Female Medical College
&
Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania
Presented by Sylvain
Cazalet
Although the
development of homeopathy in the USA appeared to be slightly belated,
the extent to which homeopathy developed in America is quite
incomparable with other countries.Imported in the
United States in the 1820s, by the 1840s homeopathy boasted
practitioners better educated than many regular physicians, had its own
institutions and had grown to be a formidable rival to the orthodox
profession… The central dogma ‘like cures like’ posed a
fundamental intellectual change to the orthodox conviction that
treatment should counterbalance the action of disease.
Henry
DETWILLER (1795-1887)In the
1830-40s, homeopathy in the USA became institutionalized by the founding
of homeopathic educational facilities.A pioneer in
this field was Dr. William Wesselhoeft of Bath, Northampton County.
Wesselhoeft, who started a small school in Bath, was one of the founders
of the Allentown institution.Constantine
Hering [known as the father of American homeopathy] was a German
Homeopath who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1830’s.In April 10,
1835 Henry Detwiller [1795-1887, a
Swiss emigrant who studied homeopathy on his own], William Wesselhoeft,
Romig and Constantine Hering established the Nordamerikanische Academie
der Homoeopathische Heilkunst in Allentown,
Pennsylvannia. The Academy flourished until 1843 when it was discovered
that its treasurer, Allentown banker John Rice, had embezzled the
school’s funds. All instructions were in German and, partly because of
that fact, the Academy was compelled to close in 1841.
Allentown
Homoeopathic Academy
College of Philadelphia – 1900Though not
aiming at a detailed analysis of the reasons that led to the flourishing
of homeopathy in America in the 19th century, I have first to
point out that American homeopaths succeeded to create their own system
of education and postgraduate training. This became possible due to a
relatively insignificant role (in comparison to other European
countries, including Russia) played by the State legislative system in
the process of licensing medical practitioners in America.
Dr Adolphe
Lippe was graduated from the University of Berlin who emigrated to the
United States in 1839 he presented himself to the sole school of the
homeopathic practice in this country – the old Allentown
Academy of the Homoeopathic Healing Art. After assiduous
application he was granted his diploma from Dr.
Constantine Hering, as President of the institution, on July
27, 1841.In 1848
Constantine Hering succeeded in obtaining a charter for the Homeopathic
Medical College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia; this was to remain
throughout the century the center of homeopathic learning in the United
States and, in the fact, the whole world.Apart from
this, the American Institute of Homeopathy (A.I.H.), the main
authoritative body of homeopathic practitioners in the USA, was
established in 1844 “in response to the lack of national medical
standards”.– Dr
Constantine Hering, of Philadelphia was elected President;
– Dr Josiah F. Flagg, of Boston, Vice President,
– Dr William Channing, of New York, Vice President,
– Dr Henry G. Dunnel, Secretary.
Two Separate
Beginnings at 229 Arch StreetHomeopathy
was brought to the United States (beginning in 1825) by several doctors
who had studied in Europe. They,
in turn, converted other doctors to homeopathic practice. Slowly schools were established,
and a medical organization was formed. By the mid-1800’s, several
medical colleges existed that taught homeopathy, including the New
England Female Medical College, the first medical school in the U.S. to
admit women, and the Medical College of Pennsylvania..Both the Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania and Homeopathic Medical College of
Pennsylvania were founded on progressive principles, and innovation has
remained a hallmark of both institutions for over150 years.
Ironically, both institutions met their first classes in the same Arch
Street building in the city of Philadelphia.
Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania &
Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania
229 Arch Street – Philadelphia – 1850Homeopathic Medical College of
Pennsylvania
distinguished physicians, Constantine
Hering, Jacob Jeanes and Walter Williamson joined together to rent
rooms in a building at the rear of a Philadelphia pharmacy at 229 Arch Street. All three doctors were
proponents of an innovative system of medical treatment called
homeopathy, a system of medicine developed by German physician Samuel
Hahnemann that attempts to stimulate the body to heal itself. With
fifteen students and eight instructors, they began the Homeopathic
Medical College of Pennsylvania. Offering joint M.D. and H.M.D
degrees, it was the first successful center for homeopathic education in
the world, and the last medical school to offer elective courses
in homeopathy.
Dr
Constantine Hering
Dr Jacob
Jeanes
Dr Walter
WilliamsonTwo years after
its founding, the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania moved to
larger quarters. In 1850, the building at 229 Arch Street became the
home of another new and innovative medical school—the Female Medical
College of Pennsylvania. Emerging from the reformist spirit which
characterized mid-nineteenth century America, it was founded by a small
group of Quaker businessmen, clergy, and physicians and headed by
philanthropist William J. Mullen. It was the first medical school for
women in the world and the last medical school in the world to provide
medical education exclusively for women.
1850:
Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania
1105 Filbert Street
1867:
Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia
1307 Chestnut Street
In 1849, a
cholera epidemic swept the nation. Because of the superior results
achieved by homeopathic physicians, many orthodox doctors took up the
practice of homeopathy. At the same time, many of the intelligentsia
were attracted to homeopathy because of its scientific basis in
experimental pharmacology.
In Honor of
Samuel HahnemannIn 1850, the
Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania moved to larger quarters at 1105 Filbert Street, which would house the
college for the next 37 years. In 1867,
Constantine Hering withdrew from The Homeopathic Medical College of
Pennsylvania because he maintained that the teaching of pathology should
be included in the curriculum. That year, he founded Hahnemann Medical
College of Philadelphia located at 1307
Chestnut Street. In 1869, the
faculties of the two schools mended the rift and reunited at the Filbert
Street Address under the Hahnemann name in honor of the father of
homeopathy. They rebuilt their hospital, and it was chartered as the
Homeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia.
Drs Boericke
& TafelIn 1850, the
18-year-old Rudolph and Adolph. J. Tafel
met Francis Edmund Boericke, and
invited Boericke to assist in some English to German translating. Dr.
Hering persuaded Francis E. Boericke and Adolph J. Tafel to enter into the
manufacture and sale of homeopathic medicines. In 1857 Boericke entered
the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, but kept his pharmacy
operating. In 1862, William Radde, Jr. died, and Boericke bought the
Radde pharmacy and kept it running. Adolph J. Tafel had returned to
Philadelphia, and Boericke sold him the pharmacy at 48 N. 9th Street in
1863, keeping the Radde Pharmacy at 635 Arch St. Boericke graduated with
his MD degree in 1863.In 1862
homeopaths controlled 110 hospitals, 145 dispensaries, over 30 nursing
homes, 62 orphan asylums and retirement homes, and 16 insane asylums in
the United States. Homeopathic Hospital, Cuthbert Street, west of
Eleventh, under the control of the Hahnemann Medical College.Frederick
Humphreys was an 1850 graduate of the Homeopathic Medical College of
Pennsylvania. In 1852, he did the first proving of Apis.
Dr Jabez P.
Dake
President of A.I.H.Jabez P. Dake, M.D., was born in Johnstown,
Fulton County, New York, April 22, 1827, son of Dr. Faber Dake, an
allopathic physician who converted to homeopathy in 1843. Young Dr. Dake
graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1849 and from
the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1851 where he was
professor of materia medica and therapeutics 1855 to 1857 and of
pathology and principles and practice 1876-77.Dr Adolphe
Lippe filled the chair of materia medica in the Homoeopathic College of
Pennsylvania from 1863 to 1868 and with distinguished success.
Dr Pemberton
Dudley
President of the A.I.H.Dr. Pemberton Dudley M.D., L.L.D., of
Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, born October 17, 1837, in
Pennsylvania, precepted under a David Jones, M.D., for two years before
entering Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia for a period of time
and then graduating from the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania
on March 1, 1861. He participated in the founding of the Homeopathic
Medical Society of Pennsylvania in 1866 which he joined in 1867, joining
the American Institute of Homeopathy in 1869. His editorship of the Hahnemannian Monthly 1880 to 1887 may
have prompted his invitation to speak at the Second Annual Session as
his journal was one of those in which Dr. Stout’s initial call for the
formation of the Southern regional association had been published. He
served on the visiting staff of the Children’s Homeopathic Hospital in
Philadelphia for several years following its establishment in 1876. In
1868, he was made professor of chemistry and toxicology at the
Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, participated in its merger
with Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, effected in 1869, and,
in 1878, was made professor of physiology and microanatomy in the
consolidated institution.S.E. Allen,
M.D., is a native of Burlington County, N.J., having been born July 18,
1835. After the age of eight years he lived in the city of Philadelphia
till 1858, when he located near Whiteleysburgh Md., remaining in the
practice of medicine there over eleven years. He read medicine with Dr.
Lenox Hodge of Philadelphia, and graduated from the Medical University
of Pennsylvania in 1858, and in the spring of 1869, he graduated from
the Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, receiving a double
diploma. He was in practice in the city of Philadelphia nearly ten years
prior to 1878, when he was obliged to abandon it on account of failing
health. He spent three years traveling. In the spring of 1881, he
located at Independence, Kan., believing this climate would prove
beneficial, and the favorable effect which it has had upon his health,
has fully verified his judgment in regard to advantages and results. The
Doctor is now serving as a member of the Board of Education, having
served one term of a year, now on a two year term. He is a member of the
American Institute of Homeopathy. He was married in Burlington County,
N.J., July 14, 1870, to Margaretta Thompson, a native of that county.
They have three children – John E., Minerva M., and Herbert Spencer.Dr. Ernest
Albert Farrington (1847-1885) was essentially a teacher among men.
Already we find him, in the spring of 1869, filling a lecturer’s
appointment as teacher of Forensic Medicine in the spring course of the
Hahnemann Medical College. These lectures proved to be so satisfactory
that the Faculty, on the resignation of the Professor of Forensic
Medicine, after the session of 1869-70, elected him to fill the vacancy.
Within two years, the chair of Pathology and Diagnosis becoming vacant,
he was appointed to fill the same, and in 1874, upon the resignation of
Dr. Henry Newell Guernsey (1817-1885), then Professor of Materia Medica,
he was called to fill that most important chair.
1885: Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia
Broad and Vine Streets
1928: Hahnemann Medical College
and Hospital of Philadelphia
Broad
Street
In 1885 the
college and hospital were formally joined as the Hahnemann Medical
College and Hospital of Philadelphia, and relocated in grand style to
the present site near Broad and Vine Streets.
A new college was built in 1886 and a new hospital which included a
School of Nursing was opened in 1890.In 1888, the
first volume of the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States
(HPUS) was issued by the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention.By this time
there were over 2400 homeopathic physicians in the United States with
over 700 in New York and over 325 in Pennsylvania.Plans for
“Greater Hahnemann” were underway by 1928, and the Broad Street location became the site of one
the first high rise teaching hospitals in the world.Women and Homeopathy
Women
figured prominently in the history of American homeopathy. By 1900, it
is estimated that 12% of homeopathic physicians were women. The
Cleveland Homeopathic College was one of the first coeducational medical
institutions in the country. Women auxiliaries raised large amounts of
money to open many of the homeopathic hospitals and it was women, in
their role of family caretaker, who were the lay prescribers introducing
homeopathy to many communities. Some members of the women’s suffrage
movement were either homeopathic physicians or their patients. Dr. Susan
Edson, a graduate of the Cleveland Homeopathic College, was personal
physician to President Garfield.
Dr.
Jean Isabel MacKay-Gliddon1859-1912. She was married in July, 1897, to Rev. DePutron
Gliddon. She graduated from the public high school of Mount Carroll and
from the Mt. Morris Academy. She attended Lake Forest University, being
the first lady student admitted to that institution. Her medical
education was received in the Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago,
Illinois. After obtaining the degree of M.D. from that college, she took
post-graduate courses in obstetrics and the puerperal diseases in
Chicago and in Materia Medica in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She also
studied at the Homeopathic Hospital, London, England. Dr. Gliddon was
licensed to practice medicine in the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois,
Colorado, Montana and California. After serving as one of the physicians
of the Moody Medical Mission in Chicago, Dr. Gliddon moved to
Philadelphia where she was the physician-in-charge of the Woman’s
Homeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia and also lecturer in the diseases
of children in the Post Graduate School of Homeopathics.
Female Medical College of Pennsylvania
A Medical
College for Women
after Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from medical school in 1848, several
other milestones in the history of women physicians in America had
occurred. On March 11, 1850, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an act
to incorporate the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania—the first
regular medical school for women in America. The Philadelphia
institution was founded by four physicians (Dr. Joseph S. Longshore, of Philadelphia, was one
of the founders.) and four
philanthropists, several of whom were Quakers. By August of that year
the men had rented space at 229 Arch Street and were seeking local
physicians to join the faculty. Most established doctors of the city
would not associate with this radicul new enterprise; and of those
physicians who did “most were young and inexperienced as medical
teachers.” On October 12 forty students were greeted by six
faculty. In December of the following year eight women formed the first
graduating class. The first president, non-Quaker William J. Mullen, was
a dentist, inventor, neighborhood philanthropist, and “prison
agent.”
Woman’s Medical CollegeOne prominent
Philadelphia physician, Alfred Stille, seemed enthusiastic. He began his
lecture to medical students gathered in the surgical ampitheater of
Philadelphia hospital on January 2, 1869, with the historic greeting,
“Ladies and Gentlemen” and further noted “…so far as I
am personally concerned, I not only have no objection to seeing ladies
among a medical audience, but, on the other hand, I welcome them.”
In the 1840s Stille had been one of the founders of the American Medical
Association, and served as its President in 1871. He had a private
practice in Philadelphia for many years and was a professor at the
Pennsylvania Medical College from 1864 until 1883. Final acceptance of
women among the ranks of regular physicians, however reluctant it might
be for many physicians, required the approval of such leaders as Stille.
Women’s
Hospital and Medical
College of Philadelphia – 19001864:
hospital-based nursing programs begin at the Female Medical College of
Pennsylvania.In its early
days, the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, or Woman’s Medical
College as it was renamed in 1867, faced serious opposition
from the male medical establishment. Prevailing notions held women to be
too feeble-minded to succeed in the demanding arena of academic medicine
and too delicate to endure the physical requirements of clinical
practice.One of the most
serious barriers to the success of the college was the lack of clinical
experience available to its students and interns because area hospitals
would not allow women to attend lectures or to treat patients. To
remedy this situation, Ann Preston,
M.D., a member of the College’s first graduating class, founded Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the
college itself was housed in rented hospital space from 1862 to
1875. The college eventually built its own hospital, floor by
floor as funds allowed, from 1903 until 1913.
Other important events related to women
physicians soon followed the establishment of the Female Medical
Institute. On May 1, 1857, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell opened the New
York Infirmary for Women and Children—the first hospital in the United
States operated by women. In 1861 Quaker women founded the Woman’s
Hospital of Philadelphia to provide the Female Medical Institute with
better clinical opportunities. Rebecca Lee Crumpler became the first
African-American female physician to graduate from a medical school when
she finished studies at the New England Female Medical College in Boston
in 1864. By 1900 about a dozen black women had graduated from the
Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and more than 100 had finished
at U.S. medical schools. After the Civil War medical schools such as
those at the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa began to
admit women students on a scattered basis. Yet, “by 1893 only 37
out of the 105 regular institutions accepted them. Many of these were
part of the major state universities, most of which were founded after
the Civil War and were obligated by their charters to provide
coeducation.” Additional women’s medical schools opened in large
cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Boston. In 1892 the medical
school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore opened and included
women in its first class. By 1881, seventeen state medical
societies accepted women. Massachusetts was the first (1869), followed
by Kansas, Iowa and North Carolina in 1872.
Women’s
Hospital and Medical CollegeEmeline Horton
Cleveland, a graduate of 1855, following advanced training in Paris
became Philadelphia’s earliest woman surgeon, and one of the earliest in
the country. While carrying out a medical and surgical career (and
briefly serving as dean after Ann Preston’s death), she also was married
and raised a son.Dr. Elizabeth
Hannah Bates, 1832-1898; member of the 3rd graduating class (1854) of
Female Medical College of Pennsylvania.Elizabeth
Cohen, an 1857 graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia,
began practice in New Orleans about the same time that Louisa was
studying medicine in Dadeville, Alabama.
Women’s
Hospital of Philadelphia – 1900Clara Swain,
the first woman medical missionary to India, graduated from Woman’s Medical College in 1869, the first of
several hundred over the next one hundred years. The College also
welcomed in the nineteenth century students from India, Japan, Syria,
England, South America, and other countries. The school became more
widely known around the world than many larger, more prestigious
American medical schools.
Anna
Elizabeth Broomall (1847-1931)- She studied medicine and
graduated in 1871, at the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia. She
was immediately appointed Assistant Physician at the Women’s Hospital of
Philadelphia, where she remained until the spring of 1872. In the summer
of that year she went to Europe to complete her studies, and spent two
years in the hospitals of Vienna and Paris, returning in November 1874.
In August 1875, she was appointed Resident Physician in the Women’s
Hospital, and in 1878 was made Physician in Charge. In 1882 she resigned
to engage in private practice. In 1878 she was appointed Professor of
Obstetrics in the College, and she was also Obstetrician and
Gynecologist in the Women’s Hospital. Early in 1885 she was appointed
Consulting Physician and lecturer on Special Hygiene to the new College
for Women at Bryn Mawr.
Women’s
Hospital and Medical College of Philadelphia – 1920In 1890 more
than 4500 female physicians were counted in the U.S. census; a decade
later the number had risen to over 7300.
Women’s
Hospital – Dispensary for Women and Children
AFRICAN
AMERICAN WOMEN DOCTORSRebecca Lee Crumpler, Rebecca Lee Crumpler
was born in 1833. She worked from 1852-1860 as a nurse in Massachusetts.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler graduated from New England Female Medical College,
Boston in March 1864, as the first African American women to earn a
medical degree.Rebecca J.
Cole, M.D. (Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1867)
Dr. Rebecca J.
Cole was the second African American women in the United States to
receive a medical degree, and the first at the Woman’s Medical College
of Pennsylvania. Cole worked under Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (the first
woman doctor) focusing on poverty and urban overcrowding. Cole spent 50
years in medicine and social activism. She was the founder and operator
of the Woman’s Directory, a Philadelphia institution which offered
“medical legal aid to women.” She also founded the National
Association of Colored Women in 1896.
Susan Smith McKinney Steward, M.D. (Homeopathic New York
Medical College and Hospital for Women in 1870)
Dr. Steward was
the third African American woman to graduate from medical school. As New
York’s first African American woman physician she was an activist for
the temperance movement, racial equality, and care for the elderly. She
established Memorial Hospital for Women and Children in Brooklyn.
Sarah
Marinda Loguen Fraser (Syracuse University College of Medicine, 1876)Sarah Marinda Loguen (1850-1933) studied diligently under her family
physician, Dr. Michael D. Benedict”s tutelage, and as the result of
her hard work and his influence, she had no trouble getting admitted to
the Syracuse University College of Medicine that fall. When Sarah
received her M.D. in the spring of 1876, she became one of the first
African-American women physicians in the nation. The U.S. Census of 1920
listed only 65 African-American women active in medical practice.In September
1876 Sarah began her internship at Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Her
warm manner endeared her to the children in the wards, who called her
“Miss Doc.” Besides pediatric and obstetric cases, she also
frequently encountered nervous or mental patients on her rounds. In the
fall of 1878 Sarah moved to Boston to fill a six-month vacancy in an
internship at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Sarah
opened an office for private medical practice in a room on 13th Street,
N.W.Verina Morton Harris Jones (Woman’s Medical
College of Pennsylvania, 1888).
Verina Morton Harris Jones
was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She became a physician, clubwoman,
civil rights activist and suffragist. She attended the Women’s Medical
College of Pennsylvania, which was widely acknowledged as being one of
the best medical colleges for women, in the country, at that time.
Achiever Lulu Fleming, born on this same date, attended the same
college, in 1895. Jones attended from 1884 to 1888. Jones became the
first woman, black or white, to practice medicine in the state of
Mississippi.Lulu (Louise) Fleming, M.D. (Woman’s Medical
College of Pennsylvania, 1895).
Dr. Lulu Fleming was the first African American
woman to be commissioned for work in Africa by the Woman’s American
Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. After working as a missionary for
five years in Palabala, Congo (now Zaire), Fleming returned to the US
and began medical school. Her biography stated that “She was much
in demand as a speaker, solicitations coming from different
denominations. On one occasion she had the honor to be heard in
Spurgeon’s great chapel, in London, and to be very cordially greeted by
that wonderful man.”Eliza Anna Grier, M.D. (Woman’s Medical College
of Pennsylvania, 1897)
Dr. Eliza Grier
became the first African American doctor in the state of Georgia after
putting herself through college and medical school by working one year
and returning home to pick cotton the next, in order to pay for her
fees. After 14 years of college and medical school, Grier graduated and
returned to Atlanta. She dedicated her practice to the poor and
neglected in spite of frequent financial difficulties.
Matilda Arabelle Evans, M.D. (Woman’s Medical
College of Pennsylvania, 1897)
Dr.
Evans was the first woman licensed to practice medicine in South
Carolina. After working to put herself through medical school, she
opened a practice in Columbia, South Carolina. There she was the sole
woman surgeon in the state and transformed her house into a hospital.
Eventually Evans founded the Taylor Lane Hospital and Training School
which served the African American population in her community.
1843-Harriet Hunt organized the
Ladies Physiological Society in Boston, MA.1849-Elizabeth Blackwell became
the first American woman to receive a medical degree1850-Emily Blackwell became the
first female to engage extensively in major surgery1852-Dr. Nancy Talbot Clark
became the first women in the United States to seek certification from a
state society in 1852.1853-Harriet Hunt was awarded
an honorary medical degree from the Female Medical College of
Pennsylvania1855-Marie Zakrzewska
introduced the concept of medical records1864-Rebecca Lee Crumpler is
the first black female physician in the United States1864-Emily Roberts Jones is the
first woman to practice dentistry independently1870-University of Michigan is
the first state medical school to fully accept women
Women
healers in ancient times:James
(Miranda) Barry, 1795-1865: woman doctor in male
disguise.At the turn of the
nineteenth century, ten-year-old James Miranda Barry enrolled as a
medical student in Edinburgh, the start of a glorious career as a
military surgeon. Across the Empire, Barry achieved fame not only
as a brilliant physician, but as a legendary duellist, and a
celbrated social figure.But James Miranda Barry
was also a woman. Her greatest achievement of all had been to
‘pass’ for a man for more than fifty years.Dorothea
Lynde Dix, 1802-1887: Champion of humane
treatment of the mentally ill, founded the Pennsylvania Hospital
for the Insane at Harrisburg.About 1820, established a
school for girls in Boston and served as its head for the next
fifteen years.After visiting prisons in
Massachusetts in 1841 and finding the insane jailed with common
criminals, worked to improve conditions in almshouses and prisons.In 1843, asked the
Massachusetts legislature for reforms to end inhumane conditions;
her efforts eventually resulted in the founding of special
facilities for the insane and destitute in the United States,
Canada, and Europe.In 1861, during the
American Civil War, served as superintendent of women nurses for
the Union army; initially she accepted as nurses only women over
age thirty, plain, and of good moral character.
1813-1872: was a pioneer woman doctor who devoted her life to
medical education for women.In 1847, at the age of
34, she enrolled herself as an apprentice in the office of Dr.
Nathaniel Mosely, and after two years of apprenticeship began
applying to medical colleges. She was turned down because she was
a woman. In 1850, a group of Quakers organized the first women’s
medical college, at 227 Arch Street, called the Female Medical
College of Pennsylvania. Ann Preston enrolled in the first class
and graduated the following year. In 1853, she was appointed
professor of physiology and hygiene and in 1866, she became dean
of the College- the first woman to hold this post. Under her
leadership, the College trained the first African American and the
first Native American woman doctors in the country.
Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1813-1888)
Lozier girls’ school,
which she opened in her home (1820s) when her husband’s health
failed, included subjects which reflected her own interests,
including anatomy, physiology, and hygiene. While teaching, she
was learning to be a physician by studying under her
physician-brother. During the 1840, she was active in several
reform movements. In 1849, she entered the Central Medical College
of Rochester, and graduated from its successor, Syracuse Medical
College, in 1853. While running a thriving medical practice in New
York City as an ob/gyn, she continued lecturing on physiology,
anatomy, and hygiene. In 1863 she helped to found the New York
Medical College and Hospital for Women, a homeopathic institution.
She was also in a number of reform movements, including the
woman’s suffrage movement (supporting the National Woman Suffrage
Association), prison reform, sanitary reform, international
arbitration, civil rights for Negroes and Indians, temperance. She
hosted for Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 70th birthday party.Harriot Kezia
Hunt, 1805-1875: widely known as the first woman
doctor, started teaching school in 1827, then after a serious
illness of her sister in 1830, learned to practice medicine and
was very successful in treating her Boston patients.She applied for admission
to the Harvard Medical School in 1847, was denied acceptance, but
was admitted in 1850 to hear lectures. The all male student body
so strongly protested that she gave up the attempt. In 1853,
however, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medicine Degree
from the newly founded Female Medical College of Pennsylvania.Hannah E. Myers Longshore, 1819-1901:
first woman faculty member at an American medical school.Longshore
received her medical degree from the Female Medical College of
Pennsylvania in 1851. She was Philadelphia’s first woman
physician. The following year she was hired by the New England
Female Medical College in Boston as the first female instructor of
anatomy.Hannah E.
Longshore Myers, one of the early woman physicians and mother of
two children, enrolled at the age of thirty-one in the Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania and received her M. D. in 1851,
all with the unfailing support and encouragement of her teacher
husband Thomas Elwood Longshore. His brother Dr. Joseph S.
Longshore, of Philadelphia, was one of the founders of the first
woman’s medical college.Florence
Nightingale, 1820-1910: nursePolemical and religious
writer best known for her work during the Crimean War as a nurse
to British troops. When Nightengale arrived on the front with 38
trained nurses, she found the military hospital overrun with fleas
and rats, and the sewers overfilled. Within months, her sanitary
reforms which she accomplished over the objection of military
authorities, dramatically cut the fatality rate. Upon returning
home, she launched a commission to investigate medical conditions
throughout the military as a whole. Pioneering a statistical
approach to analysis, Nightengale showed that most soldiers lost
their lives to disease rather than to wounds. Her philosophical
and religious works have recently been collected and reprinted in Cassandra
and Suggestions for Thought (New York University Press,
1992).Clara Barton, 1821-1912:
founder of the American Red Cross.Worked as
a volunteer during the American Civil War, distributing supplies
to wounded soldiers. Supervised a systematic search for missing
soldiers after the war. Helped establish hospitals in Europe
during the Franco-Prussian War, and received the Iron Cross of
Germany.
Founded American Red Cross Society in 1881, and
served as its president until 1904.Supervised
relief efforts in yellow-fever outbreak in Florida in 1887;
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood in 1889; Russian famine in 1891;
Spanish-American War in 1898; South African War in 1899; and
Galveston, Texas, flood in 1900Elizabeth
Blackwell, 1821-1910: first woman ever to be graduated
with a medical degree any where in the modern world. Elizabeth
Blackwell was also turned away from the Harvard Medical School as
well as several others before finally being admitted in 1847 to
the Geneva College of Medicine in Geneva, New York. Blackwell
founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and later
instituted training for other women physicians, one of whom Marie
Zakrewska, opened the New England Hospital for Women and Children
in 1862 in BostonLydia Folger Fowler,
1822-1879: first American woman doctor.The
Fowler empire was an extended family business. Lorenzo’s wife
Lydia not only took an active part in the business, but became the
second woman to graduate from an American medical college. She
graduated from the Central Medical College of Rochester, New York
(1850), year earlier than Blackwell. The school, however, was an
eclectic institution. Her Familiar Lessons on Phrenology
were first published in 1847.Emily
Blackwell, 1826-1910: physician and surgeon.Emily Blackwell was the younger sister of
the pioneering woman physician Elizabeth Blackwell.
Born in Bristol, Emily emigrated with her family to the United
States when she was six.Emily encountered the same prejudice from
the medical establishment as her sister when she attempted to
enrol for training as a physician. First accepted, then summarily
rejected, by Rush Medical College in Chicago, she was eventually
accepted for a course of medical study at Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated in 1854.After postgraduate work in Europe from 1854
to 1856, Emily returned to help her sister establish the New York
Infirmary. While Elizabeth specialized in promoting and lecturing
on public health projects, Emily’s particular talents lay in
administration and in active surgery. She was principally
responsible for the day-to-day operation of the infirmary for its
first 40 years. She also trained many women student doctors in the
infirmary’s medical college; during her term of office as dean the
college flourished, attracting many gifted students. She died,
aged 74, the same year as her elder sister.
Mary Jane Safford
1834-1891.After an
extended convalescent tour of Europe Safford returned to the
United States determined to become a physician. She graduated from
the New York Medical College for Women in 1869 and then pursued
advanced training in Europe for three years. At the University of
Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), she became the first woman
to perform an ovariotomy. In 1872 she opened a private practice in
Chicago. The next year, after her marriage to a Bostonian, she
moved her practice to that city and became professor of women’s
diseases at the Boston University School of Medicine and a staff
physician at the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. She retired
from medical practice in 1886 and a short time later moved to
Tarpon Springs, Florida, where she died on December 8, 1891.Sarah Parker
Remond, 1826-1894: African American physician and
activist.Born in Salem,
Massachusetts, to free African-American parents, Remond followed
her brother, Charles Remond, into the abolitionist cause. She
became an agent (1856) of the American Anti-Slavery Society and
lectured both in the United States (1856-1859) and in Great
Britain (1859-1865), where she exposed the evils of slavery to
British audiences. She returned to the United States for one year,
but then went to Florence, Italy, where she studied and practiced
medicine. She is buried in Rome.
Margaret
F. Butler, MD was appointed to the teaching staff of
the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1896. She initially
decided to specialize in gynecology, but recognized the need for
her skills in otolaryngology. After studying with Adam Politzer in
Vienna, she accepted the position of Clinical Professor of
Laryngology and Chief of the Nose and Throat Department at the
Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1906. She was the sole
representative for the United States at the First International
Congress of Rhinolaryngology held in Vienna in 1908. She invented
the Butler Tonsil Snare along with other ENT instruments. Butler
died in 1931 while performing a tonsillectomy; she was 70 years
old.Emeline
Horton Cleveland, 1829-1878: first woman doctor to
perform major surgery. Physician and college professor.Born in Ashford,
Connecticut, on September 22, 1829, Emeline Horton grew up in
Madison County, New York. She worked as a teacher until she was
able to afford to enroll at Oberlin College, from which she
graduated in 1853. She then entered the Female (later Woman’s)
Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and took her M.D.
degree in 1855. While working toward her medical degree she
married the Reverend Giles B. Cleveland. Her husband’s ill health
ended their plan to undertake missionary work, and, after a year
of private practice, Cleveland became a demonstrator of anatomy at
the Female Medical College. She soon was named professor of
anatomy and histology. In 1860-61, with the support of Dr. Ann
Preston of the college, Cleveland took advanced training in
obstetrics at the school of the Maternité hospital in Paris. Upon
her return to Philadelphia, she became chief resident at the
rechartered Woman’s Medical College, a post she held until 1868.
From 1862 she also taught obstetrics and diseases of women and
children and carried on an extensive private practice.Cleveland’s professional
reputation was unsurpassed among women physicians. On several
occasions she was consulted by male colleagues, and she eventually
was admitted to membership in several all-male local medical
societies. Her work at the college, where she had early
established training courses for nurses and for nurse’s aides (the
latter a pioneering venture), was capped by her appointment as
dean, succeeding Preston, in 1872-74. In 1875, in what was
apparently the earliest recorded instance of major surgery
performed by a woman, she performed the first of several
ovariotomies. In 1878 she was appointed gynecologist to the
department for the insane at Pennsylvania Hospital, but she died
in Philadelphia on December 8, 1878.Mary Harris
Thompson, 1st American woman surgeon.1829-1895: founded Chicago Hospital for Women
and Children and was the first female surgeon in the U.S. She
studied a year with Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman
doctor.
At the
outset the hospital was fairly well sustained through private
benefactions, and in 1870 largely through Dr. Thompson’s efforts a
college was organized for the medical education of women
exclusively. The hospital building was totally destroyed in the
great fire of 1871 but temporary accommodations were provided in
another section of the city. The following year, with the aid of
$25,000 appropriated by the Chicago Relief and Aid Society a
permanent building was purchased and in 1885, a new commodious and
well planned building was erected on the same site, at a cost of
about $75,000.Marie
Elizabeth Zakrzewska, 1829-1902: founder of the New
England Hospital for Women and Children.
Trained
in her native Germany as a midwife and experienced as an
instructor of midwifery, Zakrzewska immigrated to America in 1853.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell arranged for Zakrzewska to attend
Cleveland Medical College where she was among the first women in
the country to obtain a medical degree. Returning to New York,
Zakrzewska helped Blackwell build her new hospital. Adept at
fundraising, Zakrzewska traveled to Philadelphia and Boston for
Blackwell’s hospital. Offered a teaching position at the New
England Female Medical College in Boston, Zakrzewska moved to
Boston and was outraged to discover that the school was little
more than a place to train midwives. She lead the effort to create
a new teaching hospital, founding the New England Hospital for
Women and Children in 1862. Her school was of such a high caliber
that after 1881, she only admitted women who had already earned an
MD. She was also a founding member of the New England Woman’s
Club, one of the two original study clubs that would serve as
models for the twentieth- century woman’s club movement.
Cordelia Agnes Greene 1831-1905:
She
taught in country schools until her father opened a water-cure
sanitarium in Castile, New York in 1849. Greene quit teaching and
went to work for her father as a nurse in the sanitarium. She
moved to Philadelphia and enrolled in the newly-opened Women’s
Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she became their first
student to receive a medical degree, in 1853. She continued her
studies in Cleveland, where she graduated with honors from
Cleveland Medical College (later Case Western Reserve) in 1856.
One of the three women in her class was Marie Zakrzewska, who
later went on to found the New England Hospital for Women and
Children. Greene
returned to Upstate New York after her graduation and assumed a
position as the assistant to Dr. Henry Foster, a fellow graduate
of Cleveland Medical College who owned the water cure
establishment in Clifton Springs.Cordelia
Greene was a respected member of the medical community. She often
gave lectures on preventive medicine, and at one point chaired the
Educational Committee of the Woman’s Medical Society of New York
State. A member of the American Medical Association (AMA), she
served on the AMA’s Committee for Preventive Medicine. She was
also a member of the New York State Medical Association, and
served as president of their Wyoming County branch, which often
held their meetings at her facility. One of her assistants at the
Sanitarium, Dr. Clara Swain, was a sister graduate of the Woman’s
Medical College of Pennsylvania who later went on to become a
medical missionary in India, where she was to establish the first
hospital for women in Asia.Emily Jennings Stowe,
1831-1903: first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.
In Canada,
the first Canadian woman to practise medicine was Dr Emily
Jennings Stowe. Born in 1831, she was first a school teacher, and
qualified in 1867 at the New York Medical College for Women, a
homeopathic school. In 1869 the new Ontario College of Physicians
and Surgeons would not register her because she had not attended a
course of lectures at a recognised Ontario medical school. The
Ontario medical schools would not admit her. The Toronto School of
Medicine admitted her and another woman Jennie Trout in the
1870’s. Access to medical school remained difficult for women for
decades; there were major problems at Queen’s University due
largely to male students. By 1906 the University of Toronto
accepted women. The first woman graduated in medicine at the
University of Manitoba in 1894, but until after 1945, there were
few women medical graduates, partly due to social factors with the
control of the medical school, partly due to bias, both overt and
covert, in selection.Mary Edward
Walker, 1832-1919: first woman US Army Surgeon.Dr.
Walker was born in 1832 and died in 1919. Dr. Mary E. Walker will
forever be dear to many women for not only her accomplishments but
her valor during the Civil War. Dr. Walker was the only woman
graduate of the Syracuse Medical School in 1855. She was a role
model for today’s modern women. She believed in equal rights for
women, sufferage, and medical care for all regardless of their
financial status.She
lectured after her servicing on both sides during the Civil War.
She was blessed with a forward looking abolitionist country
physican father who believed that no one not even women should be
restricted. Mary adopted this independent philosophy and lived it
fully. After the war, Mary became a writer and lecturer, touring
here and abroad on women’s rights, dress reform, health and
temperance issues.In 1865,
Dr. Walker was awared the Congressional Medal of Honor which she
proudly wore on her clothing.Clara A. Swain,
1834-1910: pioneering medical missionary.First
Medical Missionary to India of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America.Clara
Swain, the first woman medical missionary to India, graduated from
Woman’s Medical College in 1869, the first of several hundred over
the next one hundred years. The College also welcomed in the
nineteenth century students from India, Japan, Syria, England,
South America, and other countries. The school became more widely
known around the world than many larger, more prestigious American
medical schools.Mary Corinna
Putnam Jacobi, 1842-1906: leader in the study of
women’s health.From the wealthy and
well-connected Putnam publishing family, Putnam was determined to
become a physician. Since she came of age just as the Civil War
began, she expected greater opportunities than women who had come
before her. She acquired her medical degree from the Female
Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1863. After working at the New
England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston and went to
France for post-graduate training. After 2 years of efforts, she
became the first woman of any nationality to be admitted to the
prestigious Ecole de Medecine. She graduated with high
honors and won an award for her thesis. When she returned to the
US in 1871, Putnam was better educated than most physicians of
either sex. Due to her family’s connections, she was able to
develop a strong private practice. One by one, she was admitted to
the most prestigious medical organizations. She continued her
research, publishing over 100 scientific papers. Unusual for her
time, Jacobi continued her medical practice after she married and
had 3 children. She organized the Advancement of the Medical
Education of Women in 1874 and served as president for most of her
life. An active suffragist, her “Common Sense”
Applied to Woman Suffrage became a classic for the suffragist
movement.Mary Eliza
Mahoney, 1845-1926: first African
American graduate nurse.Mary Eliza Mahoney was
the first African-American registered nurse in the U.S.A. She
worked for fifteen years at the New England Hospital for Women and
Children in Roxbury, Massachusetts as an unofficial nurse’s
assistant. In 1878, at the age of thirty-three, she was admitted
as a student into the hospital’s nursing program established by
Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. Sixteen months later, she was one of four
who completed the rigorous course (of forty-two who started with
her). She ended her nursing career as director of an orphanage in
Long Island, New York, the position she had held for a decade. She
never married.In 1896, Mahoney became
one of the original members of a predominately white Nurses
Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (later known as
the American Nurses Association or ANA). In 1908 she was cofounder
of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN).Susan La
Flesche Picotte 1865 – 1915: First Native American
Woman M.D.La Flesche received her
medical degree from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in
1889, graduating at the top of her class. She spent her internship
at the Woman’s Hospital in Philadelphia. From August of 1889 to
October of 1893, she served on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska
as physician to her tribe, finally resigning for health reasons.During this time, she
worked for the government’s Office of Indian Affairs. From 1891 to
1893 she also served as “medical missionary” for her
tribe, so designated by the Women’s National Indian Association.
La Flesche married in the summer of 1894 and added her husband’s
last name, Picotte, to her own. Throughout the remainder of her
life, Picotte worked for improved health conditions of the Omaha
tribe. Picotte died on September 18, 1915.
Biographies
MEN:
Charles
S. Shelton was born in Huntington, Fairfield Co., Conn., Aug.
28, 1819. He was graduated from Yale College in 1840, and subsequently
received the degree of M.D., from the Medical Department of the same
institution. The early years of his professional career were spent as a
missionary physician and surgeon in India, in the service of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In this field of
labor his health became so much impaired that he was obliged to return
to his native country. In 1856 (about a year after leaving India) he
repaired to Davenport, Iowa, whence, after remaining three years, he
removed to Springfield, Ill. Here he continued to practice until 1867,
with the exception of the years 1861 and 1862, during which time he
served as a surgeon in the Union army.In the year 1867, Dr. Shelton
became converted to the teachings of the homoeopathic school, and
settling in Jersey City, began to practice in accordance therewith. He
was very successful, and was also highly esteemed by all who knew him,
but his health, which had been so injured during his residence in India,
gradually gave way entirely, and he finally died, greatly lamented, May
21, 1879.
William Augustus Durrie was born in New
Haven, Conn., July 21,1822. In 1843 he was graduated from Yale College,
and in 1846 received his degree of M.D., from that institution. After
practicing medicine according to the allopathic system for one year in
his native place, he determined to give his attention to the homeopathic
method of treatment, and for that purpose, removing to New York, entered
the office of Drs. Gray & Hull, then in partnership in that city.
Under these preceptors he devoted himself sedulously to this mode of
practice, and in 1847 removed to Jersey City, N.J., where he established
himself as a practitioner of the new school of medicine. Dr. Durrie is
regarded as the pioneer of homoeopathy in Jersey City, being the first
physician of that school to practice there. He was among the founders of
the State Homoeopathic Medical Society, and was the third president of
that institution. For five years he was the physician to the almshouse
of Hudson County. He continued to practice in Jersey City until 1884,
when he removed to East Orange, Essex Co., N.J., where he is at present
residing.
William Augustus Durrie, Jr., was born in
Jersey City, June 11, 1855. In 1876 he was graduated from Yale College,
and subsequently attended two courses of lectures at the College of
Physicians and Surgeons of New York. He then entered the New York
Homoeopathic Medical College, and was therefrom graduated in 1878. Since
that time he has practiced medicine in Jersey City.
Alexander H. Laidlaw was born in Scotland,
July 11, 1828. His preliminary education was received in the Central
High School of Philadelphia, and in medicine he was graduated from the
Philadelphia Medical College, and subsequently, in 1851, from the
Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania. He began to practice in
Philadelphia, whence he removed to New York, where he remained two
years. For twenty-three years past he has been in Hudson County, his
professional work being now limited to chronic diseases.
Eleazer Bowen was born at Rehoboth, Bristol
Co., Mass., in October, 1829, and having received a careful preliminary
education, entered Amherst College, but was obliged, on account of ill
health, to leave in his junior year. He then applied himself to the
study of medicine, and in 1853 was graduated from the Pittsfield Medical
College, Mass. Soon thereafter he settled as a practitioner in
Barnstable, Mass., and while there was led to investigate homoeopathy.
His interest in it became so great that he was induced to go to New York
in order to make a more thorough study of it, and after spending eight
months in that city returned to his native State, settling successively
in Lynn and Marblehead. In 1864 he removed to Jersey City,. N.J., where
he has been since engaged in active and successful practice. He is a
member of the County Society and of the National Institute.
John J. Youlin was born in Rupert, Vt., Dec.
31, 1821, and received a good academic education at the Auburn Lyceum,
Auburn, N.Y. After studying medicine for some time in the office of Dr.
Augustus Willard, he attended a partial course of lectures at Geneva
College, and subsequently a full course at the University of New York.
In 1854 he was graduated from the Western Reserve Medical College, at
Cleveland, Ohio, and was subsequently connected with the New York
Dispensary, in White Street. He was originally a practitioner of the old
school, but investigation and experiment induced him to become a
homoeopath, and as such he established himself in Jersey City, where he
soon acquired an extensive and lucrative practice. Dr. Youlin was
president of the New Jersey State Homoeopathic Medical Society for
eleven years, remaining in that position until a charter for it was
obtained, in 1870. For several years he was president of the Hudson
County Homoeopathic Medical Society. He was also a medical director of
the Jersey City Dispensary, vice-president of the American Institute of
Homeopathy in 1870—72, and president of the Hudson County Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Dr. Youlin died in October, 1881,
highly esteemed by all who knew him.
William
Henry Newell was born in the city of New York, Feb. 19, 1837,
and is the son of the late Rev. Daniel Newell a distinguished
Presbyterian divine. He received his preliminary education at Phillips
Academy, Andover, Mass., and was then graduated from Dickinson College,
Carlisle, Pa. Soon afterwards he entered the University of Pennsylvania,
and in 1859 obtained therefrom the degree of M.D. Instead of settling
down at once in the practice of his profession, he spent some time in
traveling and visiting various hospitals throughout the country, with a
view to becoming more familiar with diseases in their different forms.
On the breaking out of the war of the Rebellion, Dr. Newell, being in
Baltimore, reunited with the Fifth Maryland Guards, of which he had
formerly been a member, and went with them to Virginia. Here he was
commissioned as surgeon, and served in the Confederate army until the
close of the war, when he returned to the North and settled in Jersey
City as a medical practitioner. He is a member of the American Institute
of Homoeopathy and a member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of
the Jersey City Dispensatory.
Frank Nichols, M.D.— Edmund Nichols, the
grandfather of Dr. Nichols, though of English descent, was a native of
Massachusetts, and born at Sturbridge, in that State, where he was a
prosperous farmer. He married Miss Sallie Wilder, and had children—
Liberty, Proctor, Mary and Wyman. Liberty, the eldest of these, was born
in Sturbridge in 1800, and succeeded to the land of his father, which he
cultivated. He was, in 1822, married to Miss Polly Richardson, whose
children are Harriet P., (Mrs. William L. Warner) Edmund L., George (a
physician in Brooklyn) and Frank. The last named was born
March 20, 1833, in Sturbridge, Mass., and until the age of eighteen
remained upon the homestead devoting the winter months to obtaining such
advantages of education as the neighboring school afforded, and aiding
during the remainder of the year in the labor of the farm. He then
became a pupil of the Wesleyan Academy, at Wilbraham, Mass., and also
engaged in teaching until twenty-one, when he entered the State Normal
School, at Bridgewater, Mass., and graduated in 1856. He spent the
following year as principal of the Reading Institute, at Reading, Pa.,
and acting in the same capacity in the grammar school at New London,
Conn. Having already begun the study of medicine, he entered the
Pittsfield Medical College, at Pittsfield, Mass., and later became a
student of the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania, at
Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 1861. Dr. Nichols’ first
field of labor was at Grafton; Mass., where he remained two years, and
whence he removed to Somerville, N.J. After a brief residence at the
latter point, he, in the fall of 1864, located in Hoboken, N.J., and
speedily established an extended and lucrative practice of a general
character, his labors having at times been so arduous as to have
rendered cessation from professional employment absolutely imperative.
He therefore, in 1868, devoted a period to rest and recuperation, and
made a European tour, embracing England, Scotland, France and
Switzerland. Dr. Nichols is one of the incorporators of the
Homoeopathic Medical Society of the State of New Jersey, in which he has
filled the office of president. He is also a member and has been the
president of the New Jersey Medical Club, and was in 1867 made a member
of the American Institute of Homoeopathy. He has devoted some attention
to matters outside the profession, and is one of the directors of the
Hoboken Savings-Bank. Dr. Nichols is in politics a Republican, and
although not an aspirant for official honors, has filled the responsible
office of tax commissioner of the city of Hoboken.His religious belief is in
harmony with the creed of the Baptist Church. He is a member of the
First Baptist Church of Hoboken, of which he has been for ten years
treasurer and is now a deacon. Dr. Nichols was married, in 1857, to Miss
Mary A., eldest daughter of J.H. Barton, of Worcester, Mass. Their
children are four sons,— Frank Barton, Harry Frederick, George Lewis
and Walter Edmunds.
Harris R. Simmons was born in New York City,
Jan. 7, 1851, and received his elementary education in the public
schools of that place. In 1877 he was graduated from the Homoeopathic
Medical College of New York, and soon afterwards settled in Jersey City,
where he established himself in practice, and where he still resides.
Charles
S. Shelton was born in Huntington, Fairfield Co., Conn., Aug.
28, 1819. He was graduated from Yale College in 1840, and subsequently
received the degree of M.D., from the Medical Department of the same
institution. The early years of his professional career were spent as a
missionary physician and surgeon in India, in the service of the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In this field of
labor his health became so much impaired that he was obliged to return
to his native country. In 1856 (about a year after leaving India) he
repaired to Davenport, Iowa, whence, after remaining three years, he
removed to Springfield, Ill. Here he continued to practice until 1867,
with the exception of the years 1861 and 1862, during which time he
served as a surgeon in the Union army.In the year 1867, Dr. Shelton
became converted to the teachings of the homoeopathic school, and
settling in Jersey City, began to practice in accordance therewith. He
was very successful, and was also highly esteemed by all who knew him,
but his health, which had been so injured during his residence in India,
gradually gave way entirely, and he finally died, greatly lamented, May
21, 1879.
Charles
H. Shelton, son of Dr. Charles S. Shelton, an old-school
physician, practicing in India under the American Board of Foreign
Missions, was born in Jaffnaputam, a coast island off Ceylon, May 14,
1854. His preparatory education was received at the Hasbrouck Collegiate
Institute, and in 1877 he was graduated A.B., from Yale College. In
March, 1880, he obtained his degree of M.D., from the New York
Homoeopathic Medical College, and immediately established himself in
Jersey City, where he continued to practice until about the 1st of
January, 1884, when he removed to Montclair, Essex Co., N.J., where he
is at present engaged in the work of his profession.
J.
Lawrence Nevin was born in North Sewickly, Beaver Co., Pa.,
Jan. 21, 1853. He was educated at Oakdale Academy, Pennsylvania, and for
six years taught in the public schools of Beaver County. After devoting
some time to the study of medicine, he attended lectures at the New York
Homoeopathic Medical College, and was graduated therefrom M.D., in 1878.
He established himself soon afterwards in practice in Jersey City, and
is at present in that place.
Samuel W. Clark, Jr., was born in Newark,
N.J., May 29, 1857, and is a graduate of the Public High School of that
city. In 1881 he received the degree of M.D., from the New York
Homoeopathic Medical College, and for a time was connected
professionally with Ward’s Island Hospital. During the last two and a
half years he has practiced in Jersey City.
Charles E. Jaechel was born in Baltimore,
Md., April 7, 1862. He received his academic education in the public
grammar schools and in the High School of Jersey City. In March, 1884,
he was graduated from the New York Homoeopathic Medical College, and
since then has practiced his profession in Jersey City.
George B. Cornell was born in Dukes County,
Mass., April 24, 1833. In 1857 he received the degree of A.B., from
Madison University, and in 1864 was graduated with honor from the
Medical Department of the University of the City of New York. For one
year he held the position of physician to the Lying-in Asylum of the
City of New York, and for two years filled the chairs on diseases of
children and of women and children in the Northwestern and Demitt
Dispensaries. During these years he investigated homeopathy, and in 1869
adopted it. He is now successfully engaged in practice in Jersey City,
N.J.
George
Nelson Tibbles was born at Cooleyville, Athens Co., Ohio, May
2, 1842. He received his elementary education at an academy in Illinois,
and was still a pupil in that school when the war of the Rebellion broke
out. Fired with a desire to serve his country, he threw aside his books
and enlisted in the Fourth Iowa Volunteers early in 1861, at the age of
nineteen years. In this regiment he served until March 14, 1864, when he
was taken prisoner by the enemy during a night attack on Claysville,
Ala., the outpost of the Fifteenth United States Army Corps.He was carried to
Andersonville, where he was held for seven months. At the end of that
time he succeeded in making his escape, and, worn out by sickness and
hardships, reached the North. After sufficiently recovering his health,
he applied himself to the study of medicine, and was in due time
graduated from the New York Medical College (homeopathic). For sixteen
years he has practiced in Hudson County, and is at present located in
Hoboken.
WOMEN:
Dr.
Jean Isabel MacKay-Gliddon1859-1912. She was married in July, 1897, to Rev. DePutron
Gliddon. She graduated from the public high school of Mount Carroll and
from the Mt. Morris Academy. She attended Lake Forest University, being
the first lady student admitted to that institution. Her medical
education was received in the Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago,
Illinois. After obtaining the degree of M.D. from that college, she took
post-graduate courses in obstetrics and the puerperal diseases in
Chicago and in Materia Medica in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She also
studied at the Homeopathic Hospital, London, England. Dr. Gliddon was
licensed to practice medicine in the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois,
Colorado, Montana and California. After serving as one of the physicians
of the Moody Medical Mission in Chicago, Dr. Gliddon moved to
Philadelphia where she was the physician-in-charge of the Woman’s
Homeopathic Hospital of Philadelphia and also lecturer in the diseases
of children in the Post Graduate School of Homeopathics.
1860: Mercy Ruggles
Jackson Bisbee (Marie Jackson 1802-1877) was a homeopath who
practiced without a degree in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for many years.
In 1861 she applied for membership in the American Institute of
Homeopathy (headquartered in Philadelphia) but was rejected on account
of her sex. Her annual reapplications were similarly rejected until June
1871, when the Institute admitted three women. Two years later she was
admitted to both the Massachusetts and the Boston homeopathic societies.
She received her M.D. degree from the New England Female Medical College
in 1860. In 1873 she was appointed adjunct professor of the diseases of
children at the newly opened Boston University School of Medicine. She
continued to practice medicine and to teach until her death. She was
also a temperance supporter and a woman’s suffragist.
1834-1891.After an
extended convalescent tour of Europe Safford returned to the United
States determined to become a physician. She graduated from the New York
Medical College for Women in 1869 and then pursued advanced training in
Europe for three years. At the University of Breslau, Germany (now
Wroclaw, Poland), she became the first woman to perform an ovariotomy.
In 1872 she opened a private practice in Chicago. The next year, after
her marriage to a Bostonian, she moved her practice to that city and
became professor of women’s diseases at the Boston University School of
Medicine and a staff physician at the Massachusetts Homeopathic
Hospital. She retired from medical practice in 1886 and a short time
later moved to Tarpon Springs, Florida, where she died on December 8,
1891.
Sources:
Women in
American History: http://www.women.eb.com/women/MCP Hahnemann
University: http://www.drexel.edu/med/Dr Alexander Kotok
“The history of homeopathy in the Russian Empire until World War
I”: http://homeoint.org/books4/kotok/2640.htmBoston University
Medical Campus: http://www.bumc.bu.edu/www/busm/osa/Redbook_2000/About.htm#mark1Darlene
Clark Hine, “Co-laborers in the work of the Lord:
nineteenth-century black women physicians.” In Ruth J. Abram, ed. “Send
Us a Lady Physician:” Women Doctors in America, 1835-1920. New
York: W.W. Norton, 1985.Regina
Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in
American Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.African
Americans in the Sciences: http://www.princeton.edu/~mcbrown/display/faces.htmlCopyright
© Sylvain Cazalet 2004
