Adding women to the ranks, 1860-1890: A new view with a homeopathic lens

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 73, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 429-446

  Kirschmann, Anne Taylor ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; FEMALE; HISTORY; HOMEOPATHY; HUMAN; MEDICAL SOCIETY; ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT; UNITED STATES; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

FEMALE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HOMEOPATHY; HUMANS; SOCIETIES, MEDICAL; UNITED STATES; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

EID: 0033193050     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.1999.0120     Document Type: Review

References (80)

1. The Admission of Women," Trans. Amer. Inst. Homoeop. 1869 (hereafter TAIH), 1870, pp. 345-61; quotation on p. 345.
2. Ibid. Homeopathy, a medical system developed by German physician Samuel Christian Hahnemann (1755-1843), was introduced into the United States by German immigrant physicians early in the nineteenth century. Its premise of "like cures like," or the "Law of Similars," is based on the idea that a disease is cured by the administration of a drug or "remedy" that, when given to healthy persons, causes symptoms similar to the disease. Hahnemann taught that a homeopathic remedy, whose potency was intensified with dilution, should never be mixed with another or given in multiple doses.
3. Ruben Ludlam, "Annual Address: Woman and Homoeopathy," in TAIH, pp. 363-64. Similar arguments were made by hydropaths: see Susan Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
4. Ruben Ludlam, "Annual Address: Woman and Homoeopathy," in TAIH, pp. 363-64. Similar arguments were made by hydropaths: see Susan Cayleff, Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
5. Ludlam, "Annual Address" (n. 3), p. 367.
6. Ibid.
7. For concise histories of nineteenth-century sects, see Norman Gevitz, ed., Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). For a statistical analysis of socioeconomic differences between homeopaths and regular physicians in Worcester and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts, see Michael Philip Duffy, "A Progression of Sectarianism: Homeopathy in Massachusetts from 1855 to 1875" (A.B. thesis, Harvard University, 1982). Elite patrons of homeopathy in Philadelphia included Strawbridge, Clothier, Widener, Wharton, and Diddle. Edward Atwater has shown that patrons of homeopathy in Rochester, N.Y., included many of the city's "more recently prominent and prosperous citizens" such as Hiram Sibley, organizer of Western Union and the "richest man in town" (Edward C. Atwater, "The Physicians of Rochester, N.Y., 1860-1910: A Study in Professional History, II," Bull. Hist. Med., 1977, 51: 93-106; quotation on p. 99). Additional instances of homeopathy's popularity among the elite include Cleveland homeopath Myra King Merrick, who was physician to John D. Rockefeller and "all the Standard Oil Families," and Stella Manning Perkins of Lynn, Mass., whose practice included the prominent Spragues of Swampscott as well as "other leading families" (Elia J. Merrick, M.D., to Dr. Elizabeth Mason-Hohl, 30 October 1945; "Stella Manning Perkins: A Reminiscence by Ellen Perkins Doane," Archives and Special Collections, MCP-Hahnemann University, Philadelphia, Pa.).
8. For concise histories of nineteenth-century sects, see Norman Gevitz, ed., Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). For a statistical analysis of socioeconomic differences between homeopaths and regular physicians in Worcester and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts, see Michael Philip Duffy, "A Progression of Sectarianism: Homeopathy in Massachusetts from 1855 to 1875" (A.B. thesis, Harvard University, 1982). Elite patrons of homeopathy in Philadelphia included Strawbridge, Clothier, Widener, Wharton, and Diddle. Edward Atwater has shown that patrons of homeopathy in Rochester, N.Y., included many of the city's "more recently prominent and prosperous citizens" such as Hiram Sibley, organizer of Western Union and the "richest man in town" (Edward C. Atwater, "The Physicians of Rochester, N.Y., 1860-1910: A Study in Professional History, II," Bull. Hist. Med., 1977, 51: 93-106; quotation on p. 99). Additional instances of homeopathy's popularity among the elite include Cleveland homeopath Myra King Merrick, who was physician to John D. Rockefeller and "all the Standard Oil Families," and Stella Manning Perkins of Lynn, Mass., whose practice included the prominent Spragues of Swampscott as well as "other leading families" (Elia J. Merrick, M.D., to Dr. Elizabeth Mason-Hohl, 30 October 1945; "Stella Manning Perkins: A Reminiscence by Ellen Perkins Doane," Archives and Special Collections, MCP-Hahnemann University, Philadelphia, Pa.).
9. For concise histories of nineteenth-century sects, see Norman Gevitz, ed., Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). For a statistical analysis of socioeconomic differences between homeopaths and regular physicians in Worcester and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts, see Michael Philip Duffy, "A Progression of Sectarianism: Homeopathy in Massachusetts from 1855 to 1875" (A.B. thesis, Harvard University, 1982). Elite patrons of homeopathy in Philadelphia included Strawbridge, Clothier, Widener, Wharton, and Diddle. Edward Atwater has shown that patrons of homeopathy in Rochester, N.Y., included many of the city's "more recently prominent and prosperous citizens" such as Hiram Sibley, organizer of Western Union and the "richest man in town" (Edward C. Atwater, "The Physicians of Rochester, N.Y., 1860-1910: A Study in Professional History, II," Bull. Hist. Med., 1977, 51: 93-106; quotation on p. 99). Additional instances of homeopathy's popularity among the elite include Cleveland homeopath Myra King Merrick, who was physician to John D. Rockefeller and "all the Standard Oil Families," and Stella Manning Perkins of Lynn, Mass., whose practice included the prominent Spragues of Swampscott as well as "other leading families" (Elia J. Merrick, M.D., to Dr. Elizabeth Mason-Hohl, 30 October 1945; "Stella Manning Perkins: A Reminiscence by Ellen Perkins Doane," Archives and Special Collections, MCP-Hahnemann University, Philadelphia, Pa.).
10. James H. Cassedy, American Medicine and Statistical Thinking, 1800-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 125.
11. Naomi Rogers, "Women and Sectarian Medicine," in Women, Health, and Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook, ed. Rima D. Apple (New York: Garland, 1990), pp. 281-310. Rogers has urged historians to investigate the appeal and meaning of sectarian medicine to patients as well as to practitioners, in order to recover the forgotten experiences of women who sought a certain kind of freedom in medicine and health care.
12. Martin Kaufman, "The Admission of Women to Nineteenth-Century American Medical Societies," Bull. Hist. Med., 1976, 50: 251-60; Ellen More, "The Blackwell Medical Society and the Professionalization of Women Physicians," ibid., 1987, 61: 603-28.
13. Martin Kaufman, "The Admission of Women to Nineteenth-Century American Medical Societies," Bull. Hist. Med., 1976, 50: 251-60; Ellen More, "The Blackwell Medical Society and the Professionalization of Women Physicians," ibid., 1987, 61: 603-28.
14. Phoebe Peck, "Women Physicians and Their State Medical Societies," J. Amer. Med. Women's Assoc., 1965, 20 (4): 351-53; Cora Bagley Marrett, "On the Evolution of Women's Medical Societies," Bull. Hist. Med., 1979, 53: 434-48.
15. Phoebe Peck, "Women Physicians and Their State Medical Societies," J. Amer. Med. Women's Assoc., 1965, 20 (4): 351-53; Cora Bagley Marrett, "On the Evolution of Women's Medical Societies," Bull. Hist. Med., 1979, 53: 434-48.
16. Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 70.
17. Ludlam, "Annual Address" (n. 3), pp. 363-64.
18. Adolph Lippe, "Drug Proving," Homoeop. Phys., 1881, 1: 287.
19. Ludlam, "Annual Address" (n. 3), p. 346.
20. Carroll Dunham, "Liberty of Medical Opinion and Action: A Vital Necessity and a Great Responsibility," annual address delivered before the AIH, 8 June 1870; reprinted in Tram. Homoeop. Med. Soc. Stale of New York, 1870, 8: 731-45; quotation on p. 742.
21. Carroll Dunham, "Liberty of Medical Opinion and Action: A Vital Necessity and a Great Responsibility," annual address delivered before the AIH, 8 June 1870; reprinted in Tram. Homoeop. Med. Soc. Stale of New York, 1870, 8: 731-45; quotation on p. 742.
22. Carroll Dunham, "Lilium-Tigrinum - A Summary of a Few Provings upon Women," North Amer. J. Homoeop., 1870, 1 (11): 160.
23. David Thayer, "Annual Address," in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, 1870, Publications of the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Medical Society 1866-1870 (Taunton, Mass.: Hack, 1875), 3: 526-27.
24. Roberts Bartholow, Cui Bono? and What Nature, What Art Does in the Cure of Disease: Two Introductory Lectures Delivered in the Medical College of Ohio, Sessions of 1872-3 and 1873-4 (Cincinnati: Clarke, 1873), p. 17, as cited in John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820-1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 263-64.
25. Roberts Bartholow, Cui Bono? and What Nature, What Art Does in the Cure of Disease: Two Introductory Lectures Delivered in the Medical College of Ohio, Sessions of 1872-3 and 1873-4 (Cincinnati: Clarke, 1873), p. 17, as cited in John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Practice, Knowledge, and Identity in America, 1820-1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 263-64.
26. J. Henry Allen, "President's Address," Proceedings of the International Hahnemannian Association, 1900 (Chicago: C. Swanberg & Co., 1901), pp. 1-5; also see Harris L. Coulter, Divided Legacy: The Conflict between Homoeopathy and the American Medical Association, 2d ed. (Richmond, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1982), pp. 328-70. Hahnemannians institutionalized the warring camps within the profession in 1880 by establishing a competing national organization - the International Hahnemannian Association.
27. J. Henry Allen, "President's Address," Proceedings of the International Hahnemannian Association, 1900 (Chicago: C. Swanberg & Co., 1901), pp. 1-5; also see Harris L. Coulter, Divided Legacy: The Conflict between Homoeopathy and the American Medical Association, 2d ed. (Richmond, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1982), pp. 328-70. Hahnemannians institutionalized the warring camps within the profession in 1880 by establishing a competing national organization - the International Hahnemannian Association.
28. C. Pearson, "History of the Society," Proceedings of the International Hahnemannian Association, 1881-1883 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Register Printing and Publishing House, 1884), pp. 5-9; quotation on p. 5.
29. W. E. Payne, "Miscellaneous Items," North Amer. J. Homoeop., 1871, n.s., 1 (3): 430.
30. "Admission of Women" (n. 1), p. 340.
31. "Original Communications," Richmond & Louisville Med. J., 1871, 12 (1): 27.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 17.
34. Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science (n. 11), p. 179; Ellen S. More, "The American Medical Women's Association and the Role of the Woman Physician, 1915-1990," J. Amer. Med. Women's Assoc., 1990, 45 (5): 165-182, see especially p. 165.
35. Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science (n. 11), p. 179; Ellen S. More, "The American Medical Women's Association and the Role of the Woman Physician, 1915-1990," J. Amer. Med. Women's Assoc., 1990, 45 (5): 165-182, see especially p. 165.
36. Figures are from various issues of the Transactions of the AIH.
37. "Harriet Judd Sartain, M.D." folder, box 7, Harriet Judd Sartain Papers, Samuel Sartain Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
38. Emily Sartain to Frank Weitenkampf, 10 April 1888; quoted in Phyllis Peet, "The Emergence of American Women Printmakers in the Late Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1987), p. 615.
39. Biographical information on Dr. Sartain is located in "Harriet Judd Sartain, M.D." (n. 28).
40. Pemberton Dudley, ed., Directory of the Homoeopathic Physicians of the Slate of Pennsylvania (New York: Homoeopathic Mutual Life Insurance Co., 1874). The number of women homeopaths represents approximately 6 percent of all homeopaths in the city. While privately published medical directories are subject to great inaccuracies, at times they provide the only "ballpark" figures to be had: census records do not distinguish sectarian from regular practitioners, and city directories of this period often do not identify physicians as a separate category of residents.
41. A. R. Thomas to "Drs. Sartain, Branson & Others of the Women's Medical Club of Philadelphia," 1884, Samuel Sartain Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; Amos Russell Thomas, "The Medical Education of Women," Amer. J. Homoeop. Materia Medico & Rec. Med. Sci., 1 February 1872, pp. 247-48. A broader discussion of women and Hahnemann Medical College can be found in Naomi Rogers, An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
42. A. R. Thomas to "Drs. Sartain, Branson & Others of the Women's Medical Club of Philadelphia," 1884, Samuel Sartain Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; Amos Russell Thomas, "The Medical Education of Women," Amer. J. Homoeop. Materia Medico & Rec. Med. Sci., 1 February 1872, pp. 247-48. A broader discussion of women and Hahnemann Medical College can be found in Naomi Rogers, An Alternative Path: The Making and Remaking of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital of Philadelphia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998).
43. See Kaufman, "Admission of Women" (n. 9), pp. 251-60; Martin Kaufman, Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), pp. 54-55.
44. See Kaufman, "Admission of Women" (n. 9), pp. 251-60; Martin Kaufman, Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), pp. 54-55.
45. Penn Medical University graduated ninety-three women physicians by 1879: see Harold J. Abrahams, Extinct Medical Schools of Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), pp. 176-231.
46. Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., The College of Physicians of Philadelphia: A Bicentennial History (Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1987), p. 143.
47. "The Recognition of Female Physicians by the Medical Profession of Pennsylvania," in Hiram Corson, A Brief History of Proceedings in the Medical Society of Pennsylvania in the Years 1859, 1860, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1870, and 1871 to Procure the Recognition of Women Physicians by the Medical Profession of the Stale.... (Norristown, Penn.: Herald Print, Binding, and Ruling Rooms, 1894), pp. 10-24.
48. "Original Communications" (n. 23), pp. 23-24, 33.
49. Fellows of the College did not disrupt the harmony or esprit de corps of their own institution by admitting women until 1932: see Bell, College of Physicians (n. 35), pp. 251-52.
50. For a discussion of the stratification and specialization of medical societies, see William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), pp. 198-216.
51. "Original Communications" (n. 23), pp. 54-55.
52. According to 1870 census statistics, Philadelphia had 1,077 physicians in a population of 674,022, and New York City had 1,741 in a population of 942,292: Ninth Census of the United States, 1870. Vital Statistics of the United States, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1872), 2: 794, 254, 212, 793.
53. Bell, College of Physicians (n. 35), pp. 142-45; quotations on p. 145.
54. The twenty-six women included nine homeopaths and seventeen regular physicians, according to Samuel W. Butler, ed., The Medical Register and Directory of the United States (Philadelphia: Office of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, 1874).
55. These numbers are approximate and are based on physicians listed in Butler's Directory (n. 43).
56. "Recognition of Female Physicians" (n. 36), pp. 10-24; quotation on pp. 15-16.
57. Peck, "Women Physicians" (n. 10), p. 353.
58. Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania for the years 1882-1900.
59. Bell, College of Physicians (n. 35), p. 145.
60. Mary Roth Walsh, Doctors Wanted, No Women Need Apply: Sexual Earners in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 150-51.
61. Kaufman, Homeopathy in America (n. 33), pp. 60-78. The expelled physicians were William Bushnell, Milton Fuller, H. L. H. Hoffendahl, George Russell, Israel T. Talbot, David Thayer, Benjamin West, and William Gregg.
62. Boston Post, 1 May 1873, p. 1 col. 7, as cited in Kaufman, Homeopathy in America (n. 33), p. 84.
63. Boston Post, 1 May 1873, p. 1 col. 7, as cited in Kaufman, Homeopathy in America (n. 33), p. 84.
64. First Annual Report of the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital and of the Ladies' Aid Association for the Year Ending September 30, 1871 (Boston: Alfred Mudge and Son, 1872),pp. 19-24. The two-week fair held in 1872 raised more than $100,000.
65. William Harvey King, History of Homoeopathy and Its Institutions in America: Their Founders, Benefactors, Officers, Hospitals, Alumni, etc., with a Record of Achievement of Its Representatives in the World of Medicine, 4 vols. (New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1905), 3: 178.
66. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Letter to the Editor, New England Med. Gaz.,January 1873, as cited in King, History (n. 53), 3: 180-81; quotation on p. 180.
67. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Letter to the Editor, New England Med. Gaz.,January 1873, as cited in King, History (n. 53), 3: 180-81; quotation on p. 180.
68. Ibid., p. 181.
69. Walsh, Doctors Wanted (n. 49), p. 71.
70. King, History (n. 53), 3: 172.
71. Samuel Augustus Fisk, A.L.S., to Dr. William Williamson Wellington, Northampton, Mass., 26 September 1875, pp. 3-4, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, B MS/c 75.2, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass, (hereafter, Countway Library).
72. Boston City Directory, 1870 (Boston: Samuel Davenport and Co., n.d.). Baunscheidtism was a counterirritation therapy introduced by Charles Baunscheidt in Germany about 1860, in which a disc-like instrument with a ring of needles applied to the skin was thought to divert the nervous activity from the inner organs to the surface of the body, creating external warmth and relieving congestions and inflammations. See John Linden, Manual of the Exanthematic Method of Cure: also Known as Baunscheidtism (Cleveland, 1903).
73. Boston City Directory, 1870 (Boston: Samuel Davenport and Co., n.d.). Baunscheidtism was a counterirritation therapy introduced by Charles Baunscheidt in Germany about 1860, in which a disc-like instrument with a ring of needles applied to the skin was thought to divert the nervous activity from the inner organs to the surface of the body, creating external warmth and relieving congestions and inflammations. See John Linden, Manual of the Exanthematic Method of Cure: also Known as Baunscheidtism (Cleveland, 1903).
74. See Thomas Neville Bonner, To the Ends of the Earth: Women's Search for Education in Medicine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
75. "Minority Report," 6 October 1875, Countway Library, B MS/c 75.2.
76. Ibid.
77. According to Polk's Directory, there were seventeen women regulars and twenty-seven women homeopaths; however, fifty-three women lacked any designation: R. L. Polk and Co., eds., Medical and Surgical Directory of the United States (Detroit: Polk, 1886).
78. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, "Majority Report on Accepting Women into the Massachusetts Medical Society," 1 October 1875, Countway Library, B MS/c 75.2.
79. From the records of the Massachusetts Medical Society and the Chadwick Scrapbook, as cited in Walsh, Doctors Wanted (n. 49), pp. 160-61.
80. Ibid., p. 162.