied these patients inher clinic and followed several of themto the autopsy table, she began to ap-preciate the fact that children withboth a persistent ductus and a tetral-ogy did reasonably well, but wouldbegin to deteriorate if the ductus spon-taneously closed later in childhood.Obviously, the ductus was serving toaccomplish the opposite of what it didin the embryo: it allowed blood to passfrom the high-pressure aorta into thelow-pressure pulmonary artery be-yond the obstruction. By shunting thecirculation around the obstructed pul-monary outflow tract, it provided abypass that markedly increased flowto the lungs. The logical solution forpatients with tetralogy, then, was tosurgically build a ductus. To HelenTaussig, the building of a ductusseemed a straightforward matter ofplumbing—put a length of pipe in theright place, and thereby divert the blueblood around the narrowed pul-monary artery and into the lungs so

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that it can be oxygenated. (Nuland1988, 438)

In 1938 Taussig visited Maude Abbott atMcGill University to learn all she couldabout heart defects. She met Alfred Blalockin 1941, and together they worked on per-fecting an operation that many physiciansof the time thought impossible. The Blalock-Taussig shunt successfully joined the sub-clavian artery to the pulmonary artery in acyanotic child. Their accomplishment is oneof the major milestones in medicine of thetwentieth century. Their success in 1944 ledto open-heart surgery.

Her book, Congenital Malformations of theHeart, published in 1947, was a major con-tribution to the field. “By means of this bookthe diagnosis of malformations of the heartis brought within the power of all physi-cians who are willing to devote time to itsstudy and to practice its teachings” (Parks1947, viii).

Another of Taussig’s accomplishmentswas her work with Frances Kelsey, to banthalidomide in the United States. Taussigconfirmed Kelsey’s fears, arising from herwork at the FDA, and those of others bystudying the situation in Germany, wherealready thousands of babies had been bornwith phocomelia—shorter bones in theirlegs and arms. Their mothers’ taking ofthalidomide while pregnant had caused thecondition. Both Taussig and Kelsey testifiedbefore government officials, and the newsspread that the disaster had been averted inthe United States.

Shortly after this success, Taussig workedto institute tougher drug regulations.

I feel the situation should be broughtto the immediate attention of the pub-lic in this country. It is also importantto remember that in many instancesthe damage is done before the motherknows she is pregnant. Therefore,young women must learn to be cau-tious about new drugs. Until new lawshave become effective, and indeed un-til research for the proper test on preg-nant animals has been completed,physicians must bear in mind thatsleeping tablets, tranquilizers, andother apparently innocent drugs maydo terrible harm to the rapidly grow-ing embryo and the unborn child.(Taussig 1962, 683)

Outspoken about abortion even in herearly days, she felt the mother, not the gov-ernment, should make the choice. She alsospoke out about continually having to fightthe antivivisectionists, a conflict both sheand other scientists found frustrating. Shewas concerned as well that the United Statesdid not have national health insurance thatcovered both adults and infants.

Many physicians who met or workedwith her over the years remembered herfondly. One physician who referred a childto her later wrote, “I received a long, de-tailed letter from Dr. Taussig, but, althougheverything was made very clear, her letterwas not just a technical report. That sweetlady wrote a very personal, homey message

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almost as if we were again face to faceacross a room. From time to time Teddyneeded to return to Hopkins for checkups,and I always received another friendly, un-pretentious letter. . . . Dr. Taussig will al-ways be a heroine to me” (Carlisle 2001, 59).Taussig retired in 1963 but continued herwork and stayed active in the field until shewas killed in a car accident on May 21, 1986,in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

See also: Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Sey-mour; Kelsey, Frances OldhamReferences: Carlisle, Richard C., “HelenTaussig—A Heroine,” Pharos of Alpha OmegaAlpha–Honor Medical Society 64, no. 1 (Win-ter 2001): 59; Grigg, William, “The Thalido-mide Tragedy—25 Years Ago,” FDA Con-sumer 21, no. 1 (February 1987): 14–17;Keene, Ann T., “Taussig, Helen Brooke,”American National Biography, vol. 21, NewYork: Oxford University Press (1999); Mc-Namara, Dan G., et al., “Historical Mile-stones: Helen Brooke Taussig: 1898–1986,”Journal of the American College of Cardiology10, no. 3 (September 1987): 662–671; Nu-land, Sherwin B., Doctors: The Biography ofMedicine, New York: Knopf (1988); Parks,Edward A., “Foreword,” in Helen B. Taus-sig, Congenital Malformations of the Heart;Taussig, Helen B., Congenital Malformationsof the Heart, New York: CommonwealthFund (1947); Taussig, Helen B., “DangerousTranquility,” Science 136, no. 3517 (25 May1962): 683; Taussig, Helen B., “Little Choiceand a Stimulating Environment,” Journal ofthe American Medical Women’s Association 36,no. 2 (February 1981): 43–44.

Thompson, Mary Harris1829–1895

Mary Thompson was a physician and sur-geon. She established a hospital and a med-ical college in Chicago so that women couldgain both academic and practical experiencein the field.

Born on April 15, 1829, she was thedaughter of John Harris Thompson and Ca-lista Corbin. She received her early educa-

tion at Troy Conference Academy in WestPoultney, Vermont, and Ft. Edward Colle-giate Institute in New York. She had to teachin her teens in order to support her educa-tion. She was a gifted student and devel-oped an early interest in physiology andanatomy, two subjects she was able to teachothers.

In 1863 she received her medical degreefrom the New England Female Medical Col-lege, having spent one year at the New YorkInfirmary for Women and Children with theBlackwell sisters, where she gained some ofher clinical experience. She then decided totry to establish a practice in Chicago.

She found employment with the SanitaryCommission, where she worked withwomen and children who had lost theirhusbands and fathers in the Civil War. Shealso helped many of the returning soldierswith their medical needs. It wasn’t long be-fore she decided to raise money for a hospi-tal to tend to the overwhelming numbers ofwomen and children seeking medical help.The Chicago Hospital for Women and Chil-dren opened in 1865. She became the sur-geon and top physician.

Even though she had a medical degree,she applied to Rush Medical College formore training. The college denied her appli-cation until she enlisted the help of WilliamByford of Chicago Medical College. Shegraduated in 1870. More women were notable to follow due to numerous objectionsby male students and faculty. After gradua-tion, she and Byford founded the Woman’sHospital Medical College in connectionwith her hospital.

She was a professor at the college and alsomaintained her position at the hospital, be-coming one of the best-known women sur-geons in the nation. She specialized in pelvicand abdominal surgery and also sought toimprove current surgical instruments by in-venting her own. Because of her compe-tence, some males in the field who haddoubts about a woman’s capacity to practicemedicine came to change their views. Shepublished numerous articles on a variety ofmedical topics and used her influence to aidwomen in pursuing careers as physicians.She also opened a nurses-training program

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at her hospital in 1874. Thompson died of acerebral hemorrhage on May 21, 1895, inChicago.

References: Hast, Adele, “Thompson, MaryHarris,” American National Biography, vol.21, New York: Oxford University Press(1999).

Tilghman, Shirley Marie Caldwell

1946–

Shirley Tilghman greatly enhanced ourknowledge of genes and their role in humandevelopment. She was a key designer of theHuman Genome Project.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1946, toHenry Caldwell and Shirley Carre Cald-well, Tilghman moved with her family veryfrequently and became interested in chem-istry in high school in Winnipeg, Manitoba.She went on to study at Queen’s Universityin Kingston, Ontario, receiving her degreein biochemistry in 1968. She decided to be-come a molecular biologist and earned aPh.D. in biochemistry at Temple Universityin 1975.

She was a fellow at the National Institutesof Health and, with Philip Leder Tilghman,cloned the first mammalian gene. Sheworked later at the Fox Chase Cancer Cen-ter in Philadelphia, the University of Penn-sylvania, and Princeton University. Cur-rently she is director of the Institute forGenomic Analysis at Princeton.

Her research has focused on the geneticinfluence both parents have on the embryo.Her work with the Human Genome Projectstarted before the project formally began in1990. This project, which is vital to medicalscience, is a cooperative effort that aims toidentify approximately 30,000 genes in theDNA of humans as well as discover the se-quences of the billions of chemical basesthat make up human DNA. Tilghman hastwo children with her former husband,Philip Tilghman.

References: Proffitt, Pamela, Notable WomenScientists, Detroit: Gale (1999).

Trout, Jennie Kidd1841–1921

Jennie Trout was the first licensed femalephysician in Canada. She served manysmall towns in Ontario and established freedispensaries for the poor. She also foundedthe Women’s Medical College at Queen’sUniversity in Kingston.

Born on April 21, 1841, in Kelso, Scotland,Trout emigrated with her family to Canadawhen she was a small child. They settlednear Stratford, Ontario, on a farm. She wasvery bright, as demonstrated by her earlyeducation and successful efforts at teaching.She graduated from the Ontario NormalSchool in Toronto, which was one of the bestat teacher preparation. She then taught forfour years near Stratford, Ontario.

She married Edward Trout, a successfulpublisher, in 1865. She was ill much of herearly life and was treated by electrotherapy.During her illness she determined to be-come a physician. No Canadian medicalschools accepted women at that time, so shewent to the Women’s Medical College ofPennsylvania in Philadelphia and gradu-ated in 1875. She returned to Canada andfounded the Electro-Therapeutic Institute, aclinic that was well equipped to treatwomen with galvanic baths or electricalstimulation.

She then became interested in providingopportunities for women to pursue a med-ical education and in 1883 became thefounder and trustee of the KingstonWomen’s Medical College. It merged withthe Toronto Medical College in 1894 andwas known as the Ontario Medical Collegefor Women. She died on October 30, 1921, inLos Angeles.

References: Hacker, Carlotta, The In-domitable Lady Doctors, Toronto: Clarke, Ir-win (1974); “Jennie Kidd Gowanlock Trout,”http://www.rootsweb.com/~nwa/jennie.html; Rayson, Sandra, Robert A. Kyle, andMarc A. Shampo, “Dr. Jennie Kidd Trout—Pioneer Canadian Physician,” Mayo ClinicProceedings 68, no. 2 (February 1993): 189.

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Turner-Warwick, Margaret1924–

A British physician and immunologist,Margaret Turner-Warwick was the firstwoman president of the Royal College ofPhysicians.

Born on November 19, 1924, she receivedher early education in London. She then at-tended Oxford, earning her B.A. in 1946. Sheearned her medical degree at University Col-lege Hospital Medical School in London in1956, and also earned a Ph.D. there in 1961.

Her early medical training involved postsat University College Hospital, BromptonHospital, and the Elizabeth Garrett Ander-son Hospital. She studied upper respiratorytract diseases, particularly tuberculosis and

asthma. Her interests also expanded to im-munology and thoracic medicine.

She became professor of medicine at theCardiothoracic Institute in London in 1972,and wrote her textbook, Immunology of theLung, which is still used by numerous med-ical schools today. From 1989 until 1992 sheserved as the first woman president of theRoyal College of Physicians. In 1991 she wasmade a Dame Commander of the Order ofthe British Empire (DBE).

References: Haines, Catharine M. C., andHelen Stevens, International Women in Sci-ence: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950, SantaBarbara, CA: ABC-CLIO (2001); Turner-Warwick, Margaret, Immunology of the Lung,London: Edward Arnold (1978).

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University of Bologna1088?–

The first university in the world, the Uni-versity of Bologna was founded about 1088.Although it became well-known mainly forlaw studies, prominent women professorsin the sciences, including medicine, taughtthere. By the eighteenth century the Enlight-enment had brought about more liberal

views regarding women receiving highereducation, as well as teaching. Beginning in1772, Laura Bassi taught anatomy andphysics at the University of Bologna.

See also: Bassi, Laura Maria CaterinaReferences: Rashdall, Hastings, The Univer-sities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 1:Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Oxford: ClarendonPress (1936).

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University of Salernofl. 900–1250

The medical school at the University ofSalerno, in southern Italy, was the first med-ical school of medieval Europe. It flourishedduring the tenth through the beginning ofthe thirteenth centuries and was coeduca-tional. It had as excellent a reputation formedicine as Bologna did for law and Paris

for scholasticism. Frederick II, the Holy Ro-man Emperor, decreed in 1221 that theschool at Salerno had to certify all physi-cians before they could practice legally.

References: Rashdall, Hastings, The Univer-sities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 1:Salerno, Bologna, Paris, Oxford: ClarendonPress (1936).

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Van Hoosen, Bertha1863–1952

Bertha Van Hoosen was a strong organizerof women in the medical field. She was anoutstanding surgeon and founded theAmerican Medical Women’s Association inorder to keep women abreast of currentevents, develop a voice for female physi-cians and enhance their image, and, mostimportant, provide a supportive networkfor women physicians.

Born in Stony Creek, Michigan, on March26, 1863, she was the daughter of a farmer,Joshua Van Hoosen, and a teacher, SarahAnn Taylor. She attended school in Pontiac,Michigan, and then, despite her parents’misgivings and after teaching and nursingto earn the tuition, enrolled at the Univer-sity of Michigan Medical School, fromwhich she graduated in 1888. During herstudies there she encountered much genderdiscrimination and fought for better clinicalexperience, as she wanted to become a sur-geon. She gained more clinical experienceafter she went to the New England Hospitalfor Women and Children in Boston, and alsohad experience as an intern at the Women’sHospital of Detroit.

She opened her own practice in Chicagoin 1892. In the early years, she found it verydifficult to attract patients, but as her repu-tation grew, so did her practice. Her contin-ued learning and teaching at various uni-versities around Chicago culminated in herappointment in 1918 at Loyola UniversityMedical School as a professor and head ofobstetrics.

Believing that women had a right to bearchildren painlessly, she was a strong propo-nent of twilight sleep (the use of scopo-lamine-morphine) during childbirth, a con-troversial subject. Van Hoosen closelymonitored patients using the drug and hada very good success rate in deliveringhealthy babies. She published a book on theuse of scopolamine-morphine in 1915.

Responding to a growing need for a sup-port system for women in the field, shefounded the American Medical Women’sAssociation in 1915. She was an excellentsurgeon, looked up to by her students.Other women in the field best know her forher leadership qualities. She died in Romeo,Michigan, on June 7, 1952.

See also: American Women’s HospitalsReferences: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); McGovern, Constance M., “VanHoosen, Bertha,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 22, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999).

Vejjabul, Pierra Hoon1909–

Pierra Vejjabul, a physician, worked to bet-ter the social standing of women in Thai-land. Confronting many obstacles, shefought for the rights of all in her country,particularly children and the poor, to ade-quate living conditions and medical care.

Born in Lampang on November 27, 1909,Vejjabul was the daughter of Thongkich

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Hoontrakul and Phon He, a third wife. Vej-jabul witnessed some of the rivalry amongher father’s wives and was very much insupport of monogamy at an early age.

A French doctor who helped her motherinfluenced her to go into medicine; she wasalso deeply affected by an unwed motherwho committed suicide, dying in her arms.She decided to work on raising the status ofwomen as well as advocating better rela-tionships between children and mothers.

Her father was against her planned ca-reer, so she ran away to Saigon when shewas only sixteen. Her father brought herback home. Later she ran away to Paris andwent to the Sorbonne School of Medicine.She had to work and sell many of her per-sonal belongings to make ends meet, butshe managed to graduate in 1936 with amedical degree from the Sorbonne School ofMedicine.

She went back to Thailand and worked forthe government, combating venereal dis-ease. She was strongly against prostitutionand helped with blood tests for people fromall walks of life to determine whether theyhad syphilis. She established some organiza-tions to fight prostitution and worked to en-act the law in 1960 that abolished it.

She also worked to aid the blind and as-sist poor mothers and children, taking nu-merous children into her own home untilthere was a place for them with a family.Premier Luang Pibul Songram dubbed herVejjabul, or “complete doctor.” She receivedmuch recognition and many awards for herwork on educating the public about properhealth care, including the Order of theWhite Elephant for meritorious service.

In evaluating the pioneering humani-tarian contributions that Dr. Pierra Vej-jabul has made to the improvement ofmedical, sanitary, and moral standardsin her country, journalists of the Amer-ican press have called her the Jane Ad-dams of Thailand and the Dr. AlbertSchweitzer of Asia. A conventionallyreared daughter of a well-to-do family,she defied tradition by becoming adoctor. Then as Dr. Pierra, the name bywhich her patients generally know her,

she boldly opposed unhygienic prac-tices in child care, the custom ofpolygamy, legal prostitution, and someother customs of her people, in her de-termination to dignify women and toraise living conditions—especiallyamong the underprivileged. (“Vej-jabul” 1964, 455)

Currently Vejjabul lives in Thailand.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); “Vejjabul (Kunying) Pierra,” CurrentBiography Yearbook 1964, New York: Wilson(1964).

Villa, Amelia Chopitea1899?–1942

Amelia Villa was the first female physicianin Bolivia. She graduated from the Univer-sity of San Francisco Xavier in Sucre in 1926.She did some graduate work in Paris andalso founded the Pabellon de Niños at theOruro Hospital. The Bolivian governmentrecognized her service.


Villa-Komaroff, Lydia1947–

Lydia Villa-Komaroff was involved in thediscovery that insulin could be producedfrom bacteria and has done extensive re-search to add to the knowledge of recombi-nant DNA. She is the third Mexican Ameri-can who has earned a Ph.D. in a sciencefield.

Born in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on Au-gust 7, 1947, she is the daughter of violinistand teacher John Vias Villa and DrucillaJaramillo Villa, a social worker. She grew upwith five siblings in a family where educa-tion was highly valued. She developed anearly interest in science and pursued a col-lege education.

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She began her education at the Universityof Washington and then transferred toGoucher College along with her future hus-band, Anthony Komaroff. They married af-ter Lydia graduated with a degree in biol-ogy in 1970. She went to work at theNational Institutes of Health and became in-terested in molecular biology, pursuing fur-ther study at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, where she obtained her Ph.D.in 1975.

Her work on recombinant DNA was use-ful in providing a technique to study geneswithin bacteria. This led to her work oncloning the insulin gene in rats, which even-tually led to success in producing insulin forpeople from bacteria. Villa-Komaroff is cur-rently vice-president for research at North-western University.


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Wald, Florence Schorske1917–

Florence Wald brought the hospice move-ment to the United States in 1974. She wasinspired by her visit to St. Christopher’sHospice, which Cicely Saunders founded inGreat Britain.

Wald was born in New York City on April19, 1917, to Theodore Alexander Schorskeand Gertrude Goldschmidt Schorske. Sheattended Mount Holyoke College and grad-uated in 1938. Wald received her master’s innursing from Yale University in 1941. Sheworked for the New York Visiting NursesAssociation early in her career and alsogained experience at Babies Hospital inNew York City and Children’s Hospital inBoston.

She spent six years in research at the Sur-gical Metabolism Unit of the New York Col-lege of Physicians and later taught psychi-atric nursing at Rutgers State University.Following this work, she took a position atthe Yale University School of Nursing as anassistant professor of psychiatric nursing.This is where she has spent most of her ca-reer and where she still works today. Shewas the dean of the School of Nursing fornine years.

In 1963, Cicely Saunders spoke at Yale,greatly impressing Wald. She felt Saunderswas speaking to many of the issues she andher colleagues were confronting. She madea decision soon after to become involved inthe hospice movement.

Wald was instrumental in the establish-ment of the first hospice in the United

States, in Branford, Connecticut, and led themovement for better understanding of theissues facing those who were dying. Shefeels hospice is not for everyone, as somepeople want to fight to the end. Others whowould have benefited have not always hadthe opportunity. “As more and more peo-ple—families of hospice patients and hos-pice volunteers—are exposed to this newmodel of how to approach end-of-life care,we are taking what was essentially a hiddenscene, death, an unknown, and making it areality. We are showing people that there aremeaningful ways to cope with this very dif-ficult situation” (Friedrich 1999, 1685).

Wald differs from Saunders on the ques-tion of physician-assisted suicide, feelingthat there are times when this option shouldbe available to patients; Saunders feels thisapproach is never justified. Wald has advo-cated and been supportive of better educa-tion for nurses and others involved with thecare of the terminally ill. Her initial push forhospices in the United States has grownfrom the first hospice in Connecticut to over2,500 nationwide. Wald lives in Westport,Connecticut, and is currently involved inhospice care in prisons. She married in 1959and has two children.

See also: Saunders, Cicely Mary StrodeReferences: American Nurses Association,“The Hall of Fame Inductees, Florence S.Wald” (1996), http://www.nursingworld.org/hof/waldfs.htm; Friedrich, M. J., “Hos-pice Care in the United States: A Conversa-tion with Florence S. Wald,” JAMA 281, no.18 (12 May 1999): 1683–1685; Who’s Who of

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American Women, 3d ed., Chicago: MarquisWho’s Who (1963).

Wald, Lillian D.1867–1940

Nurse, feminist, and health care reformerLillian Wald advocated child-labor laws,brought to public consciousness the healthcare needs of the poor, and founded the fa-mous Henry Street Settlement in New YorkCity, one of the first settlement houses of itskind in a period of rapid industrialization inthe United States. She founded the currentconcept of public health nursing.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 10,1867, she was the daughter of Max D. Waldand Minnie Schwarz Wald, both Germanimmigrants. She grew up in an affluent Ger-man Jewish neighborhood in New YorkCity. She became interested in nursing andgraduated from the New York HospitalSchool of Nursing in 1889. She later at-tended the Women’s Medical College of theNew York Infirmary, founded by Elizabethand Emily Blackwell, but did not become aphysician. Instead she was asked by theBlackwells to begin training immigrants inNew York in home nursing care.

She was appalled by the poverty in thestreets of New York City and determined todo something about it. She and Mary Brew-ster started work with a little funding andfound they were very welcome and needed.

Gradually there came to our knowl-edge difficulties and conflicts not pecu-liar to any one set of people, but inten-sified in the case of our neighbors bypoverty, unfamiliarity with laws andcustoms, the lack of privacy, and thefrequent dependence of the eldersupon the children. Workers in philan-thropy, clergymen, orthodox rabbis, theunemployed, anxious parents, girls indistress, troublesome boys, came as in-dividuals to see us, but no formal orga-nization of our work was effected tillwe moved into the house on HenryStreet, in 1895. (Wald 1915, 24)

Over the years, Wald trained nurses at theHenry Street Settlement, cared for the sickand poor, listened to the illiterate, andworked to raise money as well as the con-sciousness of a nation. Her leadership led tothe creation of the Visiting Nurses Services.Nurses in this organization cared for pa-tients in their homes, saving the hospitalbeds for the critically ill. She also helped es-tablish a school-nurses program to improveattendance at public schools. Children whoattended school could be seen by a well-qualified nurse.

One of her biggest assets was her abilityto raise funds from the affluent and frompoliticians. She wrote, gave lectures, andmade the public better aware of the livingand working conditions of the poor. Herwork led to better child-labor laws and reg-ulations on working conditions. Wald diedin Westport, Connecticut, on September 1,1940.

References: Daniels, Doris Groshen, Alwaysa Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D. Wald, NewYork: Feminist Press at the City University

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of New York (1989); Daniels, Doris Groshen,“Wald, Lillian D.,” American National Biogra-phy, vol. 22, New York: Oxford UniversityPress (1999); Duffus, Robert Luther, LillianWald, Neighbor and Crusader, New York:Macmillan (1938); Wald, Lillian D., TheHouse on Henry Street, New York: HenryHolt (1915).

Walker, Mary Broadfoot1888–1974

Mary Walker was a Scottish pioneer in treat-ing neurological disorders, particularlymyasthenia gravis. She introduced physo-stigmine in treating this neuromuscular dis-order in 1934. Only recently has this contri-bution been fully recognized.

Relatively unknown most of her life,Walker was born in Wigtown, Scotland, in1888 and received her medical degree fromthe University of Edinburgh in 1913. Sheserved the Royal Army Medical Corps inMalta and Salonika during World War I. Shethen worked at St. Alfege’s Hospital inGreenwich for sixteen years. Later sheserved at several other hospitals, includingSt. Leonard’s in Shoreditch, St. Francis’s inDulwich, and St. Benedict’s in Tooting.

Her publication in 1934 of her discoveryof the therapeutic effects of physostigmineon myasthenia gravis patients was a mile-stone in treatment of the disease. Her dis-covery generated some interest at the time,and medical practitioners asked to demon-strate her method a few times. However, forthe most part, the medical communitylargely ignored her discovery during herlifetime. The Royal College of Physicians inLondon awarded her the Jean Hunter Prizein 1963 but did not elect her a fellow of theorganization. Years after her death, manyfelt her shy personality and lack of a mentoror a laboratory for working on larger proj-ects kept her amazing accomplishment inthe dark. She died on September 13, 1974.

References: Kass-Simon, Gabriele, and Pa-tricia Farnes, Women of Science: Righting theRecord, Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress (1990); Keesey, John C., “Contempo-

rary Opinions about Mary Walker: A ShyPioneer of Therapeutic Neurology,” Neurol-ogy 51, no. 5 (November 1998): 1433–1439;“Mary Broadfoot Walker,” Lancet 2, no. 7893(7 December 1974): 1401–1402; Schmidt, Ja-cob Edward, Medical Discoveries: Who andWhen, Springfield, IL: Thomas (1959).

Walker, Mary Edwards1832–1919

Mary Walker was an early physician in theUnited States who fought many of society’sstandards for women, most notably the waythey dressed, and proved a valuable physi-cian and surgeon during the U.S. Civil War.

She was born in Oswego, New York, onNovember 26, 1832. Her father, AlvahWalker, was a farmer and physician. Hermother was Vesta Whitcomb Walker. Shehad four sisters and one brother who sur-vived to adulthood. Her father was verysupportive of some of the reform move-ments of the day, such as dress reform andwomen’s rights.

Her early education covered the basics.Like her sisters, she attended Falley Semi-nary in Fulton and taught for a brief time.She decided to become a physician like herfather and attended Syracuse Medical Col-lege, graduating in 1862. She married AlbertE. Miller, also a physician, but the marriageended in divorce. She practiced medicine inColumbus, Ohio, and Rome, New York.

During this period she was an avid cru-sader for dress reform. Reflecting her fa-ther’s views, she disliked the restrictiveclothing for women and objected to dressesaltogether as bad for one’s health and notconducive to proper hygiene. She chose towear bloomers, pantaloons, or trousers,finding them more practical.

During the Civil War she volunteeredwhen she was refused a commission. Sheworked in Washington, D.C., hospitals butwanted to go to the field and traveled exten-sively to see and tend to casualties. Eventu-ally she became an assistant surgeon in theUnion army, working near the front in manybattles before being taken prisoner in Rich-mond, Virginia. She spent four months there

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as a captive of the Confederate army untilshe was released in a prisoner exchange.

When the war ended she was the firstwoman to receive a Congressional Medal ofHonor for her heroism. She then traveledabroad and lectured on various subjects.When she returned home, she lectured andwrote about dress reform, marriage, thewar, women’s rights, health, and hygiene.

Walker was a colorful character withmany interests who voiced her opinionwhether asked or not. She aided in theprogress of women in general and used herskills as a physician to save many a soldierduring the Civil War.

Her Medal of Honor was rescinded in1917 when Congress tried to change the re-quirements of the medal to make it moreprestigious. Walker refused to return hers,wearing it daily until she died. PresidentCarter reinstated her medal posthumouslyin 1977. Walker died in Oswego on February21, 1919, just a little over a year beforewomen gained the right to vote in theUnited States.

References: Chaff, S. L., “Walker, Mary Ed-wards,” Dictionary of American Medical Biog-raphy, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press(1984); Snyder, Charles McCool, Dr. MaryWalker: The Little Lady in Pants, New York:Vantage Press (1962); Spiegel, Allen D., andPeter B. Suskind, “Mary Edwards Walker,M.D.: A Feminist Physician a Century aheadof Her Time,” Journal of Community Health21, no. 3 (June 1996): 211–235; Woodward,Helen Beal, The Bold Women, New York: Far-rar, Straus and Young (1953).

Wars and Epidemics

Through the ages, the most optimal time forwomen to exercise their right to practicemedicine seemed to be when countrieswaged war or were faced with overwhelm-ing epidemics. When deaths were imminentand quickly occurring, even the most ardentantifemale medical professionals acceptedwhatever help was available. FlorenceNightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,and Clara Barton are just a few women who

were accepted as healers in times of greatneed. They then were able to use their expe-rience to further their careers.

For centuries, women were seen as not ca-pable of fruitful work.

Roman men, as we have seen, wereperceived as ambitious, energetic, re-sourceful, aggressive, and successful.In claiming their brides they demon-strate their manhood and give evi-dence of their ability to maintain a se-cure and prosperous household in thefuture. Women, on the other hand,were represented as weak, passivebearers of children whose active alle-giance is evoked principally throughtheir children, by appeal to the pas-sions (cupiditas and amor), and by theirown awareness of their helpless de-pendence on men. (Miles 1995, 215)

Women have been instrumental in copingwith epidemics. In the seventeenth, eigh-teenth, and nineteenth centuries in theUnited States alone, there have been numer-ous regional outbreaks of influenza, ty-phoid fever, cholera, yellow fever, andmeasles. The yellow fever epidemic in 1852affected the entire nation, with the mostconcentrated fatalities in the New Orleansarea. In 1775 the influenza epidemic reachedworldwide proportions and requiredwomen to travel long distances to care forthe sick outside their own communities.

Women’s vital work in times of crisis didnot necessarily lead to a wholehearted beliefin their competence as health care workers.Even as late as the twentieth century, manymedical schools preferred male candidates.In Great Britain “the most comprehensibleexplanation of the medical schools’ reactionagainst women students is in terms of sim-ple ‘backlash,’ the reassertion of patriarchalprerogatives after the war, in the first in-stance, and in the context of competition foremployment during the later 1920s” (Dy-house 1998, 122).

Women’s contributions in the medicalfield were only a small part of their war ef-forts. They also took the men’s jobs whilethey served in the military. Yet whether in

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the field tending to soldiers’ wounds or athome doing the men’s work, women stillhad very little power. They continued to beless valued both by society and under thelaw: “Employers in all nations paid womenat standards well below wages for men withequivalent skills, denying them fringe bene-fits whenever possible” (Kolko 1994, 96).

In the medical field, women who hadserved on the battlefield often lost their statusduring peacetime. “During the First WorldWar there really was nothing a woman doc-tor could not do in the war zone. They treatedvirtually every kind of wound and disease,they underwent the same hardships, priva-tions and dangers as men, became prisonersof war, took part in devastating retreats, andworked under shells and bombs. None of thisvaluable experience advanced their careerprospects. And it took the outbreak of an-other world war to gain medical womencommissioned rank in the British army”(Leneman 1994, 177). In 1943 the U.S. Con-gress finally authorized the commissioningof women physicians as officers in the mili-

tary. During the Vietnam War and the GulfWar, women served in increasing numbers.

By World War II, professional bodies inBritain were more accepting of womenphysicians. The Report of the Interdepartmen-tal Committee on Medical Schools, publishedin 1944, attests, “We believe that prudenceand good sense dictate that the promise ofdeveloping into a good doctor shall be theoverriding factor in the selection of studentsand that unsuitability for a medical careershall be the sole barrier to admission to amedical school” (Goodenough 1944, 97).

In the United States, women have contin-ued to enter the medical profession in boththe private and government sectors. From1970 to 2000, the number of women physi-cians tripled in proportion to men (Ameri-can Medical Association 2002, 316–317).Nursing continues to be a field dominatedby women (Scanlon 2001, 21). Despiteprogress, however, some feel that womenphysicians will never gain equality withtheir male colleagues, particularly in theUnited States:

Women have served for centuries in wars and epidemics (Corbis)

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There is a “glass ceiling” on womenphysicians’ upward mobility. They arekept from top-level positions, I will ar-gue, through the subtle process of akind of colleague boycott—not keep-ing them out entirely, but not includ-ing them in ways that allow them toreplace the senior members of themedical community. This process isthe “Salieri phenomenon”—a combi-nation of faint praise and subtle deni-gration of their abilities to lead thatdelegitimates women physicians’ bidsto compete for positions of great au-thority. The reason men are so reluc-tant to allow women into the inner cir-cles, I contend, is their fear that if toomany women become leaders, the pro-fession will “tip” and becomewomen’s work—and men will loseprestige, income and authority. (Lorber1993, 63)

The fact that the male-dominated Ameri-can Medical Association elected NancyDickey as its president in 1997 suggests thatmore women can achieve leadership roleswith administrative power.

See also: Barriers to Success; Women ofColor in MedicineReferences: American Medical Association,“Physician Characteristics and Distributionin the United States, Chicago: Survey andData Resources, American Medical Associa-tion (2002); Dyhouse, Carol, “Women Stu-dents and the London Medical Schools,1914–39: The Anatomy of a Masculine Cul-ture,” Gender and History 10, no. 1 (1998):110–132; Goodenough, William MacNa-mara, Report of the Inter-Departmental Com-mittee on Medical Schools, London: HisMajesty’s Stationery Office (1944); Johnson,Samuel, Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. GeorgeBirkbeck Hill, Oxford: Clarendon Press(1892); Kolko, Gabriel, Century of War: Poli-tics, Conflicts, and Society since 1914, NewYork: New Press (1994); Leneman, Leah,“Medical Women at War, 1914–1918,” Med-ical History 38, no. 2 (1994): 160–177; Livy,The History of Rome, vol. 1, London: GeorgeBell (1906); Lorber, Judith, “Why Women

Physicians Will Never Be True Equals in theAmerican Medical Profession,” in Gender,Work, and Medicine: Women and the MedicalDivision of Labor, edited by Elianna Riskaand Katarina Wegar, London: Sage (1993);“Memories of War: How Vietnam-EraNurses Are Coping Today,” USA Today 121,no. 2574 (March 1993): 30–31; Miles, Gary B.,Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome, Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press (1995); Murray,Flora, Women as Army Surgeons, London:Hodder and Stoughton (1920); Scanlon,William S., “Nursing Workforce: Recruit-ment and Retention of Nurses and NurseAides Is a Growing Concern,” Washington,DC: General Accounting Office (2001); Tan-nenbaum, R. J., “Earnestness, Temperance,Industry, the Definition and Uses of Profes-sional Character among Nineteenth-Cen-tury American Physicians,” Journal of theHistory of Medicine and Allied Sciences 49, no.2 (April 1994): 251–283.

Wauneka, Annie Dodge1910–1997

Annie Wauneka was a Navajo health careeducator who taught her tribal membersthat proper hygiene and Western medicinewere essential to ridding the community oftuberculosis. President John F. Kennedyawarded her the Presidential Medal of Free-dom shortly before his assassination in1963.

Born in the Navajo Nation near Sawmill,Arizona, on April 10, 1910, she was thedaughter of Chief Henry Chee Dodge andhis third wife, K’eehabah. She grew up withher father and tended the family flock. Herfather was educated and had saved hismoney to provide well for his family. Theylived in a Western-style home rather thanthe traditional hogan.

She received some education at a govern-ment boarding school in Fort Defiance,where she saw much sickness and disease.She helped care for some of her friends whowere sick but saw many die. She later im-proved her spoken English at the Albu-querque Indian School.

When she was home she visited tribal

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members with her father, a strong advocateof education and of helping the Navajo peo-ple, and began to realize the poverty of hertribe. She pursued further education withthe U.S. Public Health Service.

In dealing with ailments in her tribe, shefaced shortages of medical supplies, sub-standard living conditions, and age-oldcustoms.

Navajos classify diseases by causerather than by symptom, maintainingthat all trouble and illness are a resultof a state of disharmony with the sur-rounding world, other people, and thesupernatural environment. When allthings in the universe are in tune, peo-ple have good health. But countlessevents can upset this harmony tocause sickness: a person can have abad dream, break a taboo, or comeinto contact with such contaminatingforces as spirits of the dead, non-Navajos, or Navajo witches. A wholerange of animals, including snakes,bears, coyotes, and porcupines, canbring illness. Touching a tree struck bylightning or gathering and cookingwith the wood from such a tree wasthought to be a cause of tuberculosis.(Niethammar 2001, 87)

She married George Wauneka in 1929,and they reared six children. She was highlyrecognized for her good works during herlifetime.

“A humanitarian and advocate for betterhealth, Dr. Annie, as she was known aftershe received an honorary doctorate degreefrom the Navajo Community College, hasbeen credited with saving thousands oflives of tribal members when she almostsingle-handedly convinced Navajos to go todoctors to get treatment for tuberculosis”(Donovan 1997, A1). She died on November10, 1997, from Alzheimer’s disease.

References: Donovan, Bill, “Life Devoted toHealth Care,” Navajo Times 36, no. 44 (13November 1997): A1; Niethammar, CarolynJ., I’ll Go and Do More: Annie Dodge Wauneka,Navajo Leader and Activist, Lincoln: Univer-

sity of Nebraska Press (2001); Suarez, Dar-lene Mary, “Annie Dodge Wauneka,” inFrank Magill, ed., Great Lives from History:American Women Series, vol. 5, Pasadena,CA: Salem Press (1995).

Weizmann, Vera1879–1966

Vera Weizmann was a physician and well-known as the first lady of Israel; her hus-band, Chaim Weizmann, became the coun-try’s first president in 1949. She worked toimprove public health in Israel. Born insouthern Russia in Rostov-on-Don as VeraChatzman, she traveled to Geneva for a med-ical education. “The small group of youngwomen to which Vira Chatzman belongeddiffered in a marked way from the generalrun of Jewish girl-students in the Swiss uni-versities of that time. Their looks, their de-portment, their outlook on life, set themapart. They were far more attractive thantheir contemporaries from the Pale of Settle-ment; they were less absorbed in Russianrevolutionary politics; not that they were in-different; but they paid more attention totheir studies, and less to the public meetingsand endless discussions which took up somuch of the time of the average Russian stu-dent abroad” (Weizmann 1949, 95).

Like her husband, she was very active inZionist causes and organizations. She alsowas instrumental in establishing health careand disease prevention programs in hercountry. Following her husband’s death in1952, she carried on the work he had startedwith the Weizmann Institute of Science inRehovot, Israel.

She had two sons, Benjamin and Michael.Michael was killed in World War II. Shedied in September 1966.

References: Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Weizmann, Chaim, Trial and Error: TheAutobiography of Chaim Weizmann, New York:Harper (1949); “Weizmann, Vera” [obit], NewYork Times (25 September 1966): 85.

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Western Reserve College1826–

Founded in 1826 in Tallmadge, Ohio, thiscollege was an early pioneer in educatingwomen and African Americans, as well aswhite males, partly because Ohio was a ma-jor center of abolitionism. The school movedto Hudson, Ohio, a year after its founding.

Carroll Cutler, president of the collegefrom 1870 to 1886, held the unconventionalbelief that women should have the sameright as men to attend institutions of highereducation, encouraging many women to en-roll in the college in the late nineteenth cen-tury. Cutler had to continually defend hisstance on women’s rights to the faculty, andafter he resigned in 1886, admittance ofwomen ended for a brief time.

The name of the college changed to West-ern Reserve University in 1882. Both EmilyBlackwell and Marie Zakrzewska obtainedtheir medical degrees at Western ReserveUniversity. In 1967, Western Reserve Uni-versity merged with the neighboring CaseSchool of Applied Science and became thecurrent Case Western Reserve University.

References: Summerfield, Carol, and MaryElizabeth Devine, eds., International Dictio-nary of University Histories, Chicago: FitzroyDearborn (1998).

Wetterhahn, Karen Elizabeth1948–1997

Karen Wetterhahn was an established can-cer researcher who also urged youngwomen to enter the science field. She diedprematurely from mercury poisoning,which brought international attention to theissue of laboratory safety.

Born in Plattsburgh, New York, on Octo-ber 16, 1948, Wetterhahn was the daughterof Gustave George Wetterhahn and MaryElizabeth Thibault Wetterhahn. She re-ceived an early education at St. Mary’s HighSchool in Champlain, New York, and thenwent on to study chemistry and mathemat-ics at St. Lawrence University, graduating in1970 at the top of her class.

She was a research fellow at ColumbiaUniversity and earned a Ph.D. in 1975 inchemistry and both inorganic and physicalbiochemistry. She was a postdoctoral fellowat the National Institutes of Health for ayear and then returned to Columbia to workat the Institute of Cancer Research. Soonthereafter she became the first female pro-fessor in chemistry at Dartmouth College.

She was a tireless researcher and writer,publishing more than eighty papers on can-cer-causing chemicals and metals as well ashow they interact with DNA. She alsohelped recruit female science students atDartmouth in a program called the Womenin Science Project (WISP), which served as amodel for recruiting programs at severalother colleges and universities.

After her tragic death from mercury poi-soning on June 8, 1997, investigators discov-ered that the standard lab gloves she waswearing do not offer protection from di-methyl mercury. Her husband, Leon H.Webb, and a son and daughter survived her.


Whately, Mary Louisa1824–1889

Mary Whately established a medical mis-sion in Egypt after treating many people onher own. She was one of the first missionar-ies in Egypt.

Born August 31, 1824, at Halesworth inSuffolk, she was the daughter of RichardWhately, archbishop of Dublin, and Eliza-beth Pope. She spent much of her early lifein Dublin with frequent trips to England.She was deeply religious and early on be-came interested in the Irish Church’s mis-sion work abroad. She felt called to serve inEgypt, in the midst of the Islamic world.

In Cairo, she provided health care andworked to teach Muslims the Bible and con-vert them to Christianity. As a missionary inthe field, she had to depend largely on herown resources. “No resident doctor was atthis time near the scene of her work; and sheherself administered constantly such reme-

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dies as she understood the use of, to the sickpoor around her. Many a really serious caseof eye disorder has been cured by her; manya wounded or otherwise injured hand orfoot healed by her skilful hand” (Whately1890, 61).

In 1879, Whately established a medicalmission that served the needs of a poorcommunity. To help with the patient load,she obtained the services of a Syrian med-ical missionary who had been trained at theAmerican Medical College in Beirut. Shedied on March 9, 1889.

References: Cale, Patricia S., “A British Mis-sionary in Egypt: Mary Louisa Whately,” Vi-tae Scholasticae 3, no. 1 (1984): 131–143;Whately, Elizabeth Jane, The Life and Work ofMary Louisa Whately, London: ReligiousTract Society (1890).

Widerstrom, Karolina1856–1949

Karolina Widerstrom was the first womandoctor in Sweden. She paved the way forothers by becoming a successful practicinggynecologist, social reformer, and writer.

Born in Sweden in 1856, Widerstrom be-came a physician in 1888. She was a teacheron sex and hygiene and wrote a book, Hy-giene for Women, that was widely used fordecades. Well ahead of her time, in 1897 sheimplemented sex education for girls’schools in Stockholm. She lectured on theneeds of infants, the importance of trainingparents in childcare, and the detrimental ef-fects of early parenthood.

Widerstrom was also concerned about theharm to society of the accepted professionof prostitution. Her success and good repu-tation were inspirational to future womenphysicians in Sweden. She died in 1949.

References: Andreen, Andrea, “WomenDoctors in Sweden,” Journal of the AmericanMedical Women’s Association 2, no. 2 (February1947): 44; Lovejoy, Esther Pohl, WomenDoctors of the World, New York: Macmillan(1957); Trost, Jan E., and Mai-Briht Bergstrom-Walan, “Sweden (Konungariket Sverige),”

http://www.rki.de/GESUND/ ARCHIV/IES/SWEDEN.HTM.

Williams, Anna Wessels1863–1954

Anna Williams was a bacteriologist andpathologist who partnered with WilliamHallock Park to identify the bacillusCorynebacterium diphtheriae. This work led tothe development of an antitoxin serum forthe treatment of and immunization againstdiphtheria, which had caused the deaths ofmany children. Williams’s research led to agreatly diminished occurrence of diphtheriaaround the world, and her findings are stilluseful to physicians today. Also importantwas her work in perfecting the diagnosis ofrabies.

Born March 17, 1863, in Hackensack,New Jersey, she was the second of six chil-dren of William and Jane Williams. She re-ceived her early education at home fromher parents before becoming a teacher atthe New Jersey State Normal School inTrenton, New Jersey, in 1883. She taught fora few years and then decided to become aphysician after her sister almost died fromthe delivery of a stillborn child. Her parentsconsented, and she entered the Women’sMedical College, which had become abranch of the New York Infirmary forWomen and Children.

After obtaining her medical degree, shestayed at the college in various teaching po-sitions before furthering her education inEurope at several universities and hospitals.Her research on diphtheria began during anepidemic of the disease when she worked ata new diagnostic lab for the Health Depart-ment of the City of New York. She and Parkworked with a mild tonsillar diphtheria toisolate a pure culture and develop an anti-toxin to the disease.

Williams was also very good at writingfor both the scientist and the layperson. Sheand Park coauthored the second, 1905, edi-tion of the eleven-edition Pathogenic Mi-croorganisms Including Bacteria and Protozoa:A Practical Manual for Students, Physiciansand Health Officers. In 1929, she also collabo-

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rated with Park on Who’s Who among the Mi-crobes, a book for the nonprofessional.

Later, Williams worked on treatments forstrep infections and pneumonia. She did re-search on scarlet fever and was the first per-son to fully understand that rabies beganwith a change in brain cells. This discoveryled to diagnosis in the early stages of thedisease. Williams was nationally recognizedfor her work. In 1907 she was appointedchair of the American Public Health Associ-ation’s Committee on the Standard Methodsfor the Diagnosis of Rabies. Williams diedon November 20, 1954.

References: Bailey, Martha J., AmericanWomen in Science: A Biographical Dictionary,Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO (1994); Schafer,Elizabeth D., “Williams, Anna Wessels,” inJohn A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds.,American National Biography, vol. 23, NewYork: Oxford University Press (1999);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Bio-graphical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1996).

Williams, Cicely Delphin1893–1992

Cicely Williams was a British physician. Shewas the first to describe kwashiorkor, a dis-ease of young children that can result indeath.

Born on December 2, 1893, in Kew Park,Jamaica, she was the daughter of JamesRowland Williams and Margaret E. C.Williams. Her father was the director of ed-ucation in Jamaica. She received her earlyeducation at Bath High School for Girls,later attended Somerville College at Oxford,and then obtained her medical degree atKings College.

She worked for the Colonial Medical Ser-vice from 1929 to 1948, serving on theAfrican Gold Coast. It was here that shewitnessed a large number of children suffer-ing from kwashiorkor, a disease caused by adiet high in carbohydrates and low in pro-tein. Older babies often suffered from thisdisease when the mother’s breast milk was

not sufficient for both the newborn and theolder child. Babies who lost their mothers orhad mothers with health problems also suf-fered from the disease. These children wereoften passed around to female relatives whocould take turns breast-feeding, but usuallythis practice did not provide enough milk tokeep the child healthy.

The symptoms of kwashiorkor were slowto develop. “The baby might have been per-fectly normal at birth, after four to twelvemonths of such a defective diet it would be-come highly irritable, lose weight, and haveattacks of diarrhea. Its hands and feetwould swell, and over a period of monthsits hair would gradually become pale andscanty, and its skin would turn a dull red-dish color. If untreated at this stage, itwould almost surely die of a progressivedisease characterized by a terrible rash, anextensive sloughing of the skin, and an en-larged fatty liver” (Downs 1952, 443).

Williams wasn’t able to perform any au-topsies until she was in Accra in 1930. Whenchildren were about to die, the motherswould take them back to their tribalgrounds. Some workers told Williams thispractice was a matter of custom, but she lis-tened to the mothers and discovered thereal reason:

Apparently the bus companiescharged more to transport a corpseand nothing for the live baby slung onits mother’s back in a shawl. So Cicelyoffered to pay the extra fare if themother would allow her to “do a smalloperation before the baby goes home.”It was so simple, but no other Euro-pean had thought of eavesdropping onthe natives before. The nearest labora-tory was two miles away and the bodyhad to be taken immediately. . . . It wasextremely difficult to define the certaincause of death because there would beso many contributory factors—in-evitably worms, probably yaws, cer-tainly evidence of improper diet—andfrequently the child had died of pneu-monia anyway. If the autopsy showeda lot of fat in the liver and oedema ofthe neck if not the whole of the gall-

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bladder, she suspected a nutritionaldeficiency. (Craddock 1983, 63–64)

Williams began to treat the children withcondensed milk, and their condition im-proved. She worked to educate many onrecognition and prevention of the diseaseand on its treatment.

She taught at the American University inBeirut from 1959 to 1964 and in 1971 was aprofessor at Tulane University in the Schoolof Public Health. She visited and lectured inmany different countries on childhood dis-eases and health care for children and moth-ers. Williams died July 13, 1992.

References: Craddock, Sally, Retired Excepton Demand: The Life of Dr Cicely Williams, Ox-ford: Green College (1983); Dally, Ann G.,Cicely: The Story of a Doctor, London: Gol-lancz (1968); Downs, Elinor, “The Story ofKwashiorkor,” Journal of the American Med-ical Women’s Association 7, no. 12 (December1952): 443–446; Who’s Who, New York: St.Martin’s Press (1992).


Women of color faced a double hurdle inproving themselves intelligent and compe-tent enough to pursue medical studies andpractice as nurses and physicians. “If whitewomen, black men, and poor whites, asmany scholars argue, were outsiders inmedicine, then black women, belonging asthey did to two subordinate groups, surelyinhabited the most distant perimeters of theprofessions” (Hine 1985, 107).

For many centuries, women themselveswere well down in the class system, inmany countries being traded as slaves. Theyoften were illiterate. Until progress wasmade against gender discrimination, therewas no hope of many cultures producingwomen educated for medicine.

Racism goes back to ancient times. TheHindu caste system was based on race; earlycave drawings in Egypt represent racial dif-ferences. Many cultures show early signs ofprejudice based on race, mainly because it iseasiest to discriminate on the basis of color.

“From antiquity to approximately 1890, theWestern world demonstrated an evolutionof definite patterns in thoughts and actionstoward those of other races” (Lauren 1996,48). Colonizers have often discriminatedagainst indigenous populations—“the Abo-rigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Aus-tralia, the Maori in New Zealand, the Uygurand the Hui in China, the Ainu in Japan, theDayaks in Malaysia, the Papuans in Indone-sia, the Andamans in India, the Saami in theArctic regions of northern Europe, theBasarwa in Botswana, the Aka Pygmies ofthe Central African Republic, and theJu/Wasi San in Namibia” (Lauren 1996,313).

Race was an issue following both worldwars, particularly after World War II, whennations were faced with the overwhelmingevidence of Hitler’s mass annihilations. Ofinterest during the two world wars was theperspective of some in minority groups thatthe white race might exhaust itself on war,providing other races with an opportunityto propel themselves to higher status. Mo-hammed Duse, editor of African Times andOrient Review, the first African-Asian jour-nal, speculated that the nonwhite races ofthe world might benefit enormously fromWorld War I: “We can only watch and pray.Unarmed, undisciplined, disunited, we can-not strike a blow, we can only await theevent. But whatever that may be, all thecombatants, the conquerors and the con-quered alike, will be exhausted by the strug-gle, and will require years for their recovery,and during that time much may be done.Watch and wait! It may be that the non-European races will profit by European dis-aster” (Duse 1914, 450).

Racism continues to be a worldwideproblem.

The first global attempt to speak forequality focused upon race. The firsthuman rights provisions in the UnitedNations Charter were placed there be-cause of race. The first internationalchallenge to a country’s claim of do-mestic jurisdiction and exclusive treat-ment of its own citizens centered uponrace. The first binding treaty of human


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rights concentrated upon race. The in-ternational convention with the great-est number of signatories is that onrace. Within the United Nations, moreresolutions deal with race than withany other subject. And certainly one ofthe most long-standing and frustratingproblems in the United Nations is thatof race. (Lauren 1996, 4)

During World War I, black female nursesmade some headway in Britain. After thewar, they continued to fight for equal accessto the profession. Having been refused bythe Red Cross, all the armed forces, andother voluntary agencies, they finallyachieved some success when in 1945 the U.S.Navy accepted nurses regardless of color.

During the end of World War II, ColonelFlorence A. Blanchfield, the Army NurseCorps superintendent, supported women ofcolor in the ranks because more nurses weredesperately needed. Like black servicemen,they had to work in segregated units in thebeginning. One black soldier commented,

“Whenever we talked about the war andwhat the fighting was all about, someonewould mention Hitler and his racist attitudetoward blacks. We had no doubt aboutHitler’s prejudice because we had all heardthe story about his snub of Jesse Owens dur-ing the 1936 Olympic Games. It neverdawned on us that there was a real irony inthe fact that the United States was trying toeradicate Nazi racism with a militaryformed along racist principles” (Conner1985, 29).

Mary Mahoney opened a new professionfor black women by graduating from theNew England Hospital for Women andChildren School of Nursing in Boston in1879. In the early years of the National As-sociation of Colored Graduate Nurses(NACGN), both Mahoney and MarthaFranklin worked hard to organize blackwomen. A major event was the dissolutionof the NACGN in 1951 when the AmericanNurses Association (ANA) accepted blacksin the organization regardless of the policiesof state units.

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Most of the early black nurses could workin only a few hospitals. By the 1950s notmuch had changed, but the ANA worked tomake the public aware of discrimination.Women of color have often found allies inwhite women who have struggled to gaincredence and status in male-dominated so-cieties and professions, and a combinedforce of both black and white nurses helpedthe cause of advancing black womennurses. In 1953, Marie Mink became an as-sistant professor in obstetric nursing at theUniversity of Oklahoma. She was the firstblack woman to hold that position.

Black women physicians had the sameproblems as black nurses. Many women’smedical schools lacked facilities for womento gain clinical experience, but white womencould at least obtain a nursing position in or-der to observe doctors and surgeons. MostU.S. hospitals were segregated until the mid-to late twentieth century, and black hospitalswere few in number. Hospitals with all-white staffs that allowed black womenphysicians to use their facilities were rare. AsMay Edward Chinn noted, “Even if a hospi-tal was around the ‘bend of the road’ it wasuseless to us who were denied any privi-leges whatsoever of its facilities. We man-aged the best we could” (Warren 1999, 27).

Women of color in medicine still face bar-riers. A noticeable problem is the lack of rolemodels for young girls of color. The contri-butions of blacks and other nonwhitegroups, male or female, in medicine are of-ten missing from history books. There is a“dearth of narratives or biographies of sci-ence-trained Blacks, particularly Blackwomen” (Warren 1999, xiii).

Over the past few decades in the UnitedStates there has been emphasis on increas-ing the enrollments of students from under-represented groups, but the effort has metwith limited success. People of color are stillunderrepresented in the medical profession.

In North America, and specifically theUnited States, enrollment of black studentsin medical schools was only 2.2 percent in1964, with the majority of them attendingall-black schools: Howard University inWashington, D.C., and Meharry MedicalCollege in Nashville, Tennessee (Nickens,

Ready, and Petersdorf 1994, 472). In the1800s, some smaller liberal arts institutionshad made an effort to educate blacks. Theboard of Oberlin College in 1835 “declaredthat ‘the education of the people of color isa matter of great interest and should be en-couraged and sustained in this institution’”(Duffy and Goldberg 1997, 137). Policiessuch as Oberlin College’s remained the ex-ception well into the twentieth century.“Prior to 1960, no selective college or uni-versity was making determined efforts toseek out and admit substantial numbers ofAfrican Americans” (Bowen and Bok 1998,4). Even in the 1960s, civil rights awarenessin education focused on men of color.

Numerous studies show that people ofcolor perform as well as whites on licensingexams if they are given the same educa-tional opportunities as whites. Many agreethat the “pool size eventually can be in-creased by improving the socioeconomicwell being for all African Americans”(Thomas 1999, 71). Thus the issue is socialand political as well as educational.

In the medical profession, ethnic diversityis especially lacking in the specialties:“There is little doubt that women, AfricanAmericans, and Hispanics, have fewer op-portunities to enter, or once in, to becomecontributing members of orthopaedic pro-grams in the United States. The expressedreasons for this by faculty members some-times sound reasonable, but on analysis allare spurious” (Mankin 1999, 85).

Hispanics and Native Americans as wellas descendants of Oriental countries havehad the same problems as blacks in addi-tion to facing barriers specific to their eth-nic groups. The women of these groups arealso seen, many times, as inferior to theirmale counterparts as well as inferior towhite females in the same occupation. Latein the nineteenth century and into thetwentieth, many medical missionariestrained indigenous women to serve asnurses and physicians.

Women and even some men of colorhave taken advantage of the opportunity toserve minority populations. Many work-ing-class neighborhood clinics have longwaiting lines, and most white male physi-

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cians do not choose to work in under-served communities.

Most race research does not include fe-males. Some have realized this oversight;for instance, in Great Britain, “a growingnumber of studies have begun to explorethe interrelationship between racism andsexism, racial inequality and gender in-equality and the position of African-Caribbean, Asian and other migrant womenin British society. This has helped to over-come the gender blind approach of manystudies of racial relations, though there arestill many aspects of the position of blackand ethnic minority women which have re-ceived little attention” (Solomos 1996, 13).

More research focused on women of coloris needed to underscore empirical evidencethat “abilities [are] separate and unrelated togender, color, race, creed, language, religion,or country of origin. A scientist is a scientist,not an African American person who doesscience. A surgeon is a surgeon, not a womanfrom Honduras who speaks the languagewith an accent and also does hand surgery.Judge them only on what they are and are infact, put on earth to do: care for patients,teach, and do research” (Mankin 1999, 86).

See also: Barriers to Success; Blanchfield,Florence Aby; Chinn, May Edward;Franklin, Martha Minerva; Mahoney, MaryEliza; Wars and EpidemicsReferences: Bowen, William G., and DerekBok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Conse-quences of Considering Race in College and Uni-versity Admissions, Princeton, NJ: PrincetonUniversity Press (1998); Conner, Douglas L.,A Black Physician’s Story: Bringing Hope inMississippi, Jackson: University of Missis-sippi Press (1985); Duffy, Elizabeth A., andIdana Goldberg, Crafting a Class: College Ad-missions and Financial Aid, 1955–1994, Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1997);Duse, Mohammed, “War!,” African Times andOrient Review (4 August 1914): 449–450;Hine, Darlene Clark, “Co-Laborers in theWork of the Lord: Nineteenth Century BlackWomen Physicians,” in Ruth J. Abrams, ed.,Send Us a Lady Physician: Women Doctors inAmerica, 1835–1920, New York: Norton(1985); Lauren, Paul Gordon, Power and Prej-

udice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Dis-crimination, Boulder, CO: Westview Press(1996); Mankin, Henry J., “Diversity in Or-thopaedics,” Clinical Orthopaedics and RelatedResearch: Issues of Minorities in Medicine andOrthopaedics 363 (May 1999): 85–87; Nickens,Herbert W., Timothy P. Ready, and Robert G.Petersdorf, “Project 3000 by 2000: Racial andEthnic Diversity in U.S. Medical Schools,”New England Journal of Medicine 331, no. 7(1994): 472–476; Solomos, John, Racism andSociety, New York: St. Martin’s Press (1996);Staupers, Mabel Keaton, No Time for Preju-dice: A Story of the Integration of Negroes inNursing in the United States, New York:Macmillan (1961); Thomas, Claudia L.,“African Americans and Women in Or-thopaedic Residency: The Johns HopkinsExperience,” Clinical Orthopaedics and RelatedResearch: Issues of Minorities in Medicine andOrthopaedics 363 (May 1999): 65–71; Warren,Wini, Black Women Scientists in the UnitedStates, Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress (1999); Watson, Wilbur H., Against theOdds: Blacks in the Profession of Medicine in theUnited States, New Brunswick, NJ: Transac-tion (1999).

Wong-Staal, Flossie1946–

Flossie Wong-Staal codiscovered (withRobert Gallo) the human immunodeficiencyvirus (HIV) and was the first scientist toclone it. Known as one of the leading scien-tists in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Wong-Staal has remained at the forefront ofknowledge on the deadly virus.

Born in Guangzhou, China, on August 27,1946, she is the daughter of Sueh-fung Wangand his wife. She attended Catholic schooland upon graduation decided on furtherstudy in the United States. She went to theUniversity of California in Los Angeles(UCLA) and majored in molecular biology.

Upon graduation in 1968, she remained atUCLA and worked at the graduate level,earning a Ph.D. in 1972. She then went toBethesda, Maryland, and worked for theNational Cancer Institute, researching retro-viruses with Robert Gallo. Her research

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group discovered the human T-cellleukemia virus (HTLV) and later two re-lated retroviruses, one of which was HIV.Wong-Staal was the first scientist to cloneHIV and to genetically map the virus. Thisstep was critical to providing a blood testfor the presence of HIV/AIDS.

In the following years, Wong-Staal wroteextensively to provide the scientific commu-nity with the necessary information formore research on the virus. In 1990 she be-came the director of the Center for AIDS Re-search at the University of California at SanDiego. She believes in examining as manyapproaches as feasible, such as a vaccineand gene therapy. Not only does the virusreproduce very quickly but there are severalstrains, each of which may lend itself to adifferent treatment.

Wong-Staal married Steven Staal in 1971,and they had two daughters. They are nowdivorced, and she and her daughters live inSan Diego, where she is currently codirectorof the AIDS Research Institute at the Uni-versity of California at San Diego.

References: Kelly, Patrick, “Wong-Staal,Flossie,” Current Biography 62, no. 4 (April2001): 87–90.

Wright, Jane Cooke1919–

Jane Wright is a prominent cancerchemotherapy researcher whose work withvarious drugs and their effects on malignanttumors has provided great insight into can-cer treatment. She has directed large hospi-tal staffs as well as served as the dean of amedical college. Born in New York City onNovember 30, 1919, she is the daughter ofDr. Louis Tompkins Wright and CorinneCooke Wright. Her family has a rich med-ical heritage with her father being one of thefirst black graduates of Harvard MedicalSchool and a leader in the field of cancerchemotherapy; a grandfather was one of thefirst blacks to graduate from Meharry Med-ical College. Her father was also a civilrights leader.

After attending private schools in New

York City, Wright entered Smith College inorder to prepare for medical school. Upongraduation from Smith in 1942, she won ascholarship to New York Medical College.She obtained her M.D. and interned atBellevue Hospital. She also worked atHarlem Hospital before getting married in1947 to David D. Jones Jr., a Harvard LawSchool graduate.

She began working in internal medicineand was a school doctor in New York Cityuntil she took a position in 1949 at theHarlem Hospital Cancer Research Founda-tion as a clinician. It was here that she beganstudying the effects of drugs such as trieth-ylene phosphoramide and triethylenemelamine on malignant growths.

She moved on to become the director ofcancer chemotherapy research at New YorkUniversity Medical Center in 1955 and be-came an instructor in research surgery. Sheexpanded her own clinical experience bydoing surgical work at Bellevue and Uni-versity Hospitals in New York City. By the1960s, Wright believed, as did some otherresearchers, that cancer was caused by avirus. Her investigations based on this viewincluded the drugs fluorouracil and step-

Jane Cooke Wright (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

tonigrin. During this time she publishedquite extensively; she has an impressive bib-liography documenting the chemotherapyresearch she was involved with.

She became the associate dean and pro-fessor of surgery at New York Medical Col-lege in 1967. Her duties broadened to heartdisease and stroke as well as cancer. She

has two daughters and lives in New YorkCity.

References: “Wright, Jane C.,” Current Biog-raphy, New York: H. W. Wilson (1968);Shearer, Benjamin F., and Barbara S. Shearer,Notable Women in the Life Sciences, Westport,CT: Greenwood Press (1996).

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Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman1921–

Rosalyn Yalow received the 1977 NobelPrize for “the development of radioim-munoassay (RIA) of peptid hormones,” atechnique that she discovered in 1959 withher partner in research, Solomon Berson(Shearer and Shearer 1996, 409). The tech-nique revolutionized endocrinology, andother fields soon found it indispensable.

She was born July 19, 1921, in New YorkCity to Clara Zipper Sussman and SimonSussman. Neither had much education, butthey encouraged Rosalyn in her studies. Shedid very well in school and went to HunterCollege in New York, which was free at thetime; her family could not afford to pay forcollege.

She decided on a career in physics andgraduated in 1941. She proceeded to theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,earning a master’s in 1942 and a Ph.D. innuclear physics in 1945. She felt that nuclearphysics was extremely exciting at the timeand that it had medical applications.

She met Aaron Yalow, a fellow physicistgraduate student, whom she married onJune 6, 1943. They have two children, Ben-jamin and Elanna. Aaron was supportive ofRosalyn’s career goals.

Yalow taught for a while upon earningher Ph.D. but then decided to work full-time at the Veterans’ Administration Hospi-tal in the Bronx, New York. There, shehelped set up the hospital’s radioisotopeservice and later teamed up with Berson, aphysician, to work on insulin. During the

1950s, they made great progress in using ra-dioactively tagged insulin to determinehow long insulin stayed in the diabetic’ssystem. They deduced, correctly, that dia-betics could build up antibodies to insulin.Before that time scientists didn’t believe in-sulin molecules were large enough to incitean antibody. Their method of using radioac-tive substances then allowed them to test formany kinds of antibodies. Thus RIA wasborn.

“The introduction of radioimmunoas-say . . . is probably the single most impor-

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow (U.S. National Library ofMedicine)

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tant advance in biological measurement ofthe past two decades. Together with relatedtechniques it has revolutionised one majordiscipline—endocrinology—and has ex-erted a similar influence in other fields, no-tably haematology, pharmacology, and can-cer detection” (Chard 1982, 1).

Yalow feels strongly that it is importantfor women to go into science or any otherprofession of their choosing as well as to be-come mothers. “Being a mother was an es-sential part of Rosalyn Yalow’s plan for herlife, and she insists that motherhood shouldfit into the lives of other women with ca-reers in science” (Straus 1998, 186).

Some feel Berson deserved more creditfor the development of RIA. Yalow has fullyacknowledged his contribution during theyears it took them to refine the process.Yalow’s “work and methods advancedmedical science in the areas of diagnosis,treatment, and prevention of disease. Thiswas done by providing breakthroughs inthe understanding of diabetes, in the diag-nosis and treatment of many glandular dis-orders such as dwarfism and cretinism, andthrough providing a method to save count-less people from acquiring liver diseasefrom blood transfusions. She fought forwhat she wanted and for her beliefs”(Straus 1998, 257). Today Yalow is retiredand lives in New York City.

References: Chard, T., An Introduction to Ra-dioimmunoassay and Related Techniques, Am-sterdam: Elsevier Biomedical Press (1982);McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch, Nobel PrizeWomen in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and

Momentous Discoveries, Secaucus, NJ: Carol(1998); Shearer, Benjamin, and Barbara S.Shearer, Notable Women in the Life Sciences: ABiographical Dictionary, Westport, CT: Green-wood Press (1996); Straus, Eugene, RosalynYalow, Nobel Laureate: Her Life and Work inMedicine: A Biographical Memoir, New York:Plenum Trade (1998).

Yoshioka, Yayoi1871–1959

Yaoi Yoshioka was an early Japanese femalephysician who struggled against oppressionand social injustice to obtain a medical edu-cation. She founded the Tokyo Women’sMedical College in 1899, which was finallyrecognized by the Japanese government in1920.

She passed government examinationsand became a gynecologist in 1893. With herhusband, she established the Tokyo Wom-en’s Medical College, where she taught forfifty years. Yoshioka also established hospi-tals in Tokyo. She died of pneumonia inTokyo on May 23, 1959, at the age of eighty-eight.

References: “Dr. Yayoi Yoshioka Dies,” NewYork Times (24 May 1959): 88; Kawai, Yaeko,“Medical Women in Japan,” Journal of theAmerican Medical Women’s Association 6, no.9 (September 1951): 352–353; Lovejoy, Es-ther Pohl, Women Doctors of the World, NewYork: Macmillan (1957); “Yoshioka, Yayoi,”Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 8, Tokyo:Kodansha (1983).

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Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth1829–1902

Marie Zakrzewska was an early proponentof women becoming physicians andfounded the New England Hospital forWomen and Children after working withElizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell atthe New York Infirmary for Women andChildren and as a professor at the New En-gland Female Medical College.

Born in Berlin, Germany, on September 6,1829, Zakrzewska was the daughter of Lud-wig Martin Zakrzewska and Caroline Fred-ericke Wilhelmina Urban. Her fatherworked in the military and later as a civilservant. They had very little money, and hermother worked as a midwife to help sup-port the family. She had trained at the RoyalCharity Hospital in Berlin.

Zakrzewska many times went with hermother on rounds and became interested inmidwifery as a profession. She did well atthe Royal Charity Hospital in Berlin andgained the position of head midwife in 1852.She stayed there less than a year before sheleft with her sister for New York City to be-come a physician.

After meeting Elizabeth Blackwell, shewas inspired to go to Western Reserve Col-lege for a medical degree. She graduated in1856, and the next year she helped theBlackwells establish the New York Infir-mary for Women and Children. Sheworked as a resident physician for a fewyears, then moved on to become a profes-sor of obstetrics in Boston at the New En-gland Female Medical College, founded by

Samuel Gregory, because she wanted tofurther her education.

Gregory and she disagreed over the cur-riculum. She wanted to incorporate somelaboratory practices into the students’ work,such as dissection and the use of micro-scopes, but could not persuade him. Shealso wanted to establish more rigorousqualifications for diplomas. “But I foundvery little support, and I was told that itwould be hard to disappoint some womenwho had perseveringly labored for adiploma. According to my ideas, whichagree, I know, with the ideas of the profes-sion generally, perseverance alone does notentitle persons to receive a diploma. Evenshould a disappointment prove to be adeathblow to the student, it is better thatone should die rather than receive permis-sion to kill many” (Zakrzewska 1924, 282).She felt compelled to leave the college anddid so in 1862.

Upon her departure, she immediatelywent to work setting up the New EnglandHospital for Women and Children. She hadhelped the Blackwells set up the New YorkInfirmary because she could see femalemedical students’ immediate need for clini-cal experience and the need for better healthcare for women and children. She saw thesame need in Boston, and officially foundedthe hospital in 1862.

Zakrzewska had a very strong personal-ity and worked hard to advance the statusof women. She was an active suffragist andreformer. She was also very compassionatetoward those she served. “At one time shewas instrumental in having a lunch-room

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opened for poor working-girls, where for afew cents a nourishing and appetizing mealwas provided” (NEHWC 1977, 19).

Zakrzewska effectively ran the New En-gland Hospital for Women and Childrenuntil 1899. She was involved in all aspects ofits operation. She continually urged womenphysicians to gain as much scientific knowl-edge as possible. She earned an excellentreputation as a physician, even among someof the male physicians of her day. She diedin Boston on May 12, 1902.

See also: Blackwell, Elizabeth; New En-gland Female Medical College; New En-gland Hospital

References: New England Hospital forWomen and Children (NEHWC), Marie Eliz-abeth Zakrzewska: A Memoir, Boston: NewEngland Hospital for Women and Children(1902), reprinted in History of Women Collec-tion, no. 5403, New Haven, CT: ResearchPublications (1977); Tuchman, Arleen Mar-cia, “Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth,” Ameri-can National Biography, vol. 24, New York:Oxford University Press (1999); Zakr-zewska, Marie E., A Woman’s Quest: The Lifeof Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D., ed. Agnes C.Vietor, New York: D. Appleton (1924).

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Index

239

Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, xx, 1(photo),1–3, 196

Abby, Charlotte, 45Abolitionist movement, 171–172Abortion, 191, 196Abouchdid, Edma, 3Abraham, Karl, 121Abrege de l’art des accouchements (du Coudray), 66Acosta Sison, Honoria, 3–4Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS),

167AZT developed, 70, 71discrimination against AIDS patients, 123HIV discovered, 220Kubler-Ross’s work, 124Osborn’s work, 157, 158

Acyclovir (Zovirax), 71Adami, J. G., 2Adamson, Sarah Read. See Dolley, Sarah Read

AdamsonAetios of Amida, 14Africa

African Medical Research Foundation, 188female genital mutilation in, 76, 171kwashiorkor in, 216medical missionaries in, xx, 133–134, 145tryparsamide tested on humans, 160women in medicine from/in, 19, 22, 25,

133–134, 136, 179, 188African American women in medicine

barriers to success, 44, 79, 135, 219 (see alsoWomen of color in medicine)

Britton, Mary E., 37Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37–38, 38(photo)Canady, Alexa Irene, 41–42Chinn, May Edward, xix, 42–43, 219Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44–45Cole, Rebecca, 45, 164Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50Daly, Marie Maynard, 55–56Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78

Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218Jemison, Mae Carol, 108–109Jordan, Lynda, 115–116Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218Manley, Audrey Forbes, 136–137medical schools, black enrollment in, 219nurses, xix, 79–80, 135–136, 217–218Remond, Sarah Parker, 171–172Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney,

189–190Wright, Jane Cooke, 221, 221(photo)

African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF),188

AIDS. See Acquired immune deficiencysyndrome (AIDS)

Alcoholism, 126Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4–5Alexander, Virginia, 61Alexius I, 45, 46Ali, Safieh, 5Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5–6Ambulances, 23, 24American Chemical Society. See Garvan MedalAmerican College of Surgeons, 37, 61American Medical Association (AMA)

Dickey elected president, 23, 62, 212military commissions for women not

supported, 6Sheppard-Towner Act opposed, 186

American Medical Missionary Society (AMMS),144

American Medical Women’s Association(AMWA), 6, 140, 186, 203. See also AmericanWomen’s Hospital Service; AmericanWomen’s Hospitals

American Nurses Association (ANA), 79, 135,218

American Red Crossblack nurses refused during WWI, 217foundation of, 25, 26Healy as president, 94not selected to oversee military nurses, 139Nursing Service, 57, 58

Index

240

American Society of Superintendents ofTraining Schools for Nurses, 64–65, 154, 174

American Women’s Hospital Service, 3, 6, 131American Women’s Hospitals (AWH), 7Amino acid similarity-scoring matrix, 57AMREF (African Medical Research Foundation),

188AMWA. See American Medical Women’s

AssociationAnatomy, 26–27Andersen, Dorothy Hansine, 7–8Anderson, Charlotte Morrison, 8Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, xix, 8–10, 9(photo),

210and other women physicians, 9, 10, 31, 32,

103, 107, 182See also Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital;

New Hospital for Women and ChildrenAnderson, Gladys. See Emerson, Gladys

AndersonAnderson, Louisa Garrett (daughter of E. G.

Anderson), 9, 146Anderson Prison (Camp Sumter, Georgia), 26Anesthesiology, 13, 203Angwin, Maria Louisa, 10–11Anna Comnena. See Comnena, AnnaAntibiotics

bacterial resistance, 4, 138Dick skin test made obsolete by, 60for influenzal meningitis, 4Nystatin (antifungal agent) discovered, 39, 92

Antibodies and antigens, 184Antivirals, 71Apgar score system, xx, 11. See also Apgar, VirginiaApgar, Virginia, xx, 11–13, 12(photo)Arkansas Department of Health, 69Army, British, 24–25, 151–152, 209Army, U.S.

Army Medical Corps, 49, 139Army Nurse Corps (ANC), 34–35, 138, 139,

218Army School of Nursing, 85, 86Congressional authorization for

commissioning women, 211first woman commissioned, 34–35first woman physician commissioned, 6, 49

Army-Navy Nurse Act (U.S., 1947), 35Ashby, Winifred Mayer, 13–14Asia, women in medicine in. See specific countriesAspasia, 14Astronauts. See Jemison, Mae CarolAtlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease (Abbott), 2Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure (Dayhoff),

57Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain (Sabin), 178Atwater, Dorence, 26Auschwitz, 92

Australia, women in medicine from/in, 22Anderson, Charlotte Morrison, 8Kenny, Elizabeth, 118–120, 135Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean, xx, 134–135Stone, Emma Constance, 191

Austria, women in medicine from/inFreud, Anna, 81, 81(photo)Hubbard, Ruth, 100(photo), 100–101Klein, Melanie, 121–122Mandl, Ines, 136Possanner-Ehrenthal, Garbrielle, 163

Avery, Mary Ellen, 14–15AWH. See American Women’s Hospital Service;

American Women’s HospitalsAZT (azidothymidine), 70, 71

Bacheler, Mary Washington, 17–18Bacon, Emily, 14Bacteria and bacteriology

Corynebacterium diphtheriae identified, 215insulin production by, 205milk bacteria, 73, 74Pittman’s research, 162resistance to antibiotics, 4, 138streptococci bacteria, 126, 127

Bain, Barbara, 18Bairsin, Anne, 66Baker, Sara Josephine, xviii, 18(photo), 18–19, 166Balfour, Margaret Ida, 19Baptist missionaries, 17, 38, 133–134. See also

Missionaries, medicalBarnes, Alice Josephine, 20Barriers to success, 20–23

for black women, 44, 79, 135, 217–220 (see alsoAfrican American women in medicine)

equality difficult to achieve, 22–23, 211–212gender discrimination in hospitals, 99, 135legal and civil suits, 109, 114legal barriers, xviii, 109, 139, 175licensing and certification, 9, 22, 109, 139, 175

(see also Licensing of women physicians)medical training, obstacles to receiving, 21–22

(see also Obstacles to medical training)posts difficult to attain, xix, 34poverty, 22Preston’s refutation of early arguments

against women, 164private practice difficult for women, 22, 29,

30, 165–166, 203social objections, xix, 20

Barringer, Emily Dunning, 23–24Barry, James, xix–xx, 24–25Barry, Katharine, 30Barton, Clara, 25(photo), 25–26, 64, 166, 210Basseport, Madeleine, 27Bassi, Laura Maria Caterina, 26–27, 201Bayerova, Anna, 27, 98, 122

Index

241

Beck, Joan, 13Becquerel, Henri, 50, 51Bennett College, 37Bernal, John D., 97Berson, Solomon, 223Beveridge, William, xviiiBiheron, Marie Catherine, 27Biochemistry, 68, 100, 115–116, 136. See also

GeneticsBird, Mary Ann Dacomb. See Scharlieb, Mary

Ann Dacomb BirdBirth. See Childbirth; Midwives; Obstetrics and

gynecologyBirth control

birth control movement, xviii–xix, 46, 166,180–181

Comstock Act, xix, 46Elders’ advocacy of, 69, 70Jacobs’ advocacy of, 107

Bishop’s College, 1Black, Sir James, 70Black women in medicine. See African American

women in medicine; Women of color inmedicine; and specific women

Blackwell, Elizabeth, 27–33, 28(photo)on addressing social evils, 65education, 21, 28–29, 33, 85family and background, xix, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34

(see also Blackwell, Emily)hospital founded, xx, 10, 30, 225 (see also New

York Infirmary for Women and Children;Women’s Medical College of the New YorkInfirmary for Women and Children)

Jacobi’s views compared to, 106medical school closed, 148other women encouraged, 9, 10, 32, 45, 56,

109, 225 (see also Anderson, ElizabethGarrett; Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam; Jex-Blake, Sophia; Zakrzewska, Marie)

private practice difficult, xix, 22, 29, 30Wald asked to train immigrants in home

nursing, 208Blackwell, Emily, xix, 28, 29–30, 33–34, 208, 214.

See also Blackwell, Elizabeth; New YorkInfirmary for Women and Children;Women’s Medical College of the New YorkInfirmary for Women and Children

Blackwell, Samuel and Hannah Lane, xix, 28, 33Blalock, Alfred, 195, 196Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34–35, 218Blood transfusion, 163Bocchi, Dorothea, 35Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35–36,

36(photo)Bolivia, first female physician in, 204Bologna, University of, 55, 66, 85, 201,

201(photo)

Bone marrow transplantation, 18Bosnia-Herzegovina, 27, 122Boston City Hospital Training School for

Nurses, 173Bourgeois, Louise, 36(photo), 36–37Bragg, Sir William, 162Brazil, women in medicine from/in, 22, 68, 131Brewster, Mary, 208British Medical Association, 8, 20Britton, Mary E., 37Brown, Antoinette Louisa, 34Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37–38, 38(photo)Brown, Edith Mary, 38Brown, Rachel Fuller, 39, 92, 93Brucellosis, 74Brundtband, Gro Harlem, xvii, 39–40Bryn Mawr College, 21

students and graduates, 47, 76, 102, 120Bubonic plague, 83Budzinski-Tylicka, Justine, 40Bulletin No. IX (International Association of

Medical Museums), 2Burlingham, Dorothy T., 81Burnet, Sir Macfarlane, 135Burroughs Wellcome, 70–71Bush, George, 94, 153Byford, William H., 142, 198

Caldwell, Shirley Marie. See Tilghman, ShirleyMarie Caldwell

Calverley, Edwin E., 41Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor, 41Canada, women in medicine from/in

Angwin, Maria Louisa, 10–11Nutting, Mary Adelaide, 154–155Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo),

174–175Stowe, Emily, 191–192Trout, Jennie Kidd, 192, 198

Canady, Alexa Irene, 41–42Cancer detection

L’Esperance’s work, 128Pap smear, 42, 43, 128

Cancer researchChinn’s work, 43Cobb’s work, 44–45Dunn’s work on mouse tumors, 67Dyer’s index of tumor chemotherapy, 68Elion’s drug discoveries, 70, 71M. E. Jones’ work, 115Macklin’s work, 134Reed-Sternberg cells discovered, 141Stewart’s work on prenatal radiation

exposure, 190viruses as cause, 82Wetterhahn’s research, 214Wright’s chemotherapy research, 221

Index

242

Cancer treatmentchemotherapy, 68, 70, 71, 221radiation, 52, 169 (see also Radium)See also Cancer research

Canton Medical Missionary Hospital, 82, 83, 87,144

Carbon fiber research, 80Cardiology, xx, 2, 7, 195–196Carlisle, C. H., 97Carnegie Foundation, 78, 137–138Carpenter, Charles M., 74Carr, Emma Perry, 162Case Western Reserve University. See Western

Reserve CollegeCatholic missionaries, 59, 144. See also Roman

Catholic ChurchCavendish, Margaret, 21Cell biology, 75–76Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(U.S.), 165Central Medical College (New York), 65, 79Certification. See Licensing of women

physiciansCesarean section, 4Chatzman, Vira. See Weizmann, VeraChemistry

Elion’s drug research, 70–71Emerson’s work on vitamins, 71–72first African American woman awarded

Ph.D., 55–56Hodgkin’s work on molecular structures,

96–98Hoobler’s work on cottonseed toxins, 98–99Petermann’s research on ribosomes, 161Pickett’s work on X-ray crystallography, 162[E.] Richards’ work, 172Sherrill’s work on antimalarial drugs, 187Wetterhahn’s research, 214See also Garvan Medal winners

Chemotherapy, 68, 70, 71, 221. See also Cancerresearch

Chevandier Law (France, 1892), 42Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, 198Chicago, University of, 21

faculty, 118research at, 184students and graduates, 13, 39, 49, 60, 98, 115,

118, 162, 163, 187Childbirth, 66–67, 147, 203. See also Birth control;

Midwives; Obstetrics and gynecologyChildren

advice books for parents, 120cancer caused by radiation, 190congenital heart malformations, 195–196psychoanalysis of, 81, 121–122See also Infants

Chile, women physicians from, 22, 59–60, 161

Chinafootbinding, 78–79Guangzhou, 87medical education of women, xx, 82, 83, 87,

93–94, 144medical missionaries, 82–83, 87, 95, 144women physicians from/in, xx, 22, 91–92,

93–94Chinn, May Edward, xix, 42–43, 219Cholera epidemics, 184, 189Chou, Elizabeth. See Han SuyinChristison, Professor, 109Circumcision, female. See Female genital

mutilationCivil War (U.S.), 25–26, 31, 165, 209–210Clarke, Catherine. See Fenselau, Catherine

ClarkeClarke, Edward H., 20Claypole, Edith Jane, 43–44Clayson, Esther. See Lovejoy, Esther Clayson

PohlCleanliness, 151, 166. See also Hygiene; Public

healthCleveland, Emeline Horton, xx, 44, 164Clinical experience

access to laboratories/teaching hospitals, 69,103, 106, 109, 164

at the Women’s Medical College ofPennsylvania, 30, 164

Clinton, Bill, 69Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44–45Coello, Antonia. See Novello, Antonia CoelloCohen, Stanley, 128, 129–130Cole, Rebecca, 45, 164Colonization, and race discrimination, 217Columbian College, 139Communicable Disease Center (U.S.), 165Comnena, Anna, 45–46Comparative Anatomy of the Nervous System of

Vertebrates, Including Man (Crosby, Kappers,and Huber), 50

Comstock Act (U.S., 1873), xix, 46Comstock, Anthony, 46Concentration camps, xx, 92, 123, 188Congenital Malformations of the Heart (Taussig),

196Congo, Belgian, xx, 160Congo, Democratic Republic of, 133–134Conley, Frances Krauskopf, 46–47Contraception. See Birth controlCori, Carl, 47–48Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz, 47(photo), 47–48Cornell University, 21, 32, 34

faculty, 169graduates, 24, 43, 74, 102, 108, 137, 183

Correia, Elisa, 48–49Cottonseed toxins, 98–99

Index

243

Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of theirChildren in Relation to Sex (Eliz. Blackwell),32

Craig, Mr., 109Craighill, Margaret, xx, 6, 49, 49(photo)Craighill, Rebecca. See Lancefield, Rebecca

CraighillCrick, Francis, 80Crimean War, xvii, 150–151, 184Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49–50Cross-dressing. See Barry, JamesCrowfoot, Dorothy Mary. See Hodgkin, Dorothy

Mary CrowfootCrumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50Crystallography. See under X-raysCupp, Janette Lorraine. See Alvord, Lori ArvisoCurie, Eve, 51, 112Curie, Irene. See Joliot-Curie, IreneCurie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo), 112Curie, Pierre, 50–53, 112Cushier, Elizabeth, 32, 34Cutler, Carroll, 213–214Cystic fibrosis, 7Czech women physicians, 27, 47–48, 98

Dalle Donne, Maria, 55Daly, Marie Maynard, 55–56Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56Danielsen, Karen Theodora Clementina. See

Horney, Karen Theodora ClementinaDanielsen

Darrow, Ruth Renter, 56Dartmouth College, 5–6, 214Davies, Emily, 9Davis, Dorland, 162Dawson, Benjamin Franklin, 114Dayhoff, Margaret Oakley, 57Death

hospice movement, 181, 207–208Kubler-Ross’s work on, 122, 124 (see also

Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth)Dejerine, Jules, 57Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo),

123–124Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59Dengal, Anna Maria, xx, 59Denmark, women physicians in, 149Dering, Wladyslaw, 92“Description of Early Symptoms of the

Meningeal Tumor Compressing theCerebellum” (Jacobi), 106

Diabetes. See InsulinDiaz Inzunza, Eloiza, 59–60, 161Dick, George, 60Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry, 60(photo), 60–61Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62

Dickey, Nancy Wilson, xvii, 23, 62, 212Diphtheria treatment and immunization, 215Discrimination

against AIDS patients, 123gender discrimination (see Barriers to success;

Obstacles to medical training)race discrimination, 44 (see also Abolitionist

movement; Nursing and nurses: blacknurses; Women of color in medicine)

Dissection, 85. See also VivisectionDix, Dorothea Lynde, 31, 62–64, 63(photo), 166Dixon, Mary Amanda. See Jones, Mary Amanda

DixonDmitrieva, Valentina Ionovna, 64DNA

[R.] Franklin’s contributions, 80–81Human Genome Project, 198as key to disease, 4M. E. Jones’ work, 115recombinant DNA, 204, 205See also Genetics

Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174Dodge, Annie. See Wauneka, Annie DodgeDolley, Sarah Read Adamson, 65–66Dominican Republic, women physicians from,

161The Double Helix (Watson), 81Drug research. See Antibiotics; Chemotherapy;

Malaria; and specific drugsdu Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, xvii, 66–67Dufferin Fund, 67Dufferin Hospital (Calcutta), 127Duges, Marie-Louise. See Lachapelle, Marie-

Louise DugesDunn, Thelma Brumfield, 67–68Dunning, Emily. See Barringer, Emily DunningDurocher, Marie Josefina Mathilde, 68Duse, Mohammed, 217Dyer, Helen Marie, 68

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, 69, 109Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (Jex-

Blake’s school), 21, 69, 103, 110Edinburgh, University of, School of Medicine,

24, 103, 109–110Education of women

Blackwell sisters’ education, xix, 21, 28–29, 33,85

in early 20th-century Prague, 47in Italy, 33, 55, 202. See also Bologna,

University ofobjections to, 20, 21physiology as appropriate area for women,

21women’s right to, 213–214See also Obstacles to medical training; and

specific schools and universities

Index

244

Egyptfemale medical missionaries in, 145, 214–215el Saadawi, Nawal, 177–178

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 35Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153Electrotherapy, 198Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70–71Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, 20, 149,

199. See also New Hospital for Women andChildren

Emerson, Gladys Anderson, 71–72, 72(photo)Emerson, Oliver, 72Endocrinology, 223–224. See also InsulinEngland. See United Kingdom; United

Kingdom, women in medicine from/inEnzymes, 115–116, 136Epidemics, and women in medicine, 210. See

also specific diseases and individualsEpidemiology, 190Erxleben, Dorothea Christiana, 72–73Eskelin, Karolina, 73Ethics, medical, 62, 208Eugenics, 134Evans, Alice Catherine, 73(photo), 73–74Explosives manufacturing, 90–91, 190

Fabiola, Saint, 75Family planning. See Birth controlFarquhar, Marilyn Gist, 75–76Felicie, Jacoba, 76Female genital mutilation (female circumcision),

76, 171, 177Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. See

Women’s Medical College of PennsylvaniaFenselau, Catherine Clarke, 76–77Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78Finland, women physicians from, 73, 94–95, 108Flexner, Abraham, 78Flexner Report, 78, 148Flikke, Julia, 35Folger, Lydia. See Fowler, Lydia FolgerFondal, Elizabeth. See Neufeld, Elizabeth FondalFootbinding, 78–79Fowler, Lydia Folger, 79France

AWH hospital established, 7Chevandier Law (1892), 42La Maternité (Paris), 29, 44licensing of women physicians, 76midwives in, 35–36, 66–67, 125Resistance (WWII), 113, 188Salpêtrière Asylum, 179–180University of Paris, 66, 106See also France, women in medicine from/in

France, women in medicine from/inBiheron, Marie Catherine, 27Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35–36,

36(photo)Bourgeois, Louise, 36(photo), 36–37Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo),

112Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, xvii,

66–67Felicie, Jacoba, 76Hautval, Adelaide, 92Joliot-Curie, Irene, 51, 52, 112–113Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Duges, 125See also France

Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 80–81Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor), 73, 202Free Baptist missionaries, 17, 38. See also Baptist

missionaries; Missionaries, medicalFreud, Anna, 81, 81(photo)Freud, Sigmund, 81, 99, 121Friend, Charlotte, 82Fulton, Mary Hannah, 82–83, 87, 144Fussell, Edwin, 105, 164

Gallo, Robert, 220Garfield, James A., 26Garret, Mary Elizabeth, 111Garrett, Elizabeth. See Anderson, Elizabeth

GarrettGarvan Medal winners, 68, 72, 77, 136, 161, 162,

187Genetics

chromosome repair following X-ray exposure,137

early embryo development research, 153–154ethical concerns, 101genetic disease research, 147Human Genome Project, 198“jumping genes” theory, 137, 138Lyon hypothesis, 132Macklin’s work, 134Tilghman’s research, 198See also DNA

Geneva Medical College, 21, 28–29, 85, 189Genital mutilation. See Female genital

mutilationGermany, woman physicians and scientists

from/inErxleben, Dorothea Christiana, 72–73Hildegard of Bingen, 96Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina

Danielsen, 99–100Hyde, Ida Henrietta, 102Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153–154See also Zakrzewska, Marie

Gerritsen, Carel Victor, 107–108Giliani, Alessandra, 85Gist, Marilyn. See Farquhar, Marilyn Gist

Index

245

Glass ceiling, 23, 212Glycogen, breakdown of into sugar, 47, 48Goodrich, Annie Warburton, xx, 85–87,

86(photo)Gordon, Doris Clifton Jolly, 87Gosling, Raymond, 80Grant, Mary Jane. See Seacole, Mary Jane GrantGreece, 7, 14Greene, Cordelia, 192Gregory, Samuel, 147, 225Guangzhou, China, 87, 144. See also ChinaGwynn, Mary, 111Gynecology. See Midwives; Obstetrics and

gynecology

Hackett Medical College for Women (China), 82,83, 87, 144

Haden-Guest, Leslie, 166Hahn, Otto, 112Haiti, women physicians from, 193Halsted, William Stewart, 111, 120Hamburger, Viktor, 129, 130Hamilton, Alice, xviii, xx, 89–91, 90(photo), 166Hampton, Isabel. See Robb, Isabel HamptonHan Suyin, 91(photo), 91–92Harding, Warren G., 52Harlem, Gro. See Brundtband, Gro HarlemHautval, Adelaide, xx, 92Hazen, Elizabeth Lee, 39, 92–93He Manqiu, xx, 93–94Healthy Babies Are Happy Babies: A Complete

Handbook for Modern Mothers (Kenyon), 120Healy, Bernadine, 94Heckford, Nathaniel, 10Heikel, Rosina, 94–95Hematoencephalic barrier, 188–189Hematology, 13, 18, 56, 163Hemenway, Josephine. See Kenyon, Josephine

HemenwayHemenway, Ruth V., 95Hemophilia, 163Henderson, Purvis Sinclair, 61Henry IV of France, 36Henry, Gladys Rowena. See Dick, Gladys

Rowena HenryHenry Street Settlement, xvii–xviii, 208Herbert, Sydney, 150The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World

(el Saadawi), 177Higgins, Margaret. See Sanger, MargaretHildegard of Bingen, 96Hindu women, 17, 67, 183. See also IndiaHinkley, Edith. See Quimby, Edith HinkleyHispanic American women in medicine,

152–153, 204–205, 219Historical women in medicine

ancient world, 14, 75, 210

1100s, 45–46, 961200s, 761300s, 76, 851400s, 351500s, 36–37, 961600s, 36–37, 96, 1871700s, 26–27, 55, 66–67, 72–73, 125, 157, 2011800–present (see specific women)

Hitchings, George, 70, 71HIV (human immunodeficiency syndrome). See

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome(AIDS)

Hobart and William Smith Colleges. See GenevaMedical College

Hoby, Lady Margaret, 96Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, 96–98Hodgkin’s disease, 141Hoffman, Ruth. See Hubbard, RuthHolt, Luther Emmett, 120, 141Homeopathic medical schools, 189, 191Honzakov, Anna, 98Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy, 98–99Hoon, Pierra. See Vejjabul, Pierra HoonHorney, Karen Theodora Clementina Danielsen,

99–100Horton, Emeline. See Cleveland, Emeline

HortonHospice movement, 181, 207–208Houssay, Bernardo Alberto, 47, 48Howard University, 55, 77, 219Hubbard, Ruth, 100(photo), 100–101Huber, G. Carl, 50Hugonay, Countess Vilma, 101Hull House (Chicago), xvii–xix, 90Human Genome Project, 198Human immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV). See

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome(AIDS)

Hungary, women physicians in, 101Hunger, 64Husband-and-wife teams

Calverley, Eleanor J. T. and Edwin E., 41Cori, Gerty T. R. and Carl, 47–48Curie, Marie S. and Pierre, 50–53 (see also

Curie, Marie Sklodowska)Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta and Jules

Dejerine, 57Dick, Gladys R. H. and George, 60Joliot-Curie, Irene and Frederic Joliot, 112–113

(see also Joliot-Curie, Irene)Hyde, Ida Henrietta, 102Hygiene

[Eliz.] Blackwell’s work, 29, 65cleanliness, 151, 166Daniel’s work, 56Dock’s work, 65milk safety, 131

Index

246

Hygiene, continuedNightingale’s work, 29Widerstrom’s work, 215See also Public health; and specific individuals

Hygiene and Morality (Dock), 65Hygiene for Women (Widerstrom), 215Hysterectomies, 114

Immigrants, 56, 76, 208Immunology, 184–185, 199. See also VaccinationImmunology of the Lung (Turner-Warwick), 199Imuran (organ transplant anti-rejection drug),

71India

Balfour’s work in, 19[E.] Brown’s work in, 38examination of women by men not allowed,

17, 22, 67, 193female medical missionaries in, xx, 17, 145,

183, 192–193medical schools, xx, 38, 67, 127–128, 145, 183Nightingale’s work in, 152women physicians from, xx, 127–128, 145, 183

(see also Scudder, Ida Sophia)Industrial diseases. See Occupational healthIndustrial Toxicology (Hamilton), 91Infantile paralysis. See PolioInfants

advice books for parents, 120Apgar score system, xx, 11, 12–13erythroblastosis foetalis, 56influenzal meningitis, 4kwashiorkor, 216mistaken for dead, 66respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), 14, 15

Influenza, 162, 210Influenzal meningitis, 4Inglis, Elsie Maude, xvii, xx, 103–104, 182Inoculation. See VaccinationInsulin, 97, 98, 205, 223International Association of Medical Museums,

2Iran, women in medicine from/in, 144–145,

186Is My Baby Alright? (Apgar and Beck), 13Israel, women physicians in, 117Italy

education of women before 1900, 35, 55, 202(see also Bologna, University of)

Jews discriminated against, 129See also Italy, women in medicine from/in

Italy, women in medicine from/inBassi, Laura Maria Caterina, 26–27, 201Bocchi, Dorothea, 35Dalle Donne, Maria, 55Fabiola, Saint, 75Giliani, Alessandra, 85

Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128–130, 129(photo)Remond, Sarah Parker, 172See also Italy

Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam (Mary Putnam),xix, 24, 32, 105(photo), 105–107, 164

Jacobs, Aletta Henriette, 107–108Jalas, Rakel, 108Jamaica, women in medicine from, 184Japan, women in medicine from/in, 22, 157,

173, 224Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, 142, 143Jemison, Mae Carol, 108–109Jennings, Emily. See Stowe, EmilyJewish women, xx, 92, 213. See also Israel,

women physicians in; and specific womenJex-Blake, Sophia, 10, 32, 69, 109–111, 175. See

also Edinburgh School of Medicine forWomen

Johns Hopkins University Hospital, nursetraining at, 64–65, 154, 174

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,21, 111(photo), 111–112

faculty, 15, 76–77, 94, 111–112, 118, 120, 178students and graduates, 4, 7, 13, 14–15, 49, 60,

94, 120, 134, 136, 141, 160, 195Joliot, Frederic, 52, 112–113Joliot-Curie, Irene, 51, 52, 112–113Jolly, Doris Clifton. See Gordon, Doris Clifton

JollyJones, Mary Amanda Dixon, 113–114Jones, Mary Ellen, 115Jones, Minnie Joycelyn. See Elders, Minnie

JoycelynJordan, Lynda, 115–116Joteyko, Josephine, 116Jung, Carl Gustav, 123

Kagan, Helena, 117Kappers, C. U. Ariens, 50Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson, 117–118Kelly, Howard, 111, 120Kelsey, Francis Oldham, xx, 118, 196Kelvin, Lord William Thomson, 51Kennedy, John F., 212Kenny, Elizabeth, 118–120, 135Kenya, women physicians in, 188Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway, 120–121Kidd, Jennie. See Trout, Jennie KiddKing, Elizabeth, 111Kingston Women’s Medical College, 198Klein, Melanie, 121–122Klumpke, Augusta. See Dejerine-Klumpke,

AugustaKorea, women physicians in, 159–160Krajewska, Teodora, 122Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth, 122–124

Index

247

Kuwait, first woman physician in, 41Kwashiorkor, 216

La Maternité (Paris), 29, 44Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Duges, 35, 125Lady with the Lamp. See Nightingale, FlorenceLaFlesche Picotte, Susan, 125–126Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill, 126–127Langevin, Paul, 51, 112Latin America, woman in medicine from/in,

22Diaz Inzunza, Eloiza, 59–60Durocher, Marie Josefina Mathilde, 68Lopez, Rita Lobato Velho, 131Luisi, Paulina, 132Montoya, Matilde, 146Perez, Ernestina, 161Rodriguez-Dulanto, Laura Esther, 175Solis, Manuela, 187Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de, 187Villa, Amelia Chopitea, 204See also Dominican Republic, women

physicians fromLazarus, Hilda, 127–128Leadership abilities, xvii. See also specific womenLebanon, women physicians in, 3L’Esperance, Elise Depew Strang, 128Leukemia, 70, 71, 82Levi, Giuseppe, 129Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128–130, 129(photo)Lewis, Edward B., 153Licensing of women physicians

in 14th-century France, 76in England, 9, 22, 109–110, 110, 139, 175examinations closed to women, 109–110Japan’s restrictions on, 157practicing without a license, 73, 76required by Frederick II, 202women of color, 219

Lincoln, Abraham, 25–26Lipman, Fritz, 115London Medical College for Women, 10London School of Medicine for Women, 32,

110Long, Esmond R., 185Longshore, Hannah Myers, 130–131, 148Longshore, Joseph, 130Lopez, Rita Lobato Velho, 131Louis XIV of France, 67, 179Louis XV of France, xvii, 66Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl, 131–132Lovell, Sarah, 192Luisi, Paulina, 132Lymphatic system, 178Lyon, Mary Frances, 132, 132(photo)

Mabie, Catharine Louise Roe, xx, 133–134

MacGregor, Jessie, 103Macklin, Charles, 134Macklin, Madge Thurlow, 134Macnamara, Dame Annie Jean, xx, 134–135Macy, Icie Gertrude. See Hoobler, Icie Gertrude

MacyMahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218Malahlele, Mary Susan, 136Malaria, 186, 187Male physicians

cultural restrictions on examination of womenby, 17, 22, 67, 144, 182, 183, 186, 193

early women physicians’ ambivalencetoward, 106

early women physicianssupported/encouraged by, 9, 11–12

and the “glass ceiling,” 23, 211–212M. A. D. Jones’ relationship with, 114and Nightingale, 151opposition to Sheppard-Towner Act, 186opposition to women physicians in hospitals,

24public health field eschewed by, 165resistance to women in medical schools, 105,

109–110, 133, 198Mall, Franklin, 178Mandl, Ines, 136Manhattan State Hospital, 123Manley, Audrey Forbes, 136–137March of Dimes, 13Marie de Medici, Queen of France, 36Mary Johnston Hospital (Philippines), 160Mass spectrometry, 76Mayo Clinic, 14, 58–59Mayo, William Worrall, 58, 59McClintock, Barbara, 137–138McDonnell, Aeneas, 119McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138(photo), 138–139McGill University, 1, 2

faculty and graduates, 15, 18, 118McKinney, Susan Maria Smith. See Steward,

Susan Maria Smith McKinneyMcKinnon, Emily H. S., 139McLaren, Agnes, 59Mead, Jere, 15Medical Act (Great Britain, 1858), 109, 139, 175.

See also Russell Gurney Enabling ActMedical College for Women (Scotland), 69, 103,

110Medical College of Pennsylvania. See Women’s

Medical College of PennsylvaniaMedical training

admission requirements, 111in China, 82, 83, 87clinical experience, 30, 69, 103, 106, 109,

164in India, 38, 67, 127–128, 145, 183

Index

248

Medical training, continuedschools admitting women before the mid-20th

century, 21 (see also Bryn Mawr College;Chicago, University of; Cornell University;Johns Hopkins University School ofMedicine; Michigan, University of)

schools for women only, 21, 148–149 (see alsoEdinburgh School of Medicine for Women;Medical College for Women; New EnglandFemale Medical College; Women’s MedicalCollege of Pennsylvania; Women’s MedicalCollege of the New York Infirmary forWomen and Children)

standardization of curriculums, 78See also Obstacles to medical training

Medical Women’s Federation of Great Britain,140

Medical Women’s International Association(MWIA), 5, 19, 131, 140–141, 192

Medical Women’s National Association. SeeAmerican Medical Women’s Association

Meharry Medical College, 219graduates, 37, 136, 221

Melbourne Hospital, 135Meloney, Missy, 52Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed, 141–142Mendoza-Gauzon, Marie Paz, 142Meningitis, 4, 162Mental illness, 62–63, 134, 179–180. See also

Psychiatry and psychologyMergler, Marie Josepha, 142Methodist missionaries, 95, 160, 192–193. See

also Missionaries, medicalMexico, women in medicine from, 146, 187Meyer, Karl F., 74Michigan, University of

faculty, 49, 50graduates, 41–42, 49, 89, 153, 203Medical School, 21, 89, 203racism at, 44

Middlesex Hospital (U.K.), 9Midwives, xvii

Boivin, Marie Anne Victoire Gillain, 35–36,36(photo)

du Coudray, Angelique Marguerite, xvii,66–67

education of, 35, 66, 103, 159Lachapelle, Marie-Louise Duges, 125Midwives Act (U.K.), 159Paget, Mary, 159Siegemundin, Justine Dittrichin, 187Zakrzewska, Marie, 225 (see also Zakrzewska,

Marie)Midwives Institute (England), 159Military commissions for women, 24, 34–35,

138, 139, 211. See also Army, U.S.; Craighill,Margaret; Navy, U.S.

Milk safety, 131Miller, Jean Baker, 142–143Mink, Marie, 219Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa, 143–144Mission for Samaritans (Dengal), 59Missionaries, medical, xx, 144–145

in Africa, xx, 133–134, 145in China, 78, 82–83, 87, 95in Egypt, 145, 214–215in India, xx, 17, 38, 59, 183, 192–193indigenous women trained as

nurses/physicians by, 219in the Philippines, 160women needed as, 144

Mixed leukocyte culture (MLC), 18Molecular biology, 57Molecular structure, 96–98, 162Montoya, Matilde, 146Morani, Alma Dea, 146, 146(photo)Munitions work, 90–91, 190Murray, Flora, 146Muslim women

circumcision of, 76, 171, 177examination by male not allowed, 67, 186Krajewska’s work with, 122physicians, 177, 186

MWIA. See Medical Women’s InternationalAssociation

Myasthenia gravis, 209Myers, Hannah. See Longshore, Hannah Myers

NACGN. See National Association of ColoredGraduate Nurses

Naegele, Franz Carl, 125Naish, Alice. See Stewart, AliceNASA (National Aeronautics and Space

Administration), 108National Academy of Sciences, 75, 82, 178National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(NASA), 108National Association of Colored Graduate

Nurses (NACGN), 79, 135, 218National Cancer Institute (U.S.), research at, 67,

68, 220National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Healy as first woman head, 94research at, 147, 153, 162, 198, 205, 214

National Medal of Science, 147National Medical Association (NMA), 79National Organ Transplant Act (U.S., 1984), 153Native American women in medicine

Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5–6barriers to success, 219LaFlesche Picotte, Susan, 125–126Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa, 143–144Ockett, Molly, 157Wauneka, Annie Dodge, 212–213

Index

249

Navajo people, 212–213. See also Alvord, LoriArviso

Navy, U.S., 6, 218. See also Military commissionsfor women

Nerve growth factor (NGF), 129–130Nervous system, drug effects on, 117, 118Netherlands, women physicians from, 107–108,

175–176Neuberg, Carl, 136Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal, 147Neurology, 57Neurosurgery. See Conley, Frances KrauskopfNew England Female Medical College, 147–148

clinical experience, 30faculty, 130, 147–148graduates, 50, 185, 198standards for graduation, 225See also New England Hospital [for Women

and Children]New England Hospital [for Women and

Children], 148(photo), 148–149establishment of, 31, 148, 225–226nurses’ training course, 173, 218staff, 10, 19, 89–90, 148, 185, 203See also New England Female Medical College

New Hospital for Women and Children(London), 9, 10, 107, 149. See also ElizabethGarrett Anderson Hospital

New York Cityfirst black woman physician in, 42–43Health Department, 19, 215 (see also Baker,

Sara Josephine)Henry Street Settlement, 208

New York Infirmary for Women and Children,10, 30, 31, 32, 45, 225. See also Blackwell,Elizabeth; Blackwell, Emily; Women’sMedical College of the New York Infirmaryfor Women and Children; Zakrzewska,Marie

New York Medical College for Women, 189, 191New York Psychoanalytic Institute, 49, 99–100New Zealand, women in medicine from, 87, 139Newborns, 11, 12–13, 56, 66. See also InfantsNewcomb, Anita. See McGee, Anita NewcombNGF (nerve growth factor), 129–130Nielsen, Nielsine Mathilde, 149Nightingale, Florence, xvii, 149–152, 150(photo),

166, 210and other women in medicine, 29, 31, 173, 182

Nightingale Home and Training School, 152NIH. See National Institutes of HealthNMA (National Medical Association), 79Nobel Prize winners

Black, Sir James, 70Cohen, Stanley, 128, 129–130Cori, Gerty T. R. and Carl, 47–48Crick, Francis, 80

Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo),112

Curie, Pierre, 50–53, 112Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70–71Hitchings, George, 70, 71Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, 96–98Houssay, Bernardo Alberto, 47, 48Joliot, Frederic, 52, 112–113Joliot-Curie, Irene, 51, 52, 112–113Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128–130, 129(photo)Lewis, Edward B., 153Lipman, Fritz, 115McClintock, Barbara, 137–138Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153–154Watson, James D., 81Wieschaus, Eric F., 153Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223(photo), 223–224See also Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry

North India School of Medicine for ChristianWomen, 38

Norway, women physicians from, xvii, 39–40,188

Notes on Nursing (Nightingale), 151. See alsoNightingale, Florence

Nova Scotia, first woman physician from, 10–11Novello, Antonia Coello, xvii, 152–153Nunn, T. W., 9Nuns, 22, 58–59, 150Nurses Associated Alumnae, 135. See also

American Nurses AssociationNursing and nurses

American Nurses Association (ANA), 79, 135,218

Army Nurse Corps (ANC), 34–35, 138, 139,218

Army School of Nursing, 85, 86Barton, Clara, 25(photo), 25–26, 64, 166, 210black nurses, xix, 79, 135, 184, 217–218Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34–35, 218during the Crimean War, 150–151, 184Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo),

123–124Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174domestic skill needed by nurses, 174–175early physicians relegated to nursing, xixeducation, 30, 31, 58, 152, 154–155, 173Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218Goodrich, Annie Warburton, xx, 85–87,

86(photo)Kenny, Elizabeth, 118–120, 135licensing and registration, 86Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138(photo), 138–139Nightingale’s reforms, 151–152. See also

Nightingale, Florencepredominance of women in, 211

Index

250

Nursing and nurses, continuedprofessional standards, xx, 64, 85, 173, 174Ramsey, Mimi, 171Richards, Linda, 135, 173(photo), 173Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo),

174–175Sanger, Margaret, xviii–xix, 46, 166,

180(photo), 180–181Seacole, Mary Jane Grant, 184standards for education, 154–155student nurses, conditions for, 154–155Visiting Nurses’ Service, 173, 208Wald, Florence Schorske, 207–208Wald, Lillian D., xviii, xx, 64, 65, 166,

208(photo), 208–209Nusslein-Volhard, Christiane, 153–154Nutrition, 98Nutting, Mary Adelaide, 154–155Nystatin (antifungal agent), 39, 92, 93

Oakley, Margaret. See Dayhoff, Margaret OakleyOberlin College, 219

graduates, 44, 158Observations (Boivin), 36Obstacles to medical training

access to laboratories/teaching hospitalslimited, 106, 109, 164

admission to medical schools refused, xx, 1, 9,21, 29, 31, 65

examinations closed to women, 109–110faculty resistance, 105, 109–110, 133, 198family opposition, 60, 80, 204gender discrimination in the late 20th/early

21st centuries, 46–47, 203, 210legal barriers, 109, 139, 175 (see also Russell

Gurney Enabling Act)licensing, 22 (see also Licensing of women

physicians)sexual harassment, 175student opposition, xix, 1, 9, 73, 109, 133, 198

Obstetrics and gynecologybefore 1800, 14, 36–37, 66[E.] Anderson’s practice, 10Barnes’ work, 20Dickens’ work, 61–62Durocher’s work, 68Gordon’s work, 87M. A. D. Jones’ work, 113–114Mergler’s work, 142Nazi experimentation upon Jewish women,

92Pap smear, 42, 43, 128in the Philippines, 3, 4reasons for women’s specialization in, 22Schauta’s clinics, 163surgical procedures, 4, 44, 114See also Childbirth; Midwives; Pregnancy

Occupational health, xx, 89, 90–91Ockett, Molly, 157Ogino, Ginko, 157Oldham, Frances. See Kelsey, Francis OldhamOmaha tribe, 125–126On Death and Dying (Kubler-Ross), 124Ontario Medical College for Women, 192, 198Organ transplantation, 18, 70, 71, 153Osborn, June Elaine, 157–158Osler, William, xix, 2, 111–112, 120Oxford University. See Somerville College

Paediatric Gastroenterology (Anderson), 8Paget, Mary, 159Pak, Esther Kim, 159–160Palade, George, 75Pap smear, 42, 43, 128Papanicolauo, George, 43Paralysis, 57. See also PolioParis, University of, 66, 106Park, William Hallock, 215Parrish, Rebecca, 160Pasteurization of milk, 73, 74Pathogenic Microorganisms Including Bacteria and

Protozoa (Williams and Park), 215Pathology, 2. See also DissectionPearce, Louise, 19, 160–161Pediatrics

congenital heart malformations, 195–196Kenyon’s advice book, 120Novello’s work, 152, 153pediatric gastroenterology, 8respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), 14, 15sickle cell anemia, 77

Penicillin, 97Perez, Ernestina, 161Perozo, Evangelina Rodriguez, 161Persia, medical missionaries in, 144–145Peru, first woman physician from, 175Petermann, Mary Locke, 161–162Philippines, women physicians from, 3–4, 142,

160Physician-assisted suicide, 62, 208Physiology

as appropriate area for women, 21hematoencephalic barrier, 188–189Hyde’s work, 102Joteyko’s work, 116Pool’s work, 163

Physostigmine, 209Pickett, Lucy Weston, 162Pierce, Franklin, 63Pincus, Gregory, 181Pittman, Margaret, 162–163Pius IX, Pope, 59, 63Plastic surgery, 146Plummer, Jewel. See Cobb, Jewel Plummer

Index

251

Pohl, Esther Clayson. See Lovejoy, EstherClayson Pohl

Poland, women in medicine from/inBudzinski-Tylicka, Justine, 40Curie, Marie Sklodowska, 50–53, 51(photo),

112Joteyko, Josephine, 116Krajewska, Teodora, 122

Polio (infantile paralysis)research, xx, 60, 134, 135treatments, 118–120

Polonium, 50, 51, 112Pool, Judith Graham, 163Portugal, women physicians from, 48–49Possanner-Ehrenthal, Garbrielle, 163Practice of medicine

barred by France’s Chevandier Law, 42private practice difficult for women, 22, 29,

30, 165–166, 203without a license, 73, 76, 191See also specific physicians

PregnancyAspasia’s writings on, 14du Coudray’s anatomical model, 66fetal development, 178fetal heartbeat, detection of, 35lung development during, 15Rh factor and, 56Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), 186teen pregnancy, 62, 69thalidomide during, xx, 118, 195, 196X-rays during, 190See also Childbirth; Midwives; Obstetrics and

gynecologyPremature infants, 14, 15Presbyterian missionaries, 82–83. See also

Missionaries, medicalPreston, Ann, xx, 29, 44, 105, 163–165,

164(photo)Preventive medicine, 166. See also Public healthPrinceton University, 5Prisons, 63Prostitution, 65, 204, 215Protein, 57, 161Protestant missionaries, 144. See also Baptist

missionaries; Methodist missionaries;Presbyterian missionaries

Psychiatry and psychologyCraighill’s practice, 49[Anna] Freud’s work, 81Horney’s work, 99–100Joteyko’s work, 116Klein’s work, 121–122Kubler-Ross’s work, 123–124Miller’s work on the psychology of women,

142–143Public health, xviii, 165–167

Baker’s work, 18–19, 166in China, 83Daniel’s work, 56Dix’s work, 62–63, 166early opportunities for women, 21, 165graduate degrees in, 166Hyde’s work, 102Manley’s work, 136–137Mendenhall’s work, 141milk safety, 73, 74, 131Novello’s work, 153nursing and, 65, 208 (see also Nursing and

nurses)occupational health, xx, 89, 90–91[E.] Richards’ work, 172Ruys’ work, 175surgeons general (U.S.), xvii, 69–70, 136,

152–153[L.] Wald’s work, 166, 209World Health Organization (WHO), 39–40,

141, 165, 185See also Barton, Clara; Hygiene; and specific

diseases, issues, and public health departmentsPublic Health Service (U.S.), 4, 68, 74, 86. See also

Surgeons generalPuerto Rico, women physicians from, 152–153Pulmonary surfactant, 14, 15Putnam, Mary Corinna. See Jacobi, Mary

Corinna Putnam

Quimby, Edith Hinkley, 169(photo), 169–170

Rabies, diagnosis of, 215Race and women in medicine, 217–220. See also

African American women in medicine;Women of color in medicine

Race research, 219–220Radiation and radioactivity

artificial radiation discovered, 112dangers of, 52, 113prenatal X-rays, 190radioactivity discovered, 51radioimmunoassay of peptide hormones,

223–224safe handling of materials, 169–170See also Curie, Marie Sklodowska

Radium, 50, 51, 169Radium Institute (France), 52, 112, 113. See also

Curie, Marie Sklodowska; Joliot-Curie,Irene

Radnitz, Gerty Theresa. See Cori, Gerty TheresaRadnitz

Ramsey, Mimi, 171Randall, Sir John, 80Red Cross, 186. See also American Red CrossReed, Dorothy. See Mendenhall, Dorothy ReedRemond, Charles, 172

Index

252

Remond, Sarah Parker, 171–172Report of the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts

(Shattuck), 165Research

difficulties for women, 101drug research (see Antibiotics; Chemotherapy;

Malaria; and specific drugs)early opportunities for women, 21husband-and-wife teams, 47 (see also

Husband-and-wife teams)management skills and, 94race research, 219–220See also Cancer research; and specific fields and

researchersRespiratory diseases, 115Respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), 14, 15Retroviruses, 220. See also Acquired immune

deficiency syndrome (AIDS)Rh factor, 56Ribosomes, 161Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow, 166, 172Richards, Linda, 135, 173(photo), 173Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo),

174–175Rockefeller Institute, research at, 127, 160Rodriguez-Dulanto, Laura Esther, 175Role models, lack of, 219Roman Catholic Church

Catholic missionaries, 59, 144nuns as nurses, 58–59, 150

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 24, 120Roosevelt, Theodore, 26Ross, Emmanuel Robert (Manny), 123, 124Royal College of Midwives, 159Royal College of Physicians, 199, 209Royal Free Hospital (London), 10, 110Rush Medical College, 133

students, 29, 33, 133, 198Russell Gurney Enabling Act (Great Britain,

1876), 110, 139, 175. See also Medical ActRussell, William Howard, 150Russia, women in medicine from/in, 22, 64, 104,

189, 213Ruys, A. Charlotte, 175–176

el Saadawi, Nawal, 177–178Sabin, Florence Rena, 141, 178(photo), 178–179Salber, Eva Juliet, xix, 179Salerno, University of, 202Salpêtrière Asylum, 179–180Sanger, Margaret, xviii–xix, 46, 166, 180(photo),

180–181Sanitation, 172. See also CleanlinessSaunders, Cicely Mary Strode, 181, 207Scarlet fever, 60Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, 182Schmideberg, Melitta, 121, 122

Schorske, Florence. See Wald, Florence SchorskeScopolamine-morphine, during childbirth, 203Scotland

certification, 38medical schools for women (see Edinburgh

School of Medicine for Women; MedicalCollege for Women)

women physicians from, xvii, 19, 103–104, 209(see also Jex-Blake, Sophia)

See also Scottish Women’s Hospitals; UnitedKingdom, women in medicine from/in

Scottish Women’s Hospitals, xvii, 103–104, 165,182

Scudder, Ida Sophia, xx, 145, 183Seacole, Mary Jane Grant, 184Seibert, Florence Barbara, 184–185, 185(photo)Settlement houses, xvii–xviii, 65, 90, 208Sewall, Lucy Ellen, 109, 185Sex education, xviii–xix, 69, 70, 215. See also

Birth controlSex in Education; or A Fair Chance for the Girls

(Clarke), 20Shaibany, Homa, 186Shattuck, Lemuel, 165Shattuck Report, 165Sheppard-Towner Act (U.S., 1921), 186Sherrill, Mary Lura, 162, 187Sickle cell anemia, 77Siegemundin, Justine Dittrichin, 187Simpson, Sir James Young, 33Sison, Antonio, 4Sklodowska, Bronia, 51Sklodowska, Marie. See Curie, Marie

SklodowskaSleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), 160Smith, Susan Maria. See Steward, Susan Maria

Smith McKinneySocial activism, xvii–xix. See also Birth control;

Settlement houses; Women’s [rights]movements

Society of American Bacteriologists, 74Society of Apothecaries (U.K.), 9, 191Solis, Manuela, 187Solis Quiroga, Margarita Delgado de, 187Somerville College, Oxford University, 97, 216Songram, Luang Pibul, 204South Africa, women physicians in, 25, 136, 179Soviet Union. See RussiaSpaangberg-Holth, Marie, 188Spain, first female physician in, 187Sparkman Act (U.S., 1943), 24Spoerry, Anne, 188St. Christopher’s Hospice (England), 181, 207St. Mary’s Hospital (Rochester, Minnesota),

58–59Standard Curriculum for Schools of Nursing

(Nutting), 155

Index

253

Stanford University, 46–47graduates, 72, 160

Sterilization, 92Stern, Lina Solomonova, 188–189, 189(photo)Sternberg, Carl, 141Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney, 189–190Stewart, Alice, 190Stone, Emma Constance, 191Stone, Lucy, 34Stowe, Emily, 191–192Strang, Elise Depew. See L’Esperance, Elise

Depew StrangStreptococci bacteria, 126, 127Stretchers, 119Stuart, Emmeline, 145Success, barriers to. See Barriers to success;

Obstacles to medical trainingSuicide, physician-assisted, 62, 208Sundquist, Alma, 192Surgeons general (U.S.), xvii, 69–70, 136,

152–153Surgery

black female surgeons, 37–38, 61licensing of women in 17th-century England,

22neurosurgery (see Conley, Frances Krauskopf)obstetrical/gynecological surgeries, 4, 44, 114pediatric cardiac surgery, 195–196plastic surgeons, 146Thompson’s work, 197–198

Sussman, Rosalyn. See Yalow, Rosalyn SussmanSwain, Clara A., 192–193Swallow, Ellen Henrietta. See Richards, Ellen

Henrietta SwallowSweden, first woman physician in, 215Switzerland, women in medicine from, 122–124Sylvain, Yvonne, 193Sylvia Stretcher, 119

Taussig, Frank W., 195Taussig, Helen Brooke, 195–197, 196(photo)Taylor, Eleanor Jane. See Calverley, Eleanor Jane

TaylorTetralogy of Fallot, 195–196Textbook for Materia Medica for Nurses (Dock),

64Thailand, women physicians from, 203–204Thalidomide, xx, 118, 195, 196Thomas, M. Carey, 111Thompson, Mary Harris, 197–198Thoms, Adah Belle Samuels, 79Thurlow, Madge. See Macklin, Madge ThurlowTibetan funerals, 93Tilghman, Philip Leder, 198Tilghman, Shirley Marie Caldwell, 198Todd, Margaret, 110Tokyo Women’s Medical College, 224

Toward a New Psychology of Women (Miller),142–143

Trout, Jennie Kidd, 192, 198Trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), 160Tryparsamide, 160Tuberculosis

Navajo treated for, 213research on, 43, 184–185, 199tuberculin skin test, 184–185

Tufts, Henry, 157Turkey

Nightingale’s work in, 150–151women physicians, 5

Turner-Warwick, Margaret, 199Twins, birth of, 66Typhoid fever, 43, 172, 175

Undulant fever, 74Union Conscription Act (U.S., 1863), 31United Kingdom

Abortion Act, 20acceptance of women physicians, 211backlash against women medical students,

210black nurses, 217–218British Army, 24–25, 151–152, 209hospice movement, 181licensing of women physicians, 9, 22, 109–110,

139, 175Midwives Act (1902), 159National Insurance Act, xviiiNightingale’s work in, 150race research in, 219See also Scotland; United Kingdom, women in

medicine from/inUnited Kingdom, women in medicine from/in

Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett, xix, 8–10,9(photo), 31, 32, 103, 107, 182, 210 (see alsoElizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital; NewHospital for Women and Children)

Ashby, Winifred Mayer, 13–14Balfour, Margaret Ida, 19Barnes, Alice Josephine, 20Barry, James, xix–xx, 24–25Brown, Edith Mary, 38Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 80–81Hoby, Lady Margaret, 96Hodgkin, Dorothy Mary Crowfoot, 96–98Inglis, Elsie Maude, xvii, xx, 103–104, 182Jex-Blake, Sophia, 10, 32, 69, 109–111, 175 (see

also Edinburgh School of Medicine forWomen)

Klein, Melanie, 121–122Lyon, Mary Frances, 132, 132(photo)medical training, 9, 30–31, 32 (see also specific

schools)Murray, Flora, 146

Index

254

United Kingdom, women in medicine from/in,continued

Nightingale, Florence (see Nightingale,Florence)

Paget, Mary, 159Saunders, Cicely Mary Strode, 181, 207Scharlieb, Mary Ann Dacomb Bird, 182Stewart, Alice, 190Turner-Warwick, Margaret, 199Walker, Mary Broadfoot, 209Whately, Mary Louisa, 145, 214–215Williams, Cicely Delphin, 216–217See also Blackwell, Elizabeth

United States of Americaarmed forces (see Army, U.S.; Military

commissions for women; Navy, U.S.)Civil War, 25–26, 31, 165, 209–210Comstock Act (1873), xix, 46Congressional Medal of Honor, 209–210hospice movement, 207–208mental illness, historic care for people with,

62–63National Economy Act, xviiinumber of women physicians, 211Red Cross (see American Red Cross)Sheppard-Towner Act (1921), 186tuberculin skin test adopted, 185women in medicine (see Native American

women in medicine; United States ofAmerica, nurses from/in; United States ofAmerica, women physicians from/in;United States of America, women scientistsfrom/in)

United States of America, nurses from/inBarton, Clara, 25(photo), 25–26, 64, 166,

210black nurses, 79–80, 135–136, 217–218Blanchfield, Florence Aby, 34–35, 218Delano, Jane Arminda, 57–58, 58(photo),

123–124Dempsey, Sister Mary Joseph (Julia), 58–59Dock, Lavinia Lloyd, 64–65, 174Franklin, Martha Minerva, 79–80, 218Goodrich, Annie Warburton, xx, 85–87,

86(photo)Mahoney, Mary Eliza, xix, 79, 135–136, 218McGee, Anita Newcomb, 138(photo), 138–139Nutting, Mary Adelaide, 154–155Ramsey, Mimi, 171Richards, Linda, 135, 173(photo), 173Robb, Isabel Hampton, 64, 154, 174(photo),

174–175Sanger, Margaret, xviii–xix, 46, 166,

180(photo), 180–181Wald, Florence Schorske, 207–208Wald, Lillian D., xviii, xx, 64, 65, 166,

208(photo), 208–209

See also American Nurses Association; Army,U.S.; United States of America

United States of America, women physiciansfrom/in

Abbott, Maude Elizabeth Seymour, xx,1(photo), 1–3, 196

African American women (see AfricanAmerican women in medicine)

Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth, 4–5Alvord, Lori Arviso, 5–6Apgar, Virginia, xx, 11–13, 12(photo)Avery, Mary Ellen, 14–15Bacheler, Mary Washington, 17–18Baker, Sara Josephine, xviii, 18(photo), 18–19,

166Barringer, Emily Dunning, 23–24Blackwell, Elizabeth (see Blackwell, Elizabeth)Blackwell, Emily, xix, 28, 29–30, 33–34, 208,

214Britton, Mary E., 37Brown, Dorothy Lavinia, 37–38, 38(photo)Calverley, Eleanor Jane Taylor, 41Canady, Alexa Irene, 41–42Chinn, May Edward, xix, 42–43, 219Claypole, Edith Jane, 43–44Cleveland, Emeline Horton, xx, 44, 164Cobb, Jewel Plummer, 44–45Cole, Rebecca, 45, 164Conley, Frances Krauskopf, 46–47Cori, Gerty Theresa Radnitz, 47(photo), 47–48Craighill, Margaret, xx, 6, 49, 49(photo)Crosby, Elizabeth Caroline, 49–50Crumpler, Rebecca Lee, 50Daniel, Annie Sturges, 56Dejerine-Klumpke, Augusta, 57Dick, Gladys Rowena Henry, 60(photo), 60–61Dickens, Helen Octavia, 61(photo), 61–62Dickey, Nancy Wilson, xvii, 23, 62, 212Dolley, Sarah Read Adamson, 65–66Dunn, Thelma Brumfield, 67–68Elders, Minnie Joycelyn, 69–70, 153Ferguson, Angela Dorothea, 77–78first woman physician (see Blackwell,

Elizabeth)Fowler, Lydia Folger, 79Fulton, Mary Hannah, 82–83, 87, 144Hamilton, Alice, xviii, xx, 89–91, 90(photo), 166Healy, Bernadine, 94Hemenway, Ruth V., 95Hispanic American women, 153–154, 219Horney, Karen Theodora Clementina

Danielsen, 99–100Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam (Mary

Putnam), xix, 24, 32, 105(photo), 105–107,164

Jemison, Mae Carol, 108–109Jones, Mary Amanda Dixon, 113–114

Index

255

Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway, 120–121Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth, 122–124LaFlesche Picotte, Susan, 125–126L’Esperance, Elise Depew Strang, 128Longshore, Hannah Myers, 130–131, 148Lovejoy, Esther Clayson Pohl, 131–132Mabie, Catharine Louise Roe, xx, 133–134Macklin, Madge Thurlow, 134Manley, Audrey Forbes, 136–137Mendenhall, Dorothy Reed, 141–142Mergler, Marie Josepha, 142Miller, Jean Baker, 142–143Minoka-Hill, Lillie Rosa, 143–144Morani, Alma Dea, 146, 146(photo)Novello, Antonia Coello, xvii, 152–153Osborn, June Elaine, 157–158Parrish, Rebecca, 160Pearce, Louise, 19, 160–161Preston, Ann, xx, 29, 44, 105, 163–165,

164(photo)Remond, Sarah Parker, 171–172Salber, Eva Juliet, xix, 179Sewall, Lucy Ellen, 109, 185statistics, 211, 219Steward, Susan Maria Smith McKinney,

189–190surgeons general, 69–70, 136, 152–153Taussig, Helen Brooke, 195–197, 196(photo)Thompson, Mary Harris, 197–198Van Hoosen, Bertha, 6, 203Walker, Mary Edwards, 31, 209–210Williams, Anna Wessels, 215–216Wright, Jane Cooke, 221, 221(photo)Zakrzewska, Marie (see Zakrzewska, Marie)See also United States of America

United States of America, women scientistsfrom/in

Brown, Rachel Fuller, 39, 92, 93Daly, Marie Maynard, 55–56Darrow, Ruth Renter, 56Dayhoff, Margaret Oakley, 57Dyer, Helen Marie, 68Elion, Gertrude Belle, 70–71Emerson, Gladys Anderson, 71–72, 72(photo)Evans, Alice Catherine, 73(photo), 73–74Farquhar, Marilyn Gist, 75–76Fenselau, Catherine Clarke, 76–77Friend, Charlotte, 82Hazen, Elizabeth Lee, 39, 92–93Hispanic American women, 204–205Hoobler, Icie Gertrude Macy, 98–99Hubbard, Ruth, 100(photo), 100–101Jones, Mary Ellen, 115Jordan, Lynda, 115–116Kaufman, Joyce Jacobson, 117–118Kelsey, Francis Oldham, xx, 118, 196Lancefield, Rebecca Craighill, 126–127

Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 128–130, 129(photo)Mandl, Ines, 136McClintock, Barbara, 137–138Neufeld, Elizabeth Fondal, 147Petermann, Mary Locke, 161–162Pickett, Lucy Weston, 162Pittman, Margaret, 162–163Pool, Judith Graham, 163Quimby, Edith Hinkley, 169(photo), 169–170Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow, 166, 172Sabin, Florence Rena, 141, 178(photo),

178–179Seibert, Florence Barbara, 184–185, 185(photo)Sherrill, Mary Lura, 162, 187Tilghman, Shirley Marie Caldwell, 198Villa-Komaroff, Lydia, 204–205Wetterhahn, Karen Elizabeth, 214Wong-Staal, Flossie, 220–221Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223(photo), 223–224See also United States of America

Universities. See specific universitiesUniversity College (U.K.), 9Uranium, 113. See also Radiation and

radioactivityUruguay, women physicians from, 132

Vaccination, 31–32, 43, 135, 162, 215van der Waals, Johannes D., 187Van Hoosen, Bertha, 6, 203Vejjabul, Pierra Hoon, 203–204Vellore [Christian] Medical College (India), xx,

127, 128, 145, 184Venereal disease, 107, 123, 192Victoria, Queen, 67, 159Villa, Amelia Chopitea, 204Villa-Komaroff, Lydia, 204–205Viruses, 71, 82, 220. See also Acquired immune

deficiency syndrome (AIDS)Visiting Nurses’ Service, xviii, 173, 208Vitamins, 72, 96–97Vivisection, 29, 106. See also DissectionVolhard, Christiane. See Nusslein-Volhard,

ChristianeVolunteer work by women, 165. See also

Missionaries, medical; Nursing and nurses

Waddington, Conrad H., 132Wald, Florence Schorske, 207–208Wald, George, 101Wald, Lillian D., xviii, xx, 64, 65, 166,

208(photo), 208–209Walker, Mary Broadfoot, 209Walker, Mary Edwards, 31, 209–210Walking Out on the Boys (Conley), 47Wars, and women in medicine, xviii, 210–211.

See also Civil War (U.S.); Crimean War;World War I; World War II

Index

256

Watson, James D., 81Wauneka, Annie Dodge, 212–213Weizmann, Chaim, 213Weizmann, Vera, 213Welch, William Henry, 111, 120, 141West, Rose, 165Western Pennsylvania Hospital, 99Western Reserve College, 214

graduates, 30, 33, 225Wetterhahn, Karen Elizabeth, 214Whately, Mary Louisa, 145, 214–215Whipple, Alan, xix, 11–12White, John, 97WHO. See World Health OrganizationWho’s Who Among the Microbes (Williams and

Park), 216Widerstrom, Karolina, 215Wieschaus, Eric F., 153Wilkins, Maurice, 80Williams, Anna Wessels, 215–216Williams, Cicely Delphin, 216–217Willis, Dr., 9Wilson, Nancy. See Dickey, Nancy WilsonWinslow, Charles-Edward Amory, 166WMNA. See American Medical Women’s

AssociationWomen of color in medicine, 217–220

black nurses, 79, 135, 184, 217–218See also African American women in

medicine; and specific women of colorWomen’s Hospital Corps (France), 146Women’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 44, 164

graduates and interns, 79, 125, 143, 146Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania,

139–140, 140(photo)clinical experience, 30, 164deans, 44, 49, 163 (see also Preston, Ann)faculty, 14, 146name changed, 164and the New England Female Medical

College, 147–148Pearce as president, 161students and graduates, 4, 44, 82, 105, 114,

125, 130, 143, 146, 183, 191, 192Women’s Medical College of the New York

Infirmary for Women and Children, 30, 31,32, 34

closure, 148curriculum and standards, 21–22, 31faculty and staff, 31, 106students and graduates, 17, 18–19, 24, 56, 128,

198, 208, 215See also Blackwell, Elizabeth; Blackwell,

Emily; Zakrzewska, MarieWomen’s Medical Service (India), 19, 127Women’s [rights] movements, xviii

in the Arab world (see el Saadawi, Nawal)

Blackwell sisters’ views on, 29, 30, 33–34and education, 213–214and female medical missionaries, 144Remond’s activism, 171, 172Walker’s support of, 209

Wong-Staal, Flossie, 220–221The Work of Medical Women in India (Balfour), 19World Health Organization (WHO), 39–40, 141,

165, 185World War I

American Women’s Hospital Service, 6, 7 (seealso American Women’s Hospital Service)

Barringer’s work during, 24benefits to nonwhite races anticipated, 217equality of women physicians, 211Jacobs’ views on, 108munitions work, 90–91, 190nurses and nursing during, 34, 57, 58, 86, 119,

217–218Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 103–104, 165, 182

(see also Inglis, Elsie Maude)Shaibany’s work during, 186women health care workers overwhelmed

during, 140women restricted following, xviii, 165,

210–211Women’s Hospital Corps (France), 146

World War IIAmerican Women’s Hospital Service during,

6Army Nurse Corps (ANC) during, 35Barringer’s work during, 24concentration camps, xx, 92, 123, 188Dutch Resistance, 175–176French Resistance, 113, 188Kubler-Ross’s work in post-war Poland, 123Manhattan Project, 169military commissions for female

nurses/physicians, 35, 49, 211 (see alsoArmy, U.S.; Navy, U.S.)

munitions work, 91penicillin needed, 97

Wright, Jane Cooke, 221, 221(photo)Wright, Louis Tompkins, 221

X-rayschromosome repair following exposure to,

137Pickett’s research on, 162prenatal X-rays, 190X-ray crystallography, 96, 97, 162

Yale Universityfaculty, 86graduates, 98, 115, 184, 207School of Nursing, 86, 207

Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 223(photo), 223–224

Index

257

Yellow fever, 210Yoshioka, Yayoi, 224

Zaire. See Congo, Democratic Republic ofZakrzewska, Marie, 225–226

and the Blackwells’ infirmary, 30, 33, 225education, 30, 214, 225hospital founded, 31, 148, 225–226 (see also

New England Hospital [for Women andChildren])

and Lucy Sewall, 185and the New England Female Medical

College, 148, 225Zon, Leonard, 154Zovirax (acyclovir), 71Zurich, University of, 123, 163

259

About the Author

Laura Lynn Windsor is a health sciences reference librarian at Ohio University. She has beena reference librarian at public and academic libraries for more than fifteen years. She is amember of the American Library Association and the Medical Library Association.

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