Ann Preston: First Woman Medical School Dean

By Maggie MacLean, 10-10-2012

Ann Preston (December 1, 1813–April 18, 1872) was a doctor and educator of women in Pennsylvania. One of the most notable achievements of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the 19th century was the role it played in the entrance of women into medicine. Ann Preston was one of those pioneer Quaker women doctors.

Through her leadership and her persuasive influence, Dr. Preston promoted educational, professional and social changes that eventually established the right of women to study medicine and removed the barriers which blocked the path of those women who aspired to become competent and successful physicians.

Early Years
Ann Preston was born on December 1, 1813 in West Grove, Pennsylvania, Quaker community near Philadelphia. She was the oldest daughter and second of nine children of Quaker minister Amos Preston and Margaret Smith Preston. Of their three daughters, Ann was the only one to survive to adulthood.

Ann grew up in a close knit family revolving around the West Grove Meeting. Her parents were abolitionists and supporters of women's rights. The famous Quaker minister Lucretia Mott was a friend of the Prestons and often visited them.

Ann was educated at the local Quaker school, then at a boarding school in Chester, Pennsylvania, until she had to return home to care for her family when her mother became ill. To continue her education she attended lectures of the local literary association and lyceum, where such poets as James Russell Lowell and John Greenleaf Whittier came to speak, and began to write her own essays and poetry.

Ann also became a member of the temperance movement and the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society, for which she wrote petitions and lectures. After her younger brothers were old enough to care for themselves, Ann became a teacher, and in 1849 she published a book of children's rhymes, Cousin Ann's Stories.

Because girls were restricted to sedentary and indoor activities and dressed in tight clothing, Ann believed that women should know more about their own bodies. After some intense study of those subjects, she began teaching physiology and hygiene to all-female classes.

For the first half of the 19th century all medical schools uniformly refused to admit females. In 1847 Geneva College in New York made a one-time exception for Elizabeth Blackwell, and she became the first American woman doctor. But others who wanted to train were forced to study medicine in the offices of physicians and could not gain the status of 'medical doctor.'

Medical Education
Encouraged by Philadelphia Quakers who were becoming interested in medical education for women, in 1847 Ann Preston became an apprentice in the office of Dr. Nathaniel Moseley. After two years of medical training under Dr. Moseley, Preston applied to four medical colleges in Philadelphia but her applications were rejected because of her gender.

To provide opportunities for women to study medicine, a group of Quakers founded the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1850 - the first institution in the world established to train women in medicine and offer them the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The first year the faculty of the College was all male, but in 1851 Hannah Longshore was selected as a demonstrator in anatomy and was listed as a faculty member.

Preston enrolled in the first class, graduating in December 1851 at the age of 38. She returned to the college the following year for postgraduate work, then ran a series of lectures on hygiene for women. In 1853 Preston was appointed professor of physiology and hygiene at the Female Medical College, and spent the rest of her life in service of women in medicine.

Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia
In 1857, the Philadelphia Medical Society spoke out against the Female Medical College, effectively barring its women students from educational clinics and medical societies in the city. Undeterred, Dr. Ann Preston organized a board of "lady managers" to fund and run a teaching hospital to care for women, where her students could gain clinical experience.

The area around the Medical College was too crowded to add a hospital wing, and it was therefore necessary to find a new location. But to buy such a site meant raising money. The supporters of the college had already given as much as they could, while other wealthy Philadelphians objected to women doctors. In 1858 Preston began walking from door to door soliciting funds.

During this time, she began to suffer from rheumatic fever and exhaustion, and she was confined to a hospital for three months to recuperate.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Medical College was forced to close due to lack of financial support. However, Dr. Preston had raised enough money to send friend and colleague, Dr. Emmeline Horton Cleveland, to Paris to study obstetrics so that she could be the resident physician at the new hospital.

When there was still not enough money in the coffers, Preston borrowed her family's horse and buggy and began to go from farm to farm in Bucks, Montgomery and Chester Counties, calling on Quaker families and pleading her cause. Her earnestness and faith were deeply moving, and slowly the money trickled in.

In 1861, Preston and her supporters founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia to offer medical and surgical care for women by women. Its purposes were to:

"establish in the City of Philadelphia a Hospital for the treatment of diseases of women and children, and for obstetrical cases; furnishing at the same time facilities for clinical instruction to women engaged in the study of medicine, and for the practical training of nurses; the chief resident physician to be a woman."

Woman's Hospital accepted its first patient, to the "Lying In Department (maternity)," on December 16, 1861. By April of 1862, twelve patients occupied beds. The hospital grew steadily; by 1875 it housed 37 beds, treated nearly 2,000 patients at their homes (with visits carried out largely by students), and saw more than 3,000 visitors in its dispensary. Women and children were admitted "without regard to their religious belief, nationality or color."

After the Female Medical College was re-opened in 1866, student Mary Putnam Jacobi was refused a medical degree by Edwin Fussel, though she met the required qualifications. Most of the faculty, including Preston, disagreed with the decision. Fussell resigned following the incident, and Preston was appointed dean.

Dean of Woman's Medical College
Dr. Ann Preston served as dean of the college from 1866 through 1872, becoming the first woman dean of an American medical school, a position that allowed her to champion the right of women to become physicians. Under her leadership the college trained the first African American and the first Native American women doctors in the country, as well as the first women medical missionaries to Asia.

The school changed its name to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. Soon many eminent physicians, male and female, were among its teaching staff. When many small medical colleges were forced to close because of the introduction of higher standards in medical training, the College survived. In 1863 the school began to train nurses, one of the first institutions in the United States to do so.

Some of the women who audited the courses at the college gave lectures on physiology and hygiene to women in the poorest sections of the city of Philadelphia, thus pioneering medical outreach as a branch of social work. One of these women was Sarah Mapps Douglass, an African American teacher and Quaker.

While she had achieved her goal of establishing a woman's hospital, Ann Preston believed that her female medical students deserved the right to attend the larger, all-purpose clinics and hospitals in Philadelphia so they might learn to deal with a greater variety of medical conditions. At first all the hospitals barred "lady doctors."

However, in 1868 Preston won the right for her students to attend the teaching clinics at Blockley Hospital. When the first women arrived, however, they were met by an angry demonstration. The male medical students shouted insults and threw paper, tinfoil and tobacco quids at the women. The female students remained composed and attended the clinic, but on their way out they were pelted with rocks.

Following this demonstration, the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and of Jefferson Medical College held a meeting attended by representatives of the medical staffs of all the hospitals in Philadelphia to discuss the admission of women medical students and declared themselves to be opposed to the "admixture of the sexes at clinical instruction in medicine and surgery."

Because of the publicity over the behavior of the male medical students at Blockley and Preston's protest against it, public opinion began to swing in favor of the education of women doctors. In 1869 she made a similar arrangement with the Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Preston accompanied her students to the first clinic and witnessed the harassment by male students firsthand.

In a letter written February 21, 1925, one of Preston's former students, Sarah Hall, recalled the events that day for the 75th anniversary of the Woman's Medical College:

"We were allowed to enter by way of the back stairs, and were greeted by the men students with hisses and paper wads, and frequently during the clinic were treated to more of the same. The Professor of Surgery came in and bowed to the men only. More hisses... We retired the same way we entered and, on reaching the outer door, found men students lined up on one side of the way, and we, to get out, had to take the road and walk to the street to the tune of 'The Rogues March.' Our students separated as soon as possible. All who could took the little antiquated horse cars in any direction they were going. The men separated also, and in groups of twos, threes and fours, followed the women."

Late Years
By this time Ann Preston was gravely ill, suffering from articular rheumatism. She continued to teach at the college, serving as professor of physiology, and to serve as consulting physician at the Woman's Hospital, but she had to restrict her private practice to office visits because she could no longer ride out to visit her patients in their homes.

Nevertheless, her spirit remained strong, and she was a constant inspiration to her students. Year after year she addressed the graduating class of the Female Medical College, urging them to continue to practice the highest standards of medical care despite opposition. In 1871 Preston suffered an attack of acute articular rheumatism, which left her in a weakened state.

Dr. Ann Preston died on April 18, 1872 and was buried near her beloved friends Lucretia and James Mott and many other Quaker abolitionists at Fair Hill burial ground in North Philadelphia. Ann left her instruments and her life savings to her beloved college for a scholarship. Six years later, her friend Dr. Emmeline Cleveland died and was buried next to Dr. Preston, as she had requested.

There is a beautiful sequel to Ann Preston's life. The Woman's Hospital that she founded flourished on North College Avenue for many years and then was moved to West Philadelphia, where the street facing it was named Preston Street. The neighborhood around it deteriorated, there was less need for a woman's hospital, and it was abandoned some years ago. However, it has now been rehabilitated by a Quaker group, Friends Rehabilitation Corporation, as housing for elderly and homeless women.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Ann Preston
Pioneer Woman Doctor: Ann Preston
Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Ann Preston
Wikipedia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

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Mary Putnam Jacobi: Pioneer for Women in the Medical Professions

By Maggie MacLean, 6-26-15

Mary Putnam Jacobi was a prominent physician, author, scientist, activist, educator, and perhaps most importantly, a staunch advocate of women's right to seek medical education and training. Men in medicine claimed that a medical education would make women physically ill, and that women physicians endangered their profession. Jacobi worked to prove them wrong and argued that it was social restrictions that threatened female health.

Jacobi was the most significant woman physician of her era and an outspoken advocate for women's rights, rising to national prominence in the 1870s. She was a harsh critic of the exclusion of women from the professions, and a social reformer dedicated to the expansion of educational opportunities for women, labor reform, and suffrage - the most important women's rights issues of her day. She supported her arguments for the rights of women with scientific proof.

Early Years
Mary Corinna Putnam was born August 31, 1842 in London, England, daughter of American parents, George Palmer Putnam and Victorine Haven Putnam, and the oldest of eleven children. Her family had been living in London since the previous year, while her father established a branch office for his New York City publishing firm, Wiley & Putnam. The Putnam family returned to the United States in 1848, and she spent her childhood and adolescence in Staten Island, Yonkers, and Morrisania, New York.

Mary received her early education from her mother at home, at a private school in Yonkers, and then at a new public school for girls in Manhattan, where she graduated in 1859. She published a story, "Found and Lost," in the April 1860 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Throughout her life she wrote political essays and fiction, and more than 120 scientific articles and 9 books.

Medical Education
After her 1859 graduation, she decided she wanted to become a doctor. Her father thought medicine was a repulsive profession, especially for a woman, but he ultimately supported her decision. No medical school in New York admitted women, so she studied medicine privately with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell [link], the first woman in American to earn a medical degree (1849), and attended pharmacy school, graduating from the New York College of Pharmacy in 1863, while the Civil War was being fought.

Female Medical College of Pennsylvania
In 1864 she earned a M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) degree from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (founded in 1850), the first medical institution in the world established to train women in medicine and offer them the M.D. degree. The college legally changed its name to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867.

A group of Quaker women, particularly Ann Preston [link], founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia in 1861 to provide clinical experience for Female Medical College students, and to:

"... establish in the City of Philadelphia a Hospital for the treatment of diseases of women and children, and for obstetrical cases; furnishing at the same time facilities for clinical instruction to women engaged in the study of medicine, and for the practical training of nurses; the chief resident physician to be a woman."

This teaching hospital could provide many patients gathered in one place for some time, who could be examined while the course of their diseases were observed.

Jacobi convinced the faculty to allow her to sit for her exams early, and in protest over the special allowances made for her, Dean Edwin Fussell resigned after her graduation. Ann Preston, who had argued for Putnam's early examination, took over his post as America's first woman dean of a medical school.

She received her Doctor of Medicine degree at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1864 and moved to Boston to study clinical medicine at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, founded in 1862 by fellow graduate, Marie Zakrzewska [link]. After a few months, Jacobi realized that she needed more education before practicing medicine. At that point she began to support co-education for men and women, arguing that women's medical schools could not provide the same training and clinical practice as at established universities affiliated with large hospitals.

Medical Education in Europe
Jacobi decided in 1866 to seek further training in Paris, France. There she attended clinics, lectures, and a class at the Ecole Pratique, and then decided to seek admission to the L'Ecole de Medecine of the University of Paris, which refused to admit women. She remained in Paris studying in less well-known schools and contributing letters, articles, and stories to American journals and newspapers, including the Medical Record, Putnam’s Magazine, the New York Evening Post, and Scribner’s Monthly.

In January 1868 a directive from the minister of education forced the faculty to admit her as the first woman student. Her course was a distinguished one, and she graduated in July 1871 with a prizewinning thesis, the second woman to get a degree at the prestigious L'Ecole de Medecine.

Career in Medicine
After returning to the United States in the fall of 1871, she established a medical practice in New York City and became lecturer of materia medica (medicines) from 1871, and professor of materia medica and therapeutics from 1873 to 1889 at the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, just opened by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and her surgeon sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell [link]. Jacobi also practiced medicine among the poor in the slums while working there.

Her mentor Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell viewed medicine as a means for social and moral reform, while Jacobi focused on curing disease. On a deeper level, Blackwell believed women would succeed in medicine because of their humane female values, but Jacobi believed that women should participate as the equals of men in all medical specialties.

The quality of her own education demonstrated to her the poor training available to most American women who wanted a career in medicine. In 1872 she organized the Association for the Advancement of the Medical Education of Women to improve that situation; she served as president of the association from 1874 to 1903. Her teaching at the Medical College often exceeded what her students were prepared to learn and led to her resignation from the Medical College in 1888.

Marriage and Family
When Mary applied for membership in the Medical Society of the County of New York, Abraham Jacobi was president. In 1873, Mary Putnam married Dr. Jacobi, who is often referred to as the "father of American pediatrics." They had three children, though their first daughter died at birth and their only son died at age seven. Their third child, Marjorie Jacobi McAneny, survived to adulthood, and Mary educated her daughter according to her own educational standards.

In the same year (1873), Dr. Jacobi began a children's dispensary service at Mount Sinai Hospital. From 1882 to 1885 she lectured on diseases of children at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. As an attending and consulting physician, Dr. Jacobi opened a children's ward at the New York Infirmary in 1886. Her ability to diagnose and her insistence on the highest standards ranked her among America's great physicians. In addition to clinical work and teaching, she continued to find time to write.

Dr. Jacobi became a member of several medical associations, including the New York Pathological Society; memberships in these organizations were vital to securing jobs and the respect of her colleagues. She was admitted to the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine by one vote, making her the society's first female member. She was the second woman member of the Medical Society of the County of New York and was admitted to the American Medical Association.

In 1891 she contributed a paper on the history of women physicians in the United States to Women's Work in America (1891). Entitled "Women in Medicine," this is an excerpt from that paper:

When people first began to think of educating women in medicine, a general dread seemed to exist that, if any tests of capacity were applied, all women would be excluded. The profound skepticism felt about women's abilities, was thus as much manifest in the action of the friends to their education as in that of its opponents.

But by 1882, the friends dared to call upon those who believe in the higher education of women, to help to set the highest possible standard for their medical education; and upon those who do not believe in such higher education to help in making such requirements as shall turn aside the incompetent, not by an exercise of arbitrary power, but by a demonstration of incapacity, which is the only logical, manly reason for refusing to allow women to pursue an honorable calling in an honorable way.

A career is open to women in the medical profession, a career in which they may earn a livelihood; a career in which they may do missionary work among the poor of our own country, and among their own sex in foreign lands; a career that is practical, that is useful, that is scientific.

Late Years
Jacobi's work with reformers and suffragists made her a leading spokesperson for women's health. As a leading feminist, she rejected the traditional wisdom about the weaknesses of women. This excerpt from her book, Common Sense Applied to Woman Suffrage (1894), illustrates her dissatisfaction with women's place in American society, especially the lack of suffrage:

No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitute a political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.

Over the course of her career, Jacobi wrote more than 100 medical papers. So it should come as no surprise to learn that she wrote a detailed account of her own fatal illness, a meningeal brain tumor: "Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum. From Which the Writer Died. Written by Herself."

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi died June 10, 1906 in New York City at age 63, and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Many prominent physicians, including Dr. Emily Blackwell, honored her at her funeral.

SOURCES
Wikipedia: Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mary Putnam Jacobi
Wikipedia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania
Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

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Hannah Myers Longshore: Pioneer Physician and Professor of Anatomy

By Maggie MacLean, 8-23-14

Hannah Myers Longshore graduated from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania's first class in 1851 and became Philadelphia's first woman doctor with a medical degree to establish a private practice, which she continued for forty years. She also lectured extensively first at the Female Medical College, and later in public speeches about sexual health at a time when there was little public discussion of any kind on the subject.

Early Years
Hannah Myers was born May 30, 1819 in Sandy Spring, Maryland, where her father taught at a Quaker school. She was the daughter of Samuel and Paulina Myers, Quakers from Bucks County, Pennsylvania who believed in equal education for boys and girls. While Hannah was still very young, her family moved to Washington, DC, where she attended a Quaker school until her early teens.

Her father, an abolitionist, was angered by the existence of slavery in the nation's capital. In 1833 he moved the family to a farm in Columbiana County, Ohio, where they could be close to the Quaker colony at New Lisbon. From an early age, Hannah was interested in science. Her early education was obtained at New Lisbon Academy, but she was unable to attend Oberlin College due to a lack of funds.

In 1841, Hannah Myers married Thomas Ellwood Longshore, a teacher at the New Lisbon Academy and a staunch supporter of advanced education for women. Thomas supported his new wife's plans to go to medical school but Hannah's education was again postponed by the birth of two children: Channing (1842) and Lucretia (1845), named after abolitionist Lucretia Mott.

In 1845, Thomas lost his teaching position because of his abolitionist convictions, and he then moved his family to his hometown, Attleboro, Pennsylvania, where he again began teaching at a Quaker school.

Thomas' brother, Dr. Joseph Skelton Longshore, was a physician in Attleboro who strongly supported medical education for women. Dr. Longshore was involved in some of the earliest efforts to open the field of medicine to women in the United States. He encouraged both Hannah and his sister Anna Longshore to study his medical books and to observe his work with patients.

Female Medical College of Pennsylvania
On March 11, 1850, the Pennsylvania legislature passed an act to incorporate the first regular medical school for women in America: the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The school was founded by Dr. Joseph S. Longshore and three other physicians, as well as four philanthropists, several of whom were Quakers.

In its early days, the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania faced serious opposition from the male medical establishment. These men believed that women were, first of all, too feeble-minded to learn the demanding curriculum, and they were also too delicate to endure the physical requirements of practicing medicine.

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, Dr. Ann Preston, also a member of the College's first graduating class, founded Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia in 1861.

hannah-longshore2In 1850, Hannah Myers Longshore, thirty-one year old mother of two, enrolled in the first class at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. On October 12, 1850, forty students were greeted by six faculty members. Thomas' sister Anna Longshore was also a member of the first graduating class of the Female Medical College.

Image: Female Medical College of Pennsylvania

Completing the customary four months of training, Longshore was one of eight women who received MD (Doctor of Medicine) degrees, all with the unfailing support and encouragement of her husband. Dr. Hannah Longshore was then appointed instructor of anatomy at the Female Medical College, serving in that capacity from 1851 to 1852.

The Myers family was very active in Philadelphia medicine in the 19th century. Hannah's sisters, Mary Frame Myers Thomas and Jane Viola Myers, also graduated from medical schools. Dr. Mary Frame Thomas became a prominent physician in Fort Wayne and Richmond, Indiana (1854-1888). Despite the unpopularity of women physicians at that time, Dr. Thomas was elected a member of the Wayne County Medical society in 1875.

Dr. Mary Frame Thomas studied at the Western Reserve College of Medicine, was president of the Indiana State Medical Society and worked with the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. She was also a leader in the causes of temperance, prison reform and women's suffrage, and operated an Underground Railroad station for escaped slaves.

Learn more about these fascinating women in Frederick Clayton Wait's book, The Three Myers Sisters: Pioneer Women Physicians.

From February to June 1852 Dr. Hannah Longshore served as an instructor of anatomy at the New England Female Medical College in Boston, becoming one of the first women faculty members at an American medical school. She also gave public lectures on sexual health at a time when there was little public discussion of any kind on the subject.

She returned to Philadelphia to work at the Female Medical College later that year, but left in 1853 after a rift with the college faculty over how medicine should be taught. When Dr. Joseph Longshore and others left the college to start a new medical school, the Pennsylvania Medical University, Dr. Hannah Longshore went with them. She taught anatomy at the Pennsylvania Medical University for the next four years.

When Dr. Hannah Myers Longshore began her private practice in 1858, she became Philadelphia's first woman doctor in private practice, a role she maintained for forty years. Despite her eventual success, her early work in private practice was not without challenges. Many male doctors would not consult with her; one advised her to "go home and darn your husband's socks." Many pharmacists would not fill her prescriptions. For a time, she had to prepare her own medicines by hand.

Despite objections, Dr. Longshore offered a series of public lectures on physiology and hygiene, encouraged by women's rights leaders such as Lucretia Mott. Dr. Hannah Longshore's frank discussions of sexual matters shocked conservatives but brought her praise by others, and many patients.

Dr. Joseph Longshore served as chair of obstetrics at the Penn Medical University until his death in December 1879, and remained active writing and publishing books on obstetrics and medical education for women. His obituary stated that, "to educate women in medicine was the leading desire of the last 30 years of his life [and] by his voice and pen, in private and public, he advocated and defended it amid great opposition."

Over the years, Dr. Hannah Longshore's practice became very successful. At one point, her practice included around three hundred families, a record met by few other doctors of the time. After forty years, she retired in 1892. Thomas Longshore died on August 19, 1898 in Philadelphia.

Dr. Hannah Myers Longshore died October 19, 1901 at the age of 82, leaving a remarkable legacy of four decades in private practice.

Her daughter, Lucretia Mott Longshore Blankenburg, became active in women's rights.

SOURCES
Longshore Family Papers
National Library of Medicine: Dr. Hannah Myers Longshore
Female Medical College and Homeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania

Image 1: Hannah Myers Longshore

Image 2: Female Medical College of Pennsylvania

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

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Oriana Moon Andrews: First Woman Doctor in the Confederate Army

By Maggie MacLean, 4-8-15

Dr. Oriana Moon Andrews was a remarkable woman who served as the first female doctor in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, she was physician to women and children, but her family had to move so frequently she was not able to establish a consistent practice. Chronic illness and childbirth at an advanced age ended her life much too soon.

Early Years
Oriana Russell Moon was born August 11, 1834 the second of seven children born to Anna Maria Barclay Moon and Edward Harris Moon. Oriana lived with her family at Viewmont, a 1500-acre estate in Scottsville, Albemarle County, Virginia. Edward Moon was a wealthy merchant, while Anna Maria had inherited her own wealth from her stepfather, including Viewmont and all of its slaves.

Edward Moon was a well-educated man, and he purchased an unusually large library, which included history, poetry, fiction and scientific works. He then hired the finest tutors for his children in literature, history, music and science. For the first sixteen years of her life, Oriana was addicted to reading, sometimes refusing to stop reading to eat.

At a time when Southern society dictated that young women be tutored privately and trained in the household arts, Edward Moon permitted his daughters to pursue their own interests. Oriana attended Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York during the 1850-1851 school year. After graduating there, she returned to Virginia, talking about the independence of Northern women.

Then, at the age of eighteen, Miss Moon decided she wanted to be a doctor. Edward Moon readily agreed that she should pursue a medical career, but he did not live to see her become a doctor. In 1854, Oriana enrolled in the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. At that time the general public believed that women were not capable of mastering the subject matter, and they would be much too squeamish to actually practice medicine.

Career in Medicine
Oriana proved them all wrong, but her path would not be easy. Female students were not allowed to work in hospitals to gain clinical experience working with patients, so the College set up its own clinic where they treated women and the poor. As her thesis, she wrote about the relationship between cardiac and pulmonary diseases, and she was awarded her Doctor of Medicine in 1857.

Oriana then returned to Viewmont. In 1858, her uncle, James Turner Barclay, decided to return to Jerusalem with his family for a second missionary tour as a Disciples of Christ minister, physician and student of the Holy Land. Oriana accompanied the Barclays and practiced medicine during her stay there.

In the summer of 1859, Oriana returned to her Virginia home, where she continued her medical practice as a woman's physician for her social circle and for the the Moon family slaves. Her patients adored their young female physician. Some male physicians grudgingly accepted Oriana as an unusual woman doctor. However, despite much urging, Dr. Moon consistently declined to 'hang out her shingle' as a general practitioner.

The Civil War
The the Civil War broke out in 1861, and Virginia seceded from the Union on May 23, 1861. Oriana, her mother and her brother drove the family carriage to Charlottesville ten miles away. Their journey was made to convert the family's cash and other marketable assets into currency or bonds for the Confederacy. A notice on the bank wall stressed the urgent need of physicians, surgeons and nurses for the Confederate Army.

Dr. Moon volunteered her services to the Confederacy in several letters written to General John H. Cocke between April and July 1861. In a letter dated July 19, 1861, she wrote:

"My most respected Friend,
Owing, I suppose, to our regular postal arrangements, your kind communication of Tuesday has just been received. I have not as yet entered into service; neither shall I, without consulting you, if you will allow me that high privilege! I have been willing and even anxious to be engaged in ministering to the wants of the sick, but after you so kindly proposed to take the matter in hand, I thought it would be better to wait and learn the result...

"If it will not be too great an imposition on your time and generosity, I would prefer to have you make any arrangements for me you may see proper. If the ladies of Richmond address me on the subject, I will enclose their communications to you. Enclosed I send you some suggestions, which strike me as being good...

"I would prefer to be in a Surgical Hospital where I would assist in the operations... I will go anywhere or do anything they may see fit to assign me, if it is to follow the army and seek the wounded on the field of battle."

Woman Surgeon in the Confederacy
On July 22, one day after the First Battle of Bull Run, Dr. Moon received word to report to the Charlottesville General Hospital which included buildings converted for that purpose at the University of Virginia. Soon the hospital overflowed with wounded from Bull Run and spilled over to private homes nearby. Dr. Moon was assigned a ward in this hospital, and was awarded a surgeon's commission as a captain in the Confederate Army, reportedly the only one given to a woman.

A letter appeared in the Richmond Daily Dispatch on August 1, 1861, describing the situation at that hospital and Dr. Moon's role there:

"The state of the hospital is most satisfactory. The few cases of death are extremely cheering. But one of the wounded has so far died; he was a Yankee and fearfully injured. The largest number of wounded belong probably to the 4th Alabama Regiment, and there are also several young men of the Oglethorpe Light Infantry from Savannah, and half dozen students from the University of Oxford, Mississippi here. By far the large majority of sick are down with the measles and will easily recover. Among the more seriously wounded are also two Yankee captains from a New York Regiment.

"Thanks to the energy and zeal displayed on all sides, order begins to reign and system to prevail amid the immense number. More physicians have arrived from other towns; among them Dr. Alexander Rives, late house-surgeon of Bellevue Hospital, New York; Dr. Moon, a young lady of the neighborhood, to whose skillful and experienced hands the care of a ward has been entrusted..."

Dr. John Andrews
When the Civil War broke out, Dr. John Summerfield Andrews, aged 23, was a practicing physician in Memphis, Tennessee. He quickly arranged his personal affairs and headed for Virginia. Arriving a few days before the Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, he cared for his brothers after they were injured in that battle.

When Confederate General Bernard Bee visited the field hospital, he immediately commissioned Dr. Andrews a surgeon and put him in charge of the wounded men of the 4th Alabama Regiment. After the battle ended, the Confederate wounded were taken to the Charlottesville General Hospital, John discovered that his brother Robert's medical condition was grave.

Dr. Andrews asked for another surgeon to examine his brother, and Dr. Moon was called in. When John looked up from his seat at his brother's bedside, he was astonished to see a young woman. After a thorough examination, the doctors retired to an adjoining room for consultation. Dr. Moon advised against surgery, fearing it would kill the young soldier. John agreed that the operation should be deferred. They packed ice around Robert's chest to reduce his fever, but he died two days later.

A few months later illness forced Dr. Moon to give up her ward. She returned to Viewmont where she was cared for by her mother. At his first opportunity, Dr. John Andrews hired a horse and rode the ten miles to Viewmont to check on Oriana's health. He remained there several days before returning to Charlottesville.

Marriage and Family
Dr. Andrews also installed himself as physician to Dr. Moon, who would be confined to bed for more than a month. His visits to Viewmont multiplied and their friendship took on a deeper meaning. John requested leave to get married, and on November 28, 1861, John Andrews and Oriana Moon married at Viewmont. She was 27.

After their wedding, Dr. John Andrews was granted leave to seek reassignment in Richmond. These hospitals daily received wounded soldiers other areas of Virginia. Every medical person was needed, but records show that John did not resurface in Richmond until late January 1862. On February 1, 1862, Dr. Andrews appeared before a medical review board, and he was declared unsatisfactory as a Confederate surgeon. He resigned his commission the same day.

Civilian Life During the War
John and Oriana continued living at Viewmont, and their first child, Henry Horton Andrews, was born there on October 30, 1862, but he died from croup in May 1863. On October 1, 1863, a second son, James Barclay Andrews, was born. The Andrews family moved from Viewmont to the Bel Air estate, approximately three miles from Viewmont. On February 9, 1865, Oriana gave birth to a third son, William Luther Andrews.

General Philip Sheridan's Union soldiers marched through the area enroute to Scottsville in early March 1865. Sheridan's goal was to destroy the canal and any food and supplies that would aid the Confederacy. Oriana and John moved their two sons back to Viewmont, where they remained until Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Move to Alabama
In 1869, Dr. John Andrews' family in Alabama assured him that there was a physician's position for him in Florence, Alabama. Oriana and their youngest son caught a train in Charlottesville, while John and their eldest son drove a wagonload of their possessions to Florence.

John soon realized that the Florence area could not pay much more than gratitude for his medical services. In early 1870, he purchased a small tract of land in Hardin County, Tennessee and built a rough board dwelling for his family. Oriana and their two sons moved there later that year. Although accustomed to far more comfort, she accepted her new situation with quiet dignity.

In their three years there, the Andrews family moved three times. Their patients lived in poverty and could not pay their physician for services rendered. Due to a chronic heart ailment, Oriana's health suffered under the strain and she was confined to bed. The Moons urged the family to return to Viewmont.

John disposed of all of their furniture and shipped their books, clothing and a few small trunks of keepsakes via railroad to Virginia. He also purchased four mules and a new wagon with canvas stretched over the bows and a bed with springs in the rear. John and Oriana made the six-week trip back to Virginia in stages to avoid antagonizing Oriana's fragile health.

Late Years
In 1874, the family settled down at Viewmont again, where Oriana tutored her sons in the family library, with the books her father had purchased for her many years before. Five months of the year, the boys hiked five miles to Church Hill, the home of their Uncle Isaac Moon who taught a public school there. When not studying, the boys roamed the woods and helped with corn planting in the nearby fields. Another son was born in 1875: Owen Merriweather Andrews.

In 1879, the heirs of Anna Marie Barclay Moon, Oriana's mother, decided to dispose of her estate and divide the proceeds among them. The Andrews had to move again, this time to a farm in Buckingham County, Virginia. In 1880, Oriana gave birth to another son, Frank Moon Andrews. (She was 46!)

Oriana's health worsened. Within a year, the Andrews moved to Norwood, Nelson County, Virginia, where they rented a farm. Dr. John Andrews found an active medical practice in Norwood and also planted corn in the fields along the James River. During the spring of 1881, torrential rains fell and swept away their crops. The Andrews once again returned to Scottsville.

In 1882, John and Oriana rented Old Hall, a mansion built in 1830 when Scottsville was a thriving river town. There the two doctors opened the First Sanatorium of Southside Albemarle and began active practice with women and children as their patients. It must have been gratifying for Oriana to finally be able to practice medicine again, but they had more patients than they could accommodate, and the work continually taxed her strength. She was forced to quit the practice in December 1883.

In the early morning hours of December 24, 1883, Dr. Oriana Moon Andrews died of pneumonia at age 49. She was buried at the Scottsville Presbyterian Cemetery.

Image 1: Dr. Oriana Moon Andrews in 1861 with her husband, Dr. John Andrews. Credit: Woman's Missionary Union

Image 2: Viewmont, the Moon family estate where Oriana lived most of her life. Credit: Scottsville Museum

Image 3: Old Hall in Scottsville, Virginia. Oriana died in the east bedroom. Credit: Scottsville Museum

From: civilwarwomenblog.com

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Badass of the Week: Mary E. Walker

By Ben Thompson

"Tables about breast high had been erected upon which the screaming victims were having legs and arms cut off. The surgeons and their assistants, stripped to the waist and bespattered with blood, stood around, some holding the poor fellows while others, armed with long, bloody knives and saws, cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity, throwing the mangled limbs on a pile nearby as soon as removed." -- Lt. Col. W.W. Blackford, 1st Virginia Cavalry

Detonating artillery shells and the non-stop rattling of musketry menacingly rumbled in the distance, barely audible over the groans and agonizing cries of dying men as droves of new arrivals steadily flooded into the ordinary, single-family home that was now being utilized as a front-line field hospital.  Horse-drawn ambulance carts packed full of trauma victims lined the driveway to a grisly facility that mashed together a barely-serviceable emergency room, operating room, and morgue into a painfully-typical three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tennessee, the hospital's overworked, exhausted nurses desperately trying to triage the wounded between those who are possibly treatable and those who aren't going to make it.

Outside the city walls the Union Army, pushed back to Chattanooga following their crushing defeat at Chickamauga, was making a desperate stand to hold the city against a massive Confederate counter-attack.  46,000 men of Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee were entrenched on the heights overlooking the critical strategic rail and communications center, with the Union forces backed up against the Tennessee River, but now a massive assault led by General George Thomas was rushing straight up a steep ridge, straight into hardened enemy positions that included 112 cannons, and were taking murderous fire from the enemy in an all-out attempt to smash the Confederates' defensive positions and break out of the siege.  Those wounded soldiers lucky enough to find their way back to friendly lines found themselves here, in a stinking, unsterilized, makeshift hospital surrounded by malaria-infected men and saw-wielding surgeons practicing a particular brand of medicine that had more in common with medieval torture than anything resembling a modern-day visit to the pediatrician, their only consolation being a cup of cold water and the soothing voice of nurses trying to comfort them and ease their pain in some small way.

During the Civil War, over ten thousand women worked as nurses in field hospitals across the war zone.

Mary Edwards Walker of the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry is the only one who served as a surgeon.  She's also the only woman in history to ever receive the Medal of Honor, the highest award for military bravery offered by the United States of America.

Walker was a woman who was roughly a hundred and fifty years ahead of her time.  Routinely criticized by women and men alike for her desire to wear men's clothing (at a time when "men's clothing" basically meant "any article of clothing that allowed you to walk through doorways or work in any capacity whatsoever), Walker paid her own way through Syracuse Medical College in 1855, becoming just the second woman in American history to complete physician training and work as a doctor.  When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Walker had already been running her own private practice for six years, but even though there were just 86 licenses surgeons in the Union Army at the start of the hostilities she was still turned away by every recruiting officer she approached.  Undeterred, the 29 year-old surgeon signed on as a volunteer  nurse, working on the front lines at the First Battle of Bull Run, then working as an unpaid volunteer surgeon at Indiana Hospital later that year.

Walker continued her practice of "I'll just show up wherever people are dying and see if they'll maybe let me help fix them for free", volunteering at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, performing front-line operations, and taking control of a medical train that was ferrying wounded men back to Washington.  Her skills at slicing and dicing men up in the name of science so impressed Union General Ambrose Burnside that the Federal commander nominated her for a commission.  At first she met with the resistance she was so used to encountering, but thanks to Burnside's recommendation, she was finally commissioned as an Assistant Surgeon in the 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, issued a U.S. Army surgeon's uniform, and sent to Tennessee to help treat wounded and dying men during the siege of Chattanooga.  She would be the only woman in the war to receive this honor.

Now, in order to fully appreciate how intense the job of a Civil War surgeon actually was, try to think of it as something of a cross between the Spanish Inquisition and an Eastern European butcher shop.  Since artillery shells, canister fire, and cannonballs typically resulted in the instant, untreatable, and horrific death of anyone unlucky enough to be standing in front of a cannon muzzle, the majority of Civil War surgical cases were from gunshot wounds caused by a .58-caliber minie ball – a soft metal, mostly hollow, incredibly heavy projectile over half an inch in diameter that was shaped very much like a modern bullet, and one that not only hit so hard that any bone it came in contact with shattered like a fluorescent lightbulb being smacked against a brick wall, but that also mushroomed on impact much like a modern-day hollow-point bullet, expanding to about an inch in width, ripping through muscle, blood vessels, organs, and all of those other important things that people keep inside their skin.

Because there was no such thing as organ transplantation, internal surgery, or blood transfusions, if a soldier got hit in the head, chest, or abdomen, he had a 90% chance of death – all you could do for the poor bastard was give him morphine and water and find a shady tree for him to sit under until he died.  Wounds to the arms and legs had better odds, however, which is why fully three-quarters of surgeries performed during the war were amputations performed on these appendages.

Here's how it worked.  After a guy got shot, he had 48 hours to get his arm cut off with an unsterilized hacksaw or he was probably going to die a painful death from gangrene.  You, as the doctor, working in terrible conditions at someone's kitchen counter, would slosh the blood off the operating table with a bucket, get the guy up there, then you'd have a couple minutes to figure out what kind of shape he was in.  If his arm wasn't broken, he might be ok – you can just wash it out, slap a tourniquet on there, and move on to the next guy.  If it was broken, you'd need to operate.  One of your nurses would anesthetize the dude with a chloroform-soaked rag (if it was available – in some field hospitals all you got was a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite down on) until he was unconscious, then you'd have to stitch the broken artery closed with a needle and thread, dig the bullet out of there with your forceps, cut through the muscle with a sharp knife, saw through the bone with your hacksaw, tie off the arteries with another piece of thread, and then sew it all shut into a stump.

A good surgeon could perform the operation in under ten minutes.  And he'd do it dozens of times in a row, all of this while people were pounding the city with artillery shells and stray bullets were slamming into the walls around them.  One nurse at the Battle of Antietam recalled working on a guy in the hospital tent and then having a stray bullet pass through the tent, through the sleeve of her dress, and then kill him right in front of her, which, honestly may have been more of a humane way to go – because this was back before we knew you had to sterilize your equipment before you operated on a patient, almost 25% of people who underwent amputation surgery ended up dying from infected wounds.

Saving human lives by performing barbaric work with her bone saw under hellish conditions in the middle of a raging war zone as bullets and artillery shrapnel ripped through the skies around her, Mary Edwards Walker continued working as a front-line surgeon throughout the three-day Battle of Chattanooga.  After a heroic, unlikely charge by George Thomas's men broke the Confederate position and sent Bragg retreating back to Georgia, Walker continued her work, not only assisting wounded Federal troops but also crossing enemy lines and providing medical care to Confederate troops and civilians in Tennessee and Georgia.

On one of these trips to Georgia to aid sick and injured civilians, Walker was ambushed by Confederate pickets, who found her in her Union uniform carrying two pistols and arrested her as a spy, a detail that may or may not actually have been true (we can't prove it either way).  Her captors, who noted in their report that she argued "enough for a regiment of men", recommended sending her to a lunatic asylum for being a woman doctor, but instead she was sent to Richmond and thrown in a jail for Federal prisoners of war.  She spent four months in brutal conditions in the POW Camp, Walker was sent back to Yankee lines as part of a prisoner exchange (she later confessed that she was very proud to have been traded straight-up for a male Confederate surgeon).

After the war, Walker was sent back to the Union Army, where she was attached to Sherman's army during the Atlanta Campaign.  After the Battle of Atlanta, she was appointed Chief Surgeon at a women's military prison in Louisville, Kentucky, where she served until the end of the war.  After her service, Walker collected an Army pension, wrote a couple books, became a women's suffrage activist, founded a weird commune, and got arrested a couple times for wearing pants instead of a dress.

During her time in the Union Army, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker had been recommended for promotion both by General George Thomas and by General William Tecumseh Sherman.  Since she technically wasn't a uniformed service member, these requests for promotion could not be granted, but in honor of her service Mary Edwards Walker was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1866.  Of the 1.8 million women who have served the United States military, she is the only one to ever receive the award.  The Federal government tried to correct this in 1917 when they changed the guidelines for the Medal of Honor, stipulating that it could only be awarded for actions that occurred in combat, and stripped 900 people – including Dr. Walker – of their awards.  Walker, obviously, told them to get bent – she wore the medal until her death in 1919.  It was officially reinstated by order of the President in 1977.

Sources:

Bollett, Alfred J.  "The Truth about Civil War Surgery."  Civil War Times.  June 12, 2006.

Davis, William.  Civil War Journal.  Thomas Nelson, 1999.

De Pauw, Linda Grant.  Battle Cries and Lullabies.  University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

Schroeder, Glenna R.  The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine.  M.E. Sharpe, 2008.

Wilbur, C. Keith.  Civil War Medicine.  Globe Pequot, 1998.

From: military.com

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Dr. Mary Walker, Surgeon

From: chnm.gmu.edu

Dr Mary Edwards Walker led an unconventional life for a women of the mid-nineteenth century. She became a doctor when few women were even credentialed in nursing, divorced in an era when women's positions were primarily defined by wifehood and motherhood, advocated dress reform for women and even wore men's full-dress clothing to lecture on women's rights. She often challenged medical orthodoxy—discouraging surgeons, for example from extensive practice of amputation.

Dr. Walker is also the only woman ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Born in Oswego New York in 1832, her father urged her to pursue a medical career and in 1855, she graduated from Syracuse Medical College and married a fellow-graduate, but later divorced.

As the Civil War broke out, Dr. Walker traveled to Washington to petition for a commission in the Army as a surgeon. Denied the commisison, she served for several months as a contract surgeon. When she Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland, she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform that gave her more mobility when treating soldiers and working in field hospitals than women's clothing of the day.

Dr. Mary Walker wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor, advocated dress reform for women and frequently adapted men's clothing for professional and personal comfort and utility.
Dr. Walker was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. Although she later fought rumors that she was not a qualified doctor, but a Union spy, it is presumed that she passed information during that time. Dr. Walker was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons.

After the war, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Congressional Medal of Honor. Her citation reads, in part,

Rank and organization: Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian), U. S. Army. Places and dates: Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861; Patent Office Hospital, Washington, D.C., October 1861; Chattanooga, Tenn., following Battle of Chickomauga, September 1863; Prisoner of War, April 10, 1864_August 12, 1864, Richmond, Va.; Battle of Atlanta, September 1864. Entered service at: Louisville, Ky. Born: 26 November 1832, OswegoCounty, N.Y.

Citation: Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, "has rendered valuable service to the Government. and her efforts have been earnest and untiring in a variety of ways," and that she was assigned to duty and served as an assistant surgeon in charge of female prisoners at Louisville, Ky., upon the recommendation of Major_Generals Sherman and Thomas, and faithfully served as contract surgeon in the service of the United States, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soliders, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in a Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon; and
Whereas by reason of her not being a commissioned officer in the military service, a brevet or honorary rank cannot, under existinglaws, be conferred upon her; and
Whereas in the opinion of the President an honorable recognition of her services and sufferings should be made:

"It is ordered, That a testimonial thereof shall be hereby made and given to the said Dr. Mary E. Walker, and that the usual medal of honor for meritorious services be given her.
Given under my hand in the city of Washington, D.C., this 11th day of November, A.D. 1865."

In 1917, when criteria for awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor changed, Dr. Walker's award was rescinded along with more than 900 others. She refused to return it, however, and wore it always. President Jimmy Carter restored the award to her in 1977. As a result of her service to the Union during the Civil War, Mary Walker was paid $766.16 and provided a monthly pension lower than those of most war widows.

Image: Dr. Mary Walker in 1913

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The First Female Medical College: "Will you accept or reject them?"

From: doctordoctress.org

How were the first women physicians of the 19th century perceived?

The 19th century was a period of rapid social change and experimentation. The reform movements that swept through American society after 1820 were built on a new vision for the young nation and were reactions to a range of factors: slavery; the abuse of alcohol; the transformation of the American economy through industrialization; urbanization; and lingering goals of the American revolutionary period. These reform movements included: the Public Schools Movement to ensure public education for all; better care and treatment for the mentally ill; the Temperance Movement to control alcohol abuse; and most famously, the abolition of slavery and the promotion of women’s rights.

Two significant reform movements of the period, the abolition of slavery and the promotion of women’s rights, were inextricably tied together. Women were very active in the anti-slavery movement, even though their contributions were limited by their legal and societal status as second-class citizens. By participating in the abolition movement, women moved beyond their traditional domestic world of home and child-rearing and entered public life. They attended meetings, strategized, spoke out, and raised money for the anti-slavery cause.

The experience of advocating for equal rights for African Americans taught women the power of organizing and acting for change. Women used what they learned in the abolition movement to publicly fight for their own equal rights, including access to education and employment opportunities.

Prior to 1850, women practiced medicine in their communities and worked, informally, as nurses and midwives, but there was no opportunity for formal medical education. Many thought that it was improper for women to study medical subjects alongside men, and were opposed to women entering medicine as professionals. Others, though, thought it would be more appropriate for a woman physician, instead of a male physician, to treat women patients.

It was at this time that a small group of Philadelphia Quakers began to imagine a future where women were professional physicians, appropriately educated, bearing a medical degree, and serving their communities equally with their male counterparts. In 1850, they founded the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first medical school in the nation for women.

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A Female Civil War Surgeon: "How Dr. Mary is Remarkable”

From: doctordoctress.org

Explore the story of a controversial woman doctor who served in the Civil War and fought for women's rights

Mary Edwards Walker was born in 1832 in Oswego, New York. In 1855, she received her M.D. from Syracuse Medical College. In March 1864, late in the Civil War, she was appointed as a contract surgeon for the Union's 52nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In April 1864, Dr. Mary Walker was captured by Confederate soldiers and held prisoner for four months in Richmond, Virginia. She was released in August in exchange for a Confederate officer.

In recognition of her services to the Union Army, President Andrew Johnson awarded her a Medal of Honor in November 1865. However, her Medal was revoked in June of 1916, along with others, by an Act of Congress. The Medals of Honor for distinguished conduct had not been awarded according to the requirements specified by law, which requires those who receive the Medal of Honor to be involved in actual conflict with the enemy. Efforts made by her descendants ensured the posthumous re-instatement of her Medal by President Jimmy Carter in 1977.

Dr. Mary, as she liked to be called, was also a strong advocate for women’s dress reform. She began wearing bloomers [loose-fitting pants, gathered at the ankle and often worn under knee-length dresses] during the Civil War, and after the War began wearing “men’s clothing” -- trousers and jackets, accompanied by short hair and sometimes a top hat. Dr. Mary became president of the National Dress Reform Association and was active in the Central Women’s Suffrage Bureau. She also supported the temperance movement. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, she toured the United Kingdom lecturing on her Civil War experience and the physiological arguments against women's traditional dress.

Dr. Mary, her stories, and her ideas could be controversial, and she caused quite a sensation. In 1874 Congress granted her a pension, and from 1882 to 1883 she served as a clerk in the Department of Pensions. Dr. Mary made occasional appearances at Congressional hearings and was quite well-recognized within Washington, D.C. While many women may have agreed with her ideas, Dr. Mary’s strong personality and sometimes impolite manner made people hesitant to work with her.

In her later years, Dr. Mary moved back to the small town of Oswego, where she lived alone and was often seen wearing denim overalls and a shabby hat, driving her horse-drawn wagon through town. She died in 1919 after a long illness.

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5 Pioneering Women Doctors and Nurses of the Civil War

By Jocelyn Green, 3-29-15

The truth is, all women who were doctors and nurses during the Civil War were pioneers in their field. Prior to 1861, nurses--and all but two doctors in the United States--were men. But when social reformer Dorothea Dix pointed out to President Lincoln that he had a scant 28 surgeons in the army's medical department to care for the 75,000 volunteers he'd just called for, he reluctantly conceded that women be allowed to serve as nurses. I want to introduce you to five remarkable women who blazed the trail for women in medicine.

1) Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. An English immigrant, Dr. Blackwell was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and ran an infirmary for women and children near the slums of New York City. When the Civil War broke out, she realized the Union army needed a system for distributing supplies and organized four thousand women into the Women’s Central Association of Relief (WCAR). The WCAR grew into chapters around the county, and this body systematically collected and distributed life-saving supplies such as bandages, blankets, food, clothing and medical supplies. Blackwell also partnered with several prominent male physicians in New York City to offer a one-month training course for 100 women who wanted to be nurses for the army. This was the first formal training for women nurses in the country. Once they completed their training, they were placed at various hospitals. By July 1861, the WCAR prompted the government to form a national version—the United States Sanitary Commission. And it all started because Dr. Blackwell decided to mobilize the women of the country to help the Union.

2) Georgeanna Woolsey. At 28 years old, Georgeanna should not have been allowed to serve the army as a nurse, but she got through the application process anyway. Against her mother’s and sisters’ wishes, she was one of the 100 women trained in New York City to be a nurse. Not content to sit in a parlor and knit or scrape lint, she was eager to go where the fighting was, to get her hands dirty in a way she had never been allowed to before as a wealthy, privileged woman. Georgeanna wrote many letters and accounts of her experiences, including this:

“Some of the bravest women I have ever known were among this first company of army nurses. . . . Some of them were women of the truest refinement and culture; and day after day they quietly and patiently worked, doing, by order of the surgeon, things which not one of those gentlemen would have dared to ask of a woman whose male relative stood able and ready to defend her and report him. I have seen small white hands scrubbing floors, washing windows, and performing all menial offices. I have known women, delicately cared for at home, half fed in hospitals, hard worked day and night, and given, when sleep must be had, a wretched closet just large enough for a camp bed to stand in. I have known surgeons who purposely and ingeniously arranged these inconveniences with the avowed intention of driving away all women from their hospitals. “These annoyances could not have been endured by the nurses but for the knowledge that they were pioneers, who were, if possible, to gain standing ground for others. . ."

Georgeanna Woolsey is the inspiration for my main character in "Wedded to War". Woolsey nursed patients in seminary buildings, the U.S. Patent Office, and aboard hospital transport ships which carried wounded and sick soldiers from the swamps of the Virginia Peninsula. After the war, Georgeanna and her husband, veteran Union surgeon Dr. Francis Bacon, founded the Connecticut Training School for Nurses at New Haven Hospital.  She also published Hand Book of Nursing for Family and General Use and co-founded the Connecticut Children's Aid Society.

3) Dr. Mary Edwards Walker After volunteering as a nurse in 1861, and then as an assistant surgeon, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker earned a Union army commission for her services as surgeon in 1863. In 1864, she was captured by Confederates, suspected of espionage, and thrown into Richmond's Castle Thunder prison where she remained four months before her release. In 1865, she became the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. Dr. Walker appears in Spy of Richmond. The newspaper article Mr. Kent dictates to Sophie about Dr. Walker's imprisonment is verbatim from the original story that ran in the Richmond Enquirer--including the comment about her "homely" appearance.

4) Captain Sally Tompkins Sally Louisa Tompkins founded a private hospital in Richmond, Virginia, to care for the flood of Confederate wounded. During the war, her hospital cared for 1,333 soldiers and suffered only 73 deaths, which was the lowest mortality rate of any military hospital. The Robertson hospital, named for the judge who let Sally use one of his houses, returned 94 percent of its patients to service. Eventually Confederate authorities decided to close all private hospitals, declaring that soldier patients could only be cared for at government hospitals run by a commissioned officer with at least a rank of captain. When Tompkins heard the news, she called on Jefferson Davis and asked for an exception to the new rule. Since her hospital's remarkable record spoke for itself, Davis commissioned Tompkins a Captain of Cavalry, unassigned, making Robertson Hospital an official government facility. She was the only female commissioned officer in the Confederate Army. As an unassigned officer she could remain at the hospital permanently. The military rank also allowed her to draw government rations for her patients, but she refused to be added to the army payroll.

5) Clara Barton No list of groundbreaking nurses would be complete without her. Barton was fiercely independent, a self-appointed field-nurse for the Army of the Potomac. Working on her own, beyond the structure of the Sanitary Commission and Army Medical Department, she stockpiled supplies in her small Washington flat and then drove into the Virginia countryside, and into Maryland, to disperse them among the wounded.  At General Butler's request, she cared for the soldiers in the Army of the James during the summer campaigns of 1864, as well. Her work for soldiers and their families didn't end along with the war, however. She continued her service by opening the Missing Soldiers’ Office (link is external)in Washington, D.C. to help family members find the remains of their loved ones. By 1869, she had identified 22,000 missing men and received and responded to 63,182 letters from those trying to locate their soldiers. Later, Clara brought a chapter of the International Red Cross to life in America.

*The following is excerpted from my nonfiction book, Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front, to explain why women had such struggles as nurses at the beginning of the war.
The clash between surgeons and women nurses which Georgeanna Woolsey described had its roots in how each group of people viewed the woman’s place in society. Americans in the mid-nineteen century commonly believed that men and women had their own separate spheres of activity. Men occupied the commercial, business and political fields. Women’s activities were relegated to home, church, women’s clubs and reform groups, and circles of female friends and relatives. But in which sphere did the hospital fall?

Normally, when someone fell ill, a doctor visited the home, examined the patient, and left the nursing care to the female relatives living in the household. Wives, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers administered medicine, dressed wounds, and saw to the patient’s recovery. The only people treated in the hospital were those who didn’t have women at home to nurse them. Once the war began, medical care for soldiers had to be systemized since the troops could not recover at home (although many wives and mothers travelled hundreds of miles to personally nurse their own wounded family members). Male doctors held that the ward was part of the military hospital, so it fell under their dominion.

Popular opinion also held that women would faint in the presence of war’s gruesome casualties, and that their innocence would be marred with exposure to the naked male body. Women nurses were convinced the hospital ward belonged in the female domain, since they were treating sick soldiers the same way they would in their own homes—and the home was unequivocally within the female sphere. More tension arose between men and women when the female nurses viewed the doctors’ advice as suggestions rather than strict orders, for at home, they had the freedom to follow or not follow the doctor’s orders as they saw fit. Over the course of the war, the surgeons and nurses came to accept and work with each other as both groups proved their mettle and shared genuine desire to save lives and speed recovery of the soldiers.

Image 1: Elizabeth Blackwell
Image 2: Georganna Woolsey
Image 3: Sally Tompkins

From: jocelyngreen.com

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Women and Medicine

From: mnwelldir.org

Surgery during this period killed as many as it cured, mostly due to sepsis. It was in Europe, where the surgical arts were being perfected, at this time, specifically France, and new techniques flourished there and were quickly disseminated among European medical schools. However, even in Europe, sepsis [infection] was still a problem.

Most surgeries in the US involved the treating of wounds, as well as battle wounds. Amputation was most probably the leading surgical procedure performed.

In 1809, Jane Todd Crawford (Lincoln’s wife’s—Mary Todd— cousin) was diagnosed with a very large ovarian cyst which had originally been diagnosed as a pregnancy. At the time, no tumor had ever been removed successfully. However, there was a visiting surgeon from Edinburgh who agreed to do the surgery. According to Gail Collins, he gave her opium and alcohol to ease the pain, and a month later she returned home cured.

Legend has it that an angry crowd surrounded the doctor’s home while he was treating Mrs. Crawford, threatening to kill him for his outrageous assault on a female body. [Collins]

It was not until mid century that anesthesia was being used, as is outlined in our tongue in cheek article, The History of Anesthesia. At this time Dr J Marion Sims began experimenting with his female slaves.

Females of this period had a rough time where medicine was involved, for doctors were determined to treat every facet of female passage, from puberty through menopause as a disease.

Many doctors believed that during their periods, women were deprived of blood to the brain, leaving them “idiotic” or temporarily insane. [Collins]

During childbirth, regulars bled women into unconsciousness, mainly to relieve their own anxiety at hearing the screams and moans accompanying most births. How woman handled menstruation at this time will remain a mystery because it was something that no one mentioned in private or public. Even diaries have no mention of this monthly visitor, though many have theories on the subject, with some guessing that the use of multiple skirts and petticoats was to hide the great variety of “napkins” women had developed and used at the time.

What we do know for sure is that personal hygiene was extremely poor. Diapers were not even washed till just prior to the Civil War. Bathing was considered unhealthy. Magazine articles exhorted people to brush their teeth, but again, accounts of visitors returning to Europe spoke volumes of the poor dental care in Americans of that time. Much of our tooth loss and gum disease, though, was attributable to mercury poisoning from traditional medicine.

Because of modesty, and no regular female physicians, doctors were not allowed to look upon the naked bodies of their female patients. Many palpated (felt around) under the skirts, while others examined women with the aid of a mirror (to avoid looking directly). Collins points out that one of the best obstetricians of that period, a Dr Degorges, was blind. Many a physician exhorted medical students in their care to avoid viewing a half naked woman (even giving birth) under their care for it could result in sexual perversion leading them to adultery and madness. Students had to learn from textbooks and manikins.

Things sexual were strictly taboo, leading to much ignorance on the subject of birth control and sexually transmitted diseases, though an efficient mail system supported our young entrepreneurial spirit in the trade of sexual goods:

… Americans could send away for birth control pamphlets, medical devices like diaphragms and syringes, condoms, spermicides for douching, and pills that promised to induce abortions. Ads for condoms, cures for venereal disease, aphrodisiacs, and abortion services were an economic mainstay of the urban newspapers. Agents distributed ads for birth control devices on street corners and mailed them to newlyweds. “French” was a code for a contraceptive, and “Portuguese” for something that induced abortion . . . .  [Collins]

Abortions, performed early, were a socially accepted form of birth control. Even the Catholic Church looked the other way, as the fetus was not considered human till movement was perceived. Midwives hung flags out their windows signifying that they performed abortions. [Collins]

Infant mortality was high, even though, as Collins points out, “Americans were more likely to live to adulthood than ever before.” With husbands gone most of the time and no easy way to call for help, young wives were left alone to their superstitions. Everyone knew a handful of stories of a happy, bouncing baby struck by a sudden fever and dead before morning.

Traditional medicines at this time did more harm than good (history seems to repeat itself, e.g. Vioxx) and parents began to drug their children.

An 1833 guide used by southern women suggested daily doses of laudanum, an opium derivative—four drops for a nine-month-old and five to six drops for a toddler. [Collins]

American women, according to the European visitors, aged rapidly. Be it due to the ravages of raising a family or poor nutrition or poor medical care, one visitor penned this maxim:

"… charming and adorable at fifteen . . . faded at twenty-three, old at thirty-five and decrepit at forty." [Collins]

It was right around the mid 19th century that our personal hygiene habits began to improve. It became genteel to have a fresh water basin awaiting one’s morning ablutions. Babies where no longer swaddled (very tightly fitting clothing) in unwashed linens, but were loosely clothed and their diapers washed regularly, and not allowed to dry while the baby still wore them. The belief that children were born unsullied sprouted at this time, and since the mother was a child’s main influence, she often took all the blame should her child go astray. Women’s magazines, physicians, clergy, and neighbors offered plenty of unsolicited advice to raising the perfect child, but the perfect child was only to be found in books. The story of young George Washington still finds life in many an elementary school today.

Women were not allowed in medical schools, period. The reasons for this were varied, and today, quite comical. It took the Blackwell sisters to finally breach this barrier, though the barrier still remained sturdy for many, many years.

Elizabeth Blackwell was inspired to go into medicine because women had a hard time discussing their issues with male doctors. She’d had a close friend dying of uterine cancer who told her of her troubles communicating with her physician. Elizabeth applied at nearly every medical school available at that time, and was turned down time after time, with some faculty members even suggesting she disguise herself as a man and try Paris. [Collins]

As luck would have it, the faculty of a small medical school in upstate New York decided to ask the student body about admitting women, and boys being boys, particularly rowdy that day, cheered and hollered and yipped their approval (most assuredly along with gratuitous lewd gestures) and that was that. Wouldn’t you like to have been a fly on the wall the day Elizabeth Blackwell showed up for her first day of class? The student body thought it had been a joke, but, as the saying goes, the joke was on them. “A hush fell over the class as if each member had been stricken by paralysis.” [Jordan Brown, Elizabeth Blackwell, Physician (p.52)].

Learn more about 19th century women doctors and women's health at www.CivilWarRx.com

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Civil War-Era Women Physicians

By Alfred Jay Bollet, M.D.

        It is unclear how many women were working as physicians in the United States before the Civil War. In the mid-1800s, medical students commonly learned from a preceptor without attending a formal medical school. At least one woman, Margaret Cannon Osborne, is known to have acquired her education in this manner and entered practice, and there may have been others like her. Also, many women learned medicine from their husbands or fathers in this fashion and then assisted in their practices. An unknown number of women attended medical school during this period dressed in male attire and went on to practice medicine pretending to be men.

        While many male and female practitioners who graduated from unorthodox medical schools applied for admission to the Medical Corps of both armies, they were rejected. In desperation, a delegation of male homeopaths appealed directly to President Lincoln, but he would not support their application for army appointments.

        Aside from Dr. Blackwell, at least two women who attended orthodox (allopathic) medical schools served as physicians during the war. Although some details of the career of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) are vague, there is no doubt that she heroically served the Union cause. Born in Oswego, New York, she became a physician during the 1840s or 1850s, graduating from Syracuse Medical College at some point. She struggled in her attempts to practice medicine in Cincinnati, and, when the Civil War began, she was allowed to work in the Union army only as a nurse. In 1864, after three years as an army nurse, a regiment from Ohio hired her as a contract physician. As such, she was able to pass back and forth through the Union and Confederate lines. This allowed her to function as a spy, reporting her observations to Union officers. In October 1864, she received an army commission as an assistant surgeon and functioned in that official capacity until the war ended. Captured while treating a Confederate soldier on a battlefield, she spent four months in a Confederate prison.

        While in the army, Dr. Walker wore the same military uniform as male physicians, but kept her hair long so that people would know that she was a woman. After the war, she continued to wear male attire and was active in women's rights movements. In 1897, she tried to establish a colony for women only, calling it "Adamless Eden." Her militancy caused most people, including her family, to shun her, and she died poor and alone in Oswego.

        Her dangerous Civil War exploits led to her being awarded the Medal of Honor. However, after the criteria for awarding such medals were revised, the Board of Medals officially revoked the medal and asked her to return it. She reportedly said, "They can have it over my dead body." She died the next day, February 21, 1919. In 1977, the award was officially reinstated.

        Dr. Esther Hill Hawks (1833-1906) was another army physician. After marrying Dr. John Milton Hawks, Esther Hill Hawks studied his medical books and decided to go to medical school. Graduating from New England Medical College for Women in 1857, she practiced in various locales with her husband. He was an ardent abolitionist, and, after Hilton Head and the surrounding areas were occupied by Union forces, he obtained a job providing medical care and running a plantation set up for freed slaves along the coast of South Carolina. Esther joined him there and helped provide medical care to the blacks. She also worked as a contract physician in General Hospital Number 10, which was established for black soldiers in Beaufort, South Carolina. Hawks helped care for soldiers from the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry after its famous ill-fated attempt to take Morris Island under Col. Robert Shaw. After the war, she continued to work in the area, caring for former slaves and teaching school.

        Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman known to have received a regular medical degree in the United States. She was born in Bristol, England, but at the age of nine moved with her family to the United States, living first in New York City and then in Cincinnati. She taught school in Henderson, Kentucky, but, in 1844, she decided to study medicine. After being refused admission to many medical schools, she was finally accepted at Geneva (New York) Medical College in 1847. (The first medical school for women was established in 1850 in Philadelphia.)

        When she received her M.D. degree in 1849, it provoked a great deal of press coverage in the United States and abroad; her biographers state that most people considered her "either mad or bad." Despite the negative attitude toward her in most of the press, the British humor magazine Punch commented on her graduation:

Young ladies all, of every clime,
Especially of Britain,
Who wholly occupy your time,
In novels or in knitting,
Whose highest skill is but to play,
Sing, dance, or French to clack well,
Reflect on the example, pray,
Of the excellent Miss Blackwell.

        After Blackwell graduated, she was unable to find a hospital in the United States that would admit her for further training. She went to Paris, where she met with the leading physicians of the era, including Dr. Pierre Louis. None of them would accept a woman for training, and Louis advised her to enroll for midwife training. Taking his advice, she trained at La Maternité in Paris in 1849.

        When Blackwell then received an appointment at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, she received congratulations from Florence Nightingale, and they began a lifelong friendship. Blackwell encouraged Nightingale to enter nursing, even though her family strongly opposed such a move.

        Blackwell returned to New York in 1850 and set up a private dispensary. Joined by her sister and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska (who had both obtained medical degrees at the Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland) and other women, she established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children on Bleeker Street in May 1857.

        In 1868, they started the New York Medical College for Women at New York Infirmary. Blackwell insisted that it be staffed by women and have a curriculum and standards more demanding than most other medical schools at the time. It was financially supported by Quakers.

         In 1869, Blackwell returned to England to campaign for the acceptance of women into the medical profession. She became the first woman ever admitted to the Medical Register of the United Kingdom and a professor at London School of Medicine for Women, which had just been founded. She remained on the faculty until 1907, when an accident enfeebled her. She was buried in England after she died in 1910.

From: Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs
©Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ, 2002

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