Medicine as profession -
"gatekeeping".
Authority, expertise
Colonial America -
Family, community
healers
Domestic medical
manuals, herbs
apprenticeship training
Medical College of
Philadelphia 1765.
1810-1820 med schools
Baltimore, Cincinnati, Vermont, Western New York
Mainstream medical care
"heroic
measures" (bleeding, purging, blistering, heavy doses of mercury)
Sectarianism -
homeopaths "law of
similars"
hydropathy - water
treatment
Thomsonianism - botanic
medicine
1900 160 med schools in
US
1893 Johns Hopkins
1904 AMA Council on
Medical Education - Abraham Flexner - 1910 Flexner report
Edward Clarke: "God
forbid I should ever see men & women aiding each other to display with the
scalpel the secrets of the reproductive system or charmingly discuss syphilis
together." "separate spheres"
1892: "Medicine is
disgusting to women accustomed to the soft side of life."
1871 president AMA
called women in medicine "monstrous productions seeking to rival
men"; editor Buffalo Med Journal called women doctors "loathsome
& disgusting"
Godey's Lady's Book: "Talk
about medicine being the appropriate sphere of man alone! With tenfold more plausibility &
reason, might we say, it is the appropriate sphere of women alone."
1870s Boston Med
Journal:
"And when the
ladies get degrees,
depend on it there's
nothing will please,
til they have got our
chairs and fees,
and there's an end of
you and me."
nurses "proper
station" -
Journal American Medical
Association 1901: nurse too "often conceited & too unconscious of the
due subordination she owes to the medical profession."
Elizabeth Blackwell -
born England 1821,
Geneva College, New York
- degree 1849
1853 NY Infirmary for
Women & Children
sister Emily Blackwell
Harriot Hunt
Born 1805
1835 set up medical
practice in Boston,
1847 applied Harvard:
"it seemed farcical to asked whether a woman who had been practicing
medicine many years might be allowed to share the privilege of drinking at the
fountains of science - a privilege which would not impoverish them, but make me
rich indeed."
no woman "of true
delicacy" would want to attend medical lectures - "We object to
having the company of any female forced upon us, who is disposed to unsex
herself & sacrifice her modesty by appearing with men in the medical
lecture room."
"If I had had
cholera, I could not have been more avoided than I was."
1848 New England Female
Medical College
"that nice sense of
delicacy which is the ornament of the female character, the soul of virtue
& the safeguard of morals, would be maintained."
Graduates get title
"doctress"
Other women doctors
disappointed: "Not one of my expectations for a thorough medical education
for women has been realized. If it
were the intention of the trustees to supply the country with ill-educated
women under the name of physicians, the NEFMC is on the right track."
1864 Rebecca Lee -
practice in Richmond, VA.
Mary Thompson Chicago
& 1865 hospital for women & children
NEFMC collapsed early
1870s.
Women's Medical College
of Pennsylvania - 1850, Philadelphia
Degrees "would not
be inferior to those of any other medical institution of this country."
Marie Zakrewska
- born Berlin 1829,
1849 study at Prussian
medical school
1853 to New York
Cleveland Medical
College
1862 set up New England
Hospital for Women & Children - Boston
support from Woman's
Journal
Mary Jacobi: "You
must combine to resolve the difficulties which stand in your way to prevent
woman from demonstrating her ability.
We have not yet reached the time when it will be as natural for a family
to employ a woman physician as a man.
To bring about this state will require much individual & collective
persistent effort."
Women's Med. Coll. Of PA:
"We look to you [women doctors] to elevate the profession's
standards. You bring to the profession
the spirit & life of true woman and infuse more purity in the ranks."
Boston peaked 1900 -
women 18.2% city's doctors - Boston University, Tufts
overall, women probably
peak at 6% of all American doctors in 1910;
1893 Woman's Medical
Journal
1881 committee including
Zakrzewka & Blackwell raised $50,000 to make Harvard coed; raise to
$500,000 for Johns Hopkins;
Mary Jacobi: "It is
astonishing how many firm objections to admitting women, listing feasibility,
modesty & propriety will melt away before the charmed touch of a few
thousand dollars."
Emily Blackwell:
"We had held open the doors for women until broader gates had swung wide
for their admission."
1902-1926 number of
women medical students down 25%.
Hopkins women 33% of
class in 1896, 10% 1916.
Michigan from 25% in
1890 to 3% 1910.
1935 half US hospitals
still never employed woman doctor.
Medical College of
Chicago - founded in 1870,
By 1892 graduated 350
women doctors, merge with Northwestern University;
1902 Northwestern closes
women's division - not allowed again til 1926 with gift from Mrs. Montgomery
Ward,
Florence Sabin
(1871-1953) -
Undergrad degree Smith
1893, entered Hopkins med sch 1896.
1900 Hopkins MD
1902 first woman faculty
member Hopkins Med Sch, assistant professor in anatomy
first woman full professor
in histology - development blood cells, lymph nodes;
1925 NY's Rockefeller
Institute - work on tuberculosis;
1944 Colorado public
health committee - lobbying state for reform legislation, reorganizing state
health dept.
Alice Hamilton
(1869-1970)
Degree Michigan 1893
Working with Jane Addams
at Hull House, Chicago
1911 US govt's Bureau of
Labor
industrial health -
lead, radium
1918 Harvard position of industrial medicine in school of
public health