Women Doctors

Manhattanites were made conscious last week that women doctors have been operating a hospital in the community for 79 years. The New York Infirmary for Women & Children has never had a man on its staff, although male specialists come in for consultations.

The event which made news last week was the opening of a cancer clinic attached to the Infirmary. Dr. James Ewing, dean of cancer specialists, was there. Mrs Frank Arthur Vanderlip attended in black & red as Infirmary president. The memory of the late Chauncey Mitchell Depew, oratorical plutocrat, hovered over the simple ceremonies. Donors of the clinic were his sister's daughters--May Strang and Dr. Elise Strang L'Esperance. Dr. L'Esperance is pathologist at the Infirmary for Women & Children.

Cancer clinics attached to hospitals are new kinds of forts in the war against cancer. Cancer leaders like Dr. Ewing have been urging multi-million dollar fortresses, currently out of the question. But small clinics are realizable and in the aggregate they can study vast numbers of patients effectively.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, first woman doctor of medicine in modern times, established the New York Infirmary. New York and Philadelphia medical schools would not admit Elizabeth Blackwell to study. But the Geneva (N. Y.) Medical School took her and she received her M. D. degree in 1849, causing much comment throughout the U. S. and Europe. While doing postgraduate obstetrical work in Paris she infected an eye, lost its sight. One of her associates in the New York Infirmary was Marie Zakrzewska who shortly went to Boston where in 1859 she founded the New England Hospital for Women & Children. Quakers supported both. One of Dr. Blackwell's vigorous helpers was her sister-in-law, Lucy Stone, for whom was named the Lucy Stone League whose members object to using their husbands' names.

Her friendship with Lucy Stone kept Dr. Blackwell from speaking at the dedication of the hospital, with "modern conveniences of gas and baths," which the original Infirmary soon acquired. Sponsors feared that Dr. Blackwell "might speak like a Woman's Rights woman." That was in 1857. When an early patient died of appendicitis, a mob tried to wreck the hospital because it was "an institution of some cranky women who killed people with cold water."

No longer does society suspect women doctors or the profession plague them. Yet the U. S. has comparatively few of them. Membership of the Medical Women's National Association is only 650. Women do not seem to wear well in medical schools and not much better in practice. Most U. S. patients are women; most women patients prefer the medical attention of men.

Few women stand out in U. S. medicine. The American College of Physicians has only 34 women fellows, the American College of Surgeons only 58.

When men count off the baker's dozen of eminent U. S. women doctors they point to Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, 50, Manhattan pediatrician, and Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen, 70, Chicago gynecologist and obstetrician, as outstanding practitioners. They point to Chicago's Dr. Gladys R. Henry Dick for her scarlet fever work (with her husband) and Maude Slye, 54, who, although no doctor, is an eminent cancer researcher.

But the first & foremost U. S. woman doctor is Florence Rena Sabin. Unimportant that she was the first woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins Medical School (1900), first to teach there, first to become a full member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Unimportant the honors: Dr. Simon Flexner calling her the greatest living woman scientist and one of the foremost scientists of all time; the National Academy of Sciences making her its first woman member; Pictorial Review giving her $5,000 for "achievement." Her importance lies with her studies in anatomy and pathology. She has made an atlas of the medulla and midbrain. She has delved to the origin and processes of the lymphatic system, the physiology of blood vessels, the origin of blood cells. Lately her work has been what she calls "an intensive study of the blood as related to the whole pathology of tuberculosis." She expects to find an antitoxin against the disease. "If I did not believe the answer could be found I would not be working on it."

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