The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  BETHENIA OWENS-ADAIR

  NORTHWEST PHYSICIAN

  GEORGIA ARBUCKLE FIX

  FRONTIER SURGEON

  SUSAN LA FLESCHE PICOTTE

  FIRST FEMALE NATIVE-AMERICAN PHYSICIAN

  SUSAN ANDERSON

  COLORADO HEALER

  NELLIE MATTIE MACKNIGHT

  BELOVED CALIFORNIA PHYSICIAN

  PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.

  PATTY BARTLETT SESSIONS

  MORMON PHYSICIAN

  NELLIE POOLER CHAPMAN & LUCY HOBBS TAYLOR

  DENTAL PIONEERS

  MARY CANAGA ROWLAND

  LEARNED PRACTITIONER

  ELLIS REYNOLDS SHIPP

  CHILDREN’S DOCTOR

  FRANC JOHNSON NEWCOMB

  NAVAJO MEDICINE WOMAN

  FLORA HAYWARD STANFORD

  FIRST WOMAN DOCTOR OF DEADWOOD

  FRONTIER MEDICINE

  ADVERTISEMENTS AND WOMEN PHYSICIANS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  A ·TWODOT® · BOOK

  Copyright © 2006 by Chris Enss

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or by the publisher. Requests for permission should be made in writing to The Globe Pequot Press, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

  TwoDot is a registered trademark of Morris Book Publishing, LLC.

  Text design: Lisa Reneson

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Enss, Chris, 1961-

  The doctor wore petticoats : women physicians of the old West / Chris

  Enss.--1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-7627-3566-2

  1. Women physicians--West (U.S.)-Biography. 2. Medicine--West (U.S.)-

  History. I. Title.

  R692.E67 2006

  610’.92’278--dc22 2005023247

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition/Fourth Printing

  For my mother-in-law Norma, for never failing to inspire

  and encourage everyone she comes in contact with

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The historical records of the women doctors of the Old West exist because of archivists dedicated to preserving the accounts of these courageous female pioneers. They are owed a debt of gratitude and deserve to be recognized for their efforts in helping to make this book possible. With that in mind I offer sincere thanks to the following organizations:Nevada State Library & Archives Department

  California State Library History Room

  Oregon Historical Society

  Nebraska State Historical Society

  Utah History Research Center

  National Library of Medicine

  Penfield Gallery of Indian Arts

  New Mexico Library & Archives Department

  University of Mexico Education Department

  San Francisco, California Historical Society

  Kansas State Archives Department

  National Archives Department, Washington, D.C.

  Adams House Historical Staff, Deadwood, South Dakota

  Denver Public Library

  Library of Congress

  Nevada County Library

  I’d like to offer a special thanks to Debra Chapman-Luckinbill for supplying the photographs of her great-great-grandmother, Nellie Pooler Chapman, and to Priscilla Newcomb for the use of the photograph of her mother, Franc Johnson Newcomb.

  I’d also like to thank the editors and staff at The Globe Pequot Press for their ability to take the raw material submitted to them and transform it into a quality product. I am consistently impressed with the process and the outcome.

  INTRODUCTION

  Higher education for women produces monstrous brains and

  puny bodies; abnormally active cerebration and abnormally weak

  digestion; flowing thought and constipated bowel.

  —E. H. Clarke, Sex Education:

  A Fair Chance for Girls, 1873

  The frontier of the wild West resisted attempts to tame it by adventurous pioneers who were hell-bent on making a life for themselves and their families on the open range. The terrain was rough and unyielding, not unlike its new inhabitants. Most of these inhabitants were as stubborn about accepting female doctors as the land was about accepting them.

  Women in the mid-1800s who possessed a strong desire to help the sick studied, worked, and struggled for places in medical schools. After receiving their degrees they studied, worked, and struggled to find a place to practice their vocation. The western frontier, with its absence of physicians and high demand for healthcare, provided women the opportunity to open medical offices. It did not, however, assure them patients. For a while it seemed most trappers, miners, and emigrants would rather suffer and die than consult a woman doctor. The lady doctor repairing a head wound on an injured farmer in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would have had to endure criticism from skeptics and male physicians who believed women shouldn’t be in the profession at all.

  Male doctors hoping to prevent the “fairer sex” from entering the field of medicine publicly chastised those women who had such desires. They often referred to them as “unnatural” and “lacking in the ability to know their place.” A protest resolution drafted by male students at Harvard University in 1850 summed up the position of many men on the subject:Resolved, That no woman of true delicacy would be willing in the presence of men to listen to the discussions of the subjects that necessarily come under the consideration of the student of medicine.

  Resolved, That we object to having the company of any female forced upon us, who is disposed to unsex herself, and to sacrifice her modesty by appearing with men in the medical lecture room.

  An article that appeared in an 1867 New York medical journal boldly announced that male physicians

  hope to never see a day when the female character shall be so c ompletely unsexed, as to fit it for the disgusting duties which imperatively devolve upon one who would attain proficiency, or even respectability in the healing art.

  In the mid- to late nineteenth century, as the country continued expanding its boundaries beyond Independence, Missouri, in a quest to civilize the wild frontier, there were fewer than 600 women physicians in the United States. Ten percent of those female doctors decided to follow the migration and offer their services to the emigrants in the West.

  These women, who dared defy the sexual barriers in the medical profession to attend school and acquire a degree, were convinced settlers would eventually seek their counsel and they brazenly opened offices in frontier towns and mining camps. The result of these few courageous women braving hardship and prejudice was a change in the way society viewed women’s roles and the improvement of the health of many settlers.

  Doctor Eliza Cook had a strong impact on the male-dominated community in Carson Valley, Nevada. Men who felt women were “not blessed with the temperament or disposition to be doctors” changed their minds after years of watching Doctor Cook work. The tall, slender lady from Salt Lake City, Utah, set broken limbs, performed operations, and
delivered generations of babies in the small northern Nevada town where she lived. She was not only a skilled physician but also a pharmacist, and she contributed numerous articles to medical journals and magazines on a variety of health related issues. She is considered by many historians to have been the first woman doctor in Nevada.

  Another daring female physician to practice in the American West was Doctor Minnie Frances Hayden Howard. After attending Kansas City Medical College, Doctor Howard established a practice in Pocatello, Idaho. She not only cared for the ailing in the booming gold-mining camp but also tended to the health needs of the Native Americans in the area, and eventually helped build the Pocatello General Hospital.

  In time the wild frontier would become civilized. Many tough-minded women doctors like Eliza Cook and Frances Howard, would pour onto the western plains, paving the way for other professional women yet to come.

  In Cripple Creek, Colorado, Doctor Susan Anderson set up her practice and helped save the lives of many sick and injured gold miners. Doctor Flora Hayward Stanford braved the wild and wooly town of Deadwood, South Dakota, to tend to such patients as Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill Cody. Doctor Georgia Arbuckle Fix defied the wishes of her puritanical husband to serve the medical needs of settlers in western Nebraska. Women like Nellie Pooler Chapman and Lucy Hobbs Taylor struggled along the path of prejudice to become the West’s leading ladies in the field of dentistry.

  Female physicians were subjected to more than scorn and ridicule when they decided to practice their vocation; they oftentimes risked life and limb. Women medical students and graduated doctors were discouraged by law enforcement from calling on patients at night in big cities like San Francisco, for fear they would be attacked by resentful male colleagues. Sometimes, female physicians like Lillian Heath of Wyoming, who did risk going out, wore men’s clothing to hide their gender.

  The medical experts highlighted in this volume paid a personal price to bring about changes in healthcare, but their efforts would solidify their place in medicine and encourage others to follow in their footsteps. One hundred years after the first American female physician, Elizabeth Blackwell, graduated from medical school in 1849, only a little over 5 percent of students entering the field were women. But female physicians of the nineteenth century, like Bethenia Owens-Adair and Georgia Arbuckle Fix, dug the trail for future generations of female doctors to come. Twentieth-century women physicians such as Gerty Cori, the Nobel Prize winner for Physiology and Medicine, and Mae Jemison, astronaut and medical officer for NASA’s space program, made tremendous advances in the medical profession and paved the way for other females.

  Women who have followed these pioneering doctors into medicine owe much to the great strides made by their predecessors. As surgeon Marie Mergler said of the fight for equal access to training for women and for respect in their chosen profession, “it meant much more than success or failure for the individual; it meant the failure or success of a grand cause.” The Doctor Wore Petticoats examines the lives of but a few women endowed with the stamina needed to one day earn the title of Doctor.

  BETHENIA OWENS-ADAIR

  NORTHWEST PHYSICIAN

  I am determined to get at least a common education. I now know

  that I can support and educate myself and my boy, and I am

  resolved to do it; furthermore, I do not intend to do it over a

  washtub either.

  —Bethenia Owens-Adair, 1874

  A loud rap on the door of the hat shop coaxed the diminutive young woman from her work of loading bolts of fabric into a trunk. The scruffy messenger on the other side of the door smiled politely when Bethenia Owens greeted him, and then handed her a letter. The monogram on the envelope showed that the correspondence came from Doctor Palmer, a prominent physician in the northwestern area of the United States.

  The messenger waited patiently for Bethenia to break the seal on the envelope and read the enclosed note. “How sad,” she said to no one in particular. “One of our elder citizens passed away . . . and the six local physicians who treated him at one time or another want to do an autopsy. And as one of the newest doctors in town, I’m invited to attend the operation.” The messenger grinned and nodded, anticipating a negative response.

  Bethenia knew the invitation was meant as a joke and was determined to turn the tables on the pranksters. There were very few women in medicine in 1872, and, by and large, they were not well received by men in the same profession.

  Bethenia studied the note, carefully considering the proper response. “Give Doctor Palmer and the others my regards,” she announced. “And tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes.” A stunned look fell over the courier’s face as he turned and hurried off down the dusty thoroughfare in Roseburg, Oregon.

  Bethenia followed, a safe distance behind the messenger, to Doctor Palmer’s office, where she waited outside. She listened in as the courier relayed the information she had given him and heard the doctors laughing heartily. Bethenia opened the door, momentarily interrupting their merriment. One of the doctors regained his composure and walked toward her with his hand outstretched. She shook it and the physician choked back a giggle.

  “Do you know the autopsy is on the genital organs?” he snickered. “No,” Bethenia replied, “But one part of the human body should be as sacred to the physician as another.” The mood in the room quickly changed to one of disbelief and then, in an instant, to indignation.

  Doctor Palmer objected to Bethenia’s presence during the procedure and insisted that he would leave if she stayed. Bethenia was unmoved by the pronouncement and stood her ground. “I came here by written invitation,” she calmly confessed. “I will leave it to a vote whether I go or stay; but first I would like to ask Doctor Palmer what is the difference between the attendance of a woman at a male autopsy and the attendance of a man at a female autopsy?”

  For a few moments none of the male physicians replied. She had presented to them a sensible query, demonstrating her dedication to the profession and a maturity they had underestimated. One by one, the men slowly voted in favor of Bethenia not only staying, but of performing the procedure as well.

  News of Bethenia’s brave stand circulated throughout the lumber town. A number of curious onlookers, including the messenger, lined the street to get a look at the strange female doctor as she exited the office. Many citizens strongly disapproved of a woman in that line of work, and had it not been for her family members, the scene would have likely erupted into violence.

  Not long after the much-talked-about event, Bethenia completed the task of closing her milliner business, moved to northern Oregon with her sister, and started her own medical practice. Physicians, male or female, were woefully lacking in many parts of the West. Doctor Owens hoped the need for her skills in Portland would far outweigh any reservations people might have had regarding her gender.

  From a very early age, Bethenia exercised her individuality and proved herself a pioneer in many circumstances. She was born in Missouri, on February 7, 1840. Her father and eight siblings emigrated to Oregon in 1843 and settled in Clatsop County. By the time she turned eighteen, she had been married, divorced, and had a son. She supported herself and her child by taking in laundry—work suitable for women, but objectionable to Bethenia’s father, who offered to take care of his daughter and his grandson. Bethenia steadfastly refused such monetary help from her family, but did accept the sewing machine her parents gave her. After teaching herself to be a seamstress, she added mending to her list of services for hire.

  Bethenia’s formal education was limited. At the age of sixteen, she could barely read and write. Anxious to learn and better herself, she leapt at an offer from a good friend in nearby Oysterville, Washington, to attend school there. Bethenia worked her way through primary school by doing laundry for ranch hands. Through books and lessons she overcame the hardships associated with a failed marriage and single parenthood. In 1874, she wrote:Thus passed one of the pleasantest, and most p
rofitable winters of my life, while, whetted by what it fed on, my desire for knowledge grew daily stronger.

  An urgent plea from Bethenia’s sister persuaded her to leave Washington and return to Clatsop County. Bethenia agreed to help her ailing sister in exchange for the chance to attend and teach school in Astoria. After arriving back in Oregon, Bethenia immediately went to work soliciting students for a summer-school term. Her dauntless will and determination are evident in Bethenia’s recollection of the experience:I succeeded in getting the promise of sixteen pupils, for which I was to receive $2 for three months. This was my first attempt to instruct others. I taught my school in the Old Presbyterian Church, the first Presbyterian Church building ever erected in Oregon.

  Of my sixteen pupils there were three who were more advanced than myself, but I took their books home with me nights and with the help of my brother-in-law I managed to prepare the lessons beforehand, and they never suspected my incompetency.