Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine

56 ”Report of the Regional Director for New England,”AMWA MSS, Box 10, Folder 4, Cornell University. See also letters to the Medical Women of Connecticut from Mead, 14 August 1930, 20 March 1930; Mead to Dr. M. May Allen, 19 November 1929; Elvenor Ernest to Louise Tayler-Jones, 23 October 1930, 21 May 1930; and to Dr. Sylvia Allen, 17 December 1931; and to Rosa Gantt, 15 April 1932, AMWA MSS, Box 10, Folder 10, and Box 4, Folder 31. See the rest of Box 10, especially folders 5, 8, 16, for other information regarding membership drives. Also see Box 12, Folder 31. All in AMWA MSS, Cornell University.

57 Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association (JAMWA) 4 (May 1949): 198; Editorial, JAMWA 2 (September 1947): 410; Philbrick Questionnaire, 1944, Philbrick File; Mabel Gardner to Catherine MacFarlane, 4 February 1942, Macfarlane MSS, both in MCP Archives.

58 Interview of author with Harriet Hardy, 13 and 14 October 1977, p. 56; Interview with Harriet Dustan, 4 and 5 April 1977, p. 43-44; Interview wtih Katherine Sturgis, 77; Interview with Caroline Bedell Thomas, 71; Interview with Louise de Schweinitz, 101; Interview with Esther Bridgeman Clark, 19 December 1977, 33; Interview with Beryl Michaelson, 27 July 1977, 55. All in Women in Medicine Oral History Project, MCP Archives. 59. Editorial, JAMWA 1 (May 1946): 39; JAMWA 11 (September 1956): 323 for sample ”program” for the year. See also ”Message from the President,” Women in Medicine, October 1940, p. 7; Emily Dunning Barringer, ”Nineteen Forty-One and the Woman Doctor,” and ”Address of the Retiring President,” in Women in Medicine, July 1941, p. 8-22, 23-27.

60 See Florence Del. Lowther and Helen R. Downes, ”Women in Medicine,” JAMA 129 (13 October 1945): 512-14; ”Women in Medicine,” JAMWA 1 (June 1946): 93-95; ”Editorial,” JAMWA 1 (October 1946): 201-2. See also Hulda Thelander, ”Opportunities for Medical Women,” JAMWA 3 (February 1948): 67.

61 ”The American Woman Physician: Doorway to the Second Century,” JAMWA 19 (January 1964): 45-49; ”Symposium: Medical WomanPower—Can it be Used More Efficiently?” JAMWA 17 (December 1962): 973-85, see especially comments of Dr. Toby Helfand and follow-up letter to the editor and comment ”More on Physician Mothers,” in JAMWA 19 (April 1964): 311. Also the report on ”Psychiatric Residency Training for Physician Mothers: A Progress Report,” JAMWA 19 (April 1964): 311.

62 Chafe, The American Woman, 199-245; Barbara Easton, ”Feminism and the Contemporary Family,” Socialist Review 8 (May-June 1978): 11-36; JAMA 240 (22/29 December 1978): 2822-23.

63 Also interesting to note was the fact that Rose wrote about the request to Florence Sabin—a research scientist who had no connection with the obstetrical field whatsoever—presumably because Sabin was one of the few women physicians she could think of who had an honored reputation among men physicians. See Rose to Sabin, 22 December 1926. Sabin would have none of the idea, and was justifiably annoyed. Sabin to Rose, 31 December 1926, Sabin MSS, American Philosophical Society.

64 Nellie S. Noble, ”A Message from the President: War Service.” Women in Medicine, October 1939, p. 24; ”Our Part in National Defense,”and ”Legislative,” Women in Medicine, October 1940, p. 24-25; ”Report of the Retiring President,”Women in Medicine, July 1942, p. 17; ”Report of Committee on Army Resolutions,” Women in Medicine, July 1939, p. 18; Emily Dunning Barringer, ”Nineteen Forty-One and the Woman Doctor,” ”Report of the Retiring President,” Women in Medicine, July 1942, p. 17, 25; ”President’s Message,” ibid., January 1943, p. 12; ”Our Cause in Congress,” i6id., April 1943, p. 8-9; Emily Dunning Barringer, ”Commissions for Women Physicians,” ibid., July 1943, pp. 11-14; ”Women Physicians in the Army of the United States, ibid., October 1945, pp. 7-9; “Women Physicians Commissioned in the Armed Services as of September 1, 1944,” ibid., October 1944, p. 16; “Report by Elizabeth Mason-Hohl, ibid., January 1945, p. 19.

65 Baker, ”Presidential Address,” Women in Medicine, July 1936, pp. 12-14; ”New Business,” ibid., July 1939, p. 19; Barringer, ”A Step Forward on a Difficult Quest,” ibid., October 1939, p. 23-24.

66 Observer status allows the representative to present reports and evaluate policy, but not to vote. Interview of author with Carol Davis-Grossman, Executive Director of AMWA, 20 April 1984.

67 JAMWA 19 (January 1964): 56-57; Interview with Carol Davis-Grossman.

68 For the lack of interest in AMWA of interviewees of the Women in Medicine Oral History Project who graduated from medical school during the 1950s and early 1960s see the transcripts of Frances Conley, 20 June 1977, p. 61; Ann Barnes, 29 September 1977, p. 61; Grace Holmes, 25 and 28 February 1977, p. 80; Florence Haseltine, 8 August 1977, p. 102; and Gillian Karatinos, 29 October 1977, p. 62, MCP Archives. See also Lopate, Women in Medicine, 17.

69 Interview of author with Dr. Clair M. Callan, presently president of AMWA, 15 January 1985; Interview with Carol Davis-Grossman.

70 See, for example, Kathleen Lusk Brooke, ”Drs. Carol & Ted Nadelson on Dual-Career Marriage,”JAMWA 37 (November 1982): 292-304; Adele N. Brodkin et al., ”Parenting and Professionalism—A Medical School Elective,” JAMWA 37 (October 1982): 227-330; Serena-Lynn Brown and Robert Klein, ”Woman-Power in the Medical Hierarchy,” JAMWA 37 (June 1982): 155-64; Marcia Angell, ”Juggling the Personal and Professional Life,” JAMWA 37 (March 1982): 64-68; Jean Hamilton and Barbara Parry, ”Sex-Related Differences in Clinical Drug Response: Implications for Women’s Health,” JAMWA 38 (September/October 1983): 126-32.

71 Medical Education in the United States reprint, (New York: Arno Press, 1972),178-79.

72 For a fine account of the transformation of the hospital as an institution from a charitable to a business enterprise see David Rosner, A Once Charitable Enterprise, Hospitals and Health Care in Brooklyn and New York (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). See also Charles Rosenberg, ”The Hospital in America: A Century’s Perspective,”in Medicine and Society: Contemporary Medical Problems in Historical Perspective (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1971), and ”From Almshouse to Hospital: The Shaping of Philadelphia General Hospital,” Health and Society 60 (1982): 108-54; Virginia Drachman, Hospital With a Heart: Women Doctors and the Paradox of Separatism at the New England Hospital, 1862-1969 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).

73 See Helena Wall, ”Feminism and the New England Hospital,” American Quarterly 32 (Fall 1980): 435-52, for an excellent analysis of this last decade. For a more detailed summary of the hospital’s difficulties in the first half of the twentieth century, see Drachman, Hospital with a Heart, chap. 7.

74 Faxon Report, 2; NEH Trustees to Staff, Circular letter, 5 November 1951; all in Blanche Ames MSS, Schlesinger Library. cited in Wall, ”Feminism,” 439.

75 This was a solution which many women’s hospitals eventually were forced to take. The Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis merged with the Abbott Hospital to become the Abbott-Northwestern Hospital in 1970, and the New York Infirmary joined with Beekman Hospital in 1979.

76 Ames to Narcissa Vanderlip, 26 May 1961, Margaret Noyes Kleinert MSS, Schlesinger Library; Ames to New Corporation members, n.d. (probably October/November 1953), Blanche Ames MSS, Schlesinger Library. Wall, ”Feminism,” 445.

77 Nelson to Potter, 27 November 1951; Blanche Ames MSS, Schlesinger Library ; Wall, ”Feminism,” 449.

78 ”Womanly Attributes ... Application to Medicine and the Hospital,” Blanche Ames MSS, Schlesinger Library; Wall, ”Feminism,“” 444. Drachman, Hospital with a Heart, 211.

79 Interview with Marion Fay, 11 July 1977; 8, 13; Interview with Katherine Sturgis, 9; Women in Medicine Oral History Project, MCP Archives. See also Ellen C. Potter, M.D., acting president, ”Report to the Alumnae Association,” 941, Potter MSS, MCP Archives.

80 Lopate, Women in Medicine, 91; Johnson and Hutchins, ”Doctor or Dropout ?” 1159. The college trained roughly 25 percent of women medical graduates between 1905-1910, 20 percent between 1912-1921, and 10 percent in the 1930s. In 1964 Catherine Macfarlane estimated that 6 percent of women physicians were trained by the school. See Martha Tracy, ”Women Graduates in Medicine,”passim, and Dr. Catherine Macfarlane, ”The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania,“” Transactions & Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 33 (July 1965): 41.

81 Potter to Jean Strump, n.d. but ca. 1950, Potter MSS, MCP Archives. AMWA felt similarly about the New York Infirmary and other women’s institutions. See Proceedings of the 13th Annual Meeting, 1927, p. 41-48, AMWA MSS, Cornell University: Bulletin of the Medical Women’s National Association, April 1926, p. 19; Mrs. Frank Vanderlip, ”Are.Special Provisions Necessary for Women Physicians Today,” Women in Medicine, July 1940, p. 8-11.

82 Margaret Craighill to Florence Sabin, 1 April 1941, Sabin MSS, American Philosophical Society. See also Women in Medicine, October 1936, p. 20; Emily Dunning Barringer, ”Address Delivered at the Eighty-Seventh Opening of the Medical College of Pennsylvania,” Women in Medicine, October 1937, p. 19; ibid., October 1940, p. 18; ibid., April 1941, p. 25.

83 Oral Interview with Marion Fay, 7, 17 MCP Archives; Craighill to Sabin, 1 April 1941, Sabin MSS, APS; Sabin to Louise Pearce, 17 March 1942; Pearce to Sabin, 18 March 1943; all in Sabin MSS, American Philosophical Society.

84 Interview with Marion Fay, 19-20, 21-22, MCP Archives.

85 Ibid., 22-25. See also ”Report on the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania,” JAMWA 1 (June 1946): 28.

86 Interview with Marion Fay, 39; Interview with Alma Morani, 89-91; Interview with Katherine Sturgis, 72-74 MCP Archives. Catherine Macfarlane to Margaret Noyes Kleinert, 17 April 1964: ”The situation is even worse now. The latest College catalogue lists 292 officers of instruction-192 men and one hundred women. What would Dr. Van Hoosen say?” Kleinert MSS, Schlesinger Library. See supportive material on file with Fay interview, MCP Archives, especially notes of my interview with Dr. Morani, 4 April 1977; and interview with Charles Glanville, vice president in charge of planning and development in the late 1960s, n.d.

87 Interview with Alma Morani, 90-92; Interview with Katherine Sturgis, 73, MCP Archives; Mary Riggs Noble to Margaret Noyes Kleinert, 15 September 1951; Catherine Macfarlane to Dr. Teresa McGovern, 10 May 1964; all in Kleinert MSS, Schlesinger Library.

88 Interview of author with Dr. Marjorie Wilson, 1 November 1977, p. 73-74, Women in Medicine Oral History Project, MCP Archives.

89 Interview with Marion Fay, 42-49; Interview with Charles Glanville, n.d., pp. 1-2, MCP Archives.

90 Information on faculty was gathered by counting female faculty listed in catalogues and announcements for appropriate years. Information on the percentage of male students was provided by the college’s registrar office in June 1984.

91 Interview with Marion Fay, 49. Interview with Alma Morani, 92. MCP Archives. For alumnae responses see Margaret Noyes Kleinert to Mrs. Keiner, 3 September 1969, Kleinert MSS, Schlesinger Library; and Viola Erlanger to Mrs. Kaiser, 22 August 1961, Erlanger file, MCP Archives.

92 ”Barnard Alumnae in Medicine,” Barnard Alumnae Magazine, Fall 1977, p. 41. In addition, see my interview with Dr. Joni Magee, also one of the last to attend the school as a woman’s institution, 1 April 1977, pp. 25-27, Women in Medicine Oral History Project, MCP Archives.

CHAPTER 12

1 William Chafe, The American Woman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 218-19; Robert W. Smuts, Women and Work in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 36-37, 63-64.

2 J. A. Wilson Keyes, M. P., and J. Becker, ”The Forecast of Medical Education : Forecast of the Council of Deans,” Journal of Medical Education 50 (March 1975): 319-27; Judith B. Braslow and Marilyn Heins, ”Women in Medical Education, A Decade of Change,” New England Journal of Medicine 304 (7 May 1981): 1129-35. See also Marilyn Heins, M.D. ”Update: Women in Medicine,” forthcoming in JAMWA, Fall, 1985.

3 Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (London: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 271-83.

4 Peter Filene, HimlHerlSelf (New York: New American Library, 1974), 172- 74 ; Mary Ross, ”Shall We Join the Gentlemen?”Survey 57 (1 December 1926): 263-66; Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929), 83-85; Winifred Wandersee, Women’s Work and Family Values, 1929-1940 (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1981), especially 7-26; Lois Scharf, To Work and to Wed: Female Employment, Feminism, and the Great Depression (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 39-42; Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Female Labor Force in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 25-63.

5 ”The New Feminists: Revolt Against ‘Sexism,’ ” Time 94 (21 November 1969): 53-56; ”Women’s Lib: The War on ‘Sexism’ ” Time 94 (31 August 1970): 71-78; Francine Klagsburn, ed., The First MS Reader (New York: Ms. Magazine, 1973), 262-72; ”A Personal Report,” Ms. 1 (July 1972).

6 For a very helpful discussion of these issues see Barbara Melosh, ”The Physician’s Han”: Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 15-27. See, for example, Amitai Etzioni, ed., The Semi-Professions and Their Organization (New York: Free Press, 1969); William J. Goode, ”Community within a Community: The Professions,” merican Sociological Review 22 (April 1957): 194-200; Ernest Greenwood, ”Elements of Professionalization,” in Howard Volmer and Donald Mills, eds., Professionalization (Englewood Cliff, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1960); Talcott Parsons, ”Professions and Social Structure,” Social Forces 12 (May 1939): 450-62; and William J. Goode, ”Encroachment, Charlatanism, and the Emerging Profession: Psychology, Medicine, and Sociology,” American Sociological Review 25 (April 1960): 902-14.

7 See Rosner and Markowitz, ”Doctors in Crisis: Medical Education and Medical Reform During the Progressive Era, 1895-1915,” American Quarterly 25 (March 1973): 83-107; see also E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Megali Larson, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978).

8 Eliot Friedson, Profession of Medicine (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970). Paul Starr has recently argued that corporate medicine threatens to challenge the authority and autonomy of doctors in The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 379-449.

9 Rose Laub Coser and Gerald Rokoff, ”Women in the Occupational World: Social Disruption and Conflict,” Social Problems 18 (Spring 1971): 548. See also Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, ”Encountering the Male Establishment: Sex Status Limits on Women’s Careers in the Professions,”American Journal of Sociology 75 (May 1975): 965-82, and Woman’s Place: Options and Limits in Professional Careers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 151-98; Arlie Russell Hochschild, ”Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure,” American Journal of Sociology 85 (May 1979): 551-75.

10 ”Women in Science, Why so Few?” Science 148 (April-June 1965): 1196- 1202.

11 Dorothy Rosenthal Mandelbaum, Work, Marriage and Motherhood: The Career Persistence of Female Physicians (New York: Praeger, 1981), 6-7; H. Westling-Wikstrand, M. Monk, and C. B. Thomas, ”Some Characteristics Related to the Career Status of Women Physicians,”Johns Hopkins Medical Journal 127 (November 1970): 273-86; Lynne Davidson, ”Choice by Constraint : The Selection and Function of Specialties among Women Physicians-in-Training,” Journal of Health Politics 4 (Summer 1979): 200-219; ”Symposium : Medical WomanPower-Can_it it be Used More Efficiently?” JAMWA 17 (December 1962): 973-85.

12 Mandelbaum, Work, Marriage and Motherhood, p. 32; Davidson, ”Choice by Constraint,” Marjorie Wilson and Amber Jones, ”Career Patterns of Women in Medicine,” in Women in Medicine-1976: Carolyn Speiler, ed., Report of a Macy Conference (New York: Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, 1977), 67-87.

13 Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 174. For parallel or complementary arguments from other disciplines see Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); Lillian Rubin, Intimate Strangers (New York: Harper & Row, 1983); Carol McMillan, Women, Reason and Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

14 For an interesting and perceptive feminist critique of what Anita Fellman has termed ”maternal feminism” and Judith Stacey has labeled the ”new conservative feminism,” see Stacey, ”The New Conservative Feminism,” Feminist Studies 9 (Fall 1983): 559-84. See also Judith Lorber, ”Minimalist and Maximalist Feminist Ideologies and Strategies for Change,” Quarterly Journal of Ideology 5 (Fall 1981): 61-66.

15 ”A Woman’s Health School?” Social Policy 6 (September/October 1975): 50- 53.

16 ”Female Doctors Assess the Problems of Their Profession,”New York Times, 12 October 1979; Carlotta M. Rinke, M.D., ”The Professional Identities of Women Physicians,” JAMA 245 (19 June 1981): 2419-21. See also Elizabeth Morgan, The Making of a Woman Surgeon (New York: Berkeley Books, 1981), 287 and passim; Michelle Harrison, A Woman in Residence (New York: Random House, 1982); Commentary, ”Women in Medicine: Two Points of View, I. The Future of Women Physicians, II. Medicine and Motherhood,” JAMA 249 (14 January 1983): 207-10.

17 Commentary, ”Women in Medicine: II. Medicine and Motherhood,” 204-11; Marcia Angell, ”Juggling the Personal and Professional Life,” JAMWA 37 (March 1982): 64-68, and ”Women in Medicine: Beyond Prejudice,” New England Journal of Medicine 304 (7 May 1981): 1161-62; M. Heins et al., ”Productivity of Women Physicians,” JAMA 236 (October 1976): 1961-64, and ”Medicine and Motherhood,” JAMA 249 (14 January 1983): 209-10.

18 Adele N. Brodkin et al., ”Parenting and Professionalism—A Medical School Elective,” JAMWA 37 (October 1982): 227-30. See also, for example, Robert M. Veatch and K. Danner Clouser, ”New Mix in the Medical Curriculum,” Prism, November 1973, 1-5; ”The Hard Facts,” Second Century Radcliffe News, April 1984, p. 19.

19 Josephine J. Williams, ”The Woman Physician’s Dilemma,” Journal of Social Issues 6 (1950): 38-45; C. Nadelson and M. Notman, ”The Woman Physician,” Journal of Medical Education 47 (March 1972): 176-83; Editorials, ”What Women Want in Medicine Most—Power,” Medical News, 18 February 1980; ”Female Doctors Assess the Problems of Their Profession,” New York Times, 12 October 1971; Marilyn Heins, M.D., ”Women Physicians,” Radcliffe Quarterly, June 1979, 11-14; Mary Jane Gray and Judith Tyson, ”Evolution of a Women’s Clinic: An Alternate System of Medical Care,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 126 (1 December 1976): 760-68; Editorials—” Women in Surgery,” Archives in Surgery 102 (March 1971): 234_-35; Carol Nadelson and Malka Notman, ”Success or Failure: Women as Medical School Applicants,“” JAMWA 29 (April 1974): 167-72; Esther Haar, M.D., et al., ”Factors Related to the Preference for a Female Gynecologist,” Medical Care 13 (September 1975): 782-90; ”An Interview with Dr. Estelle Ramey,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 14 (Spring 1971): 424-31; Kathleen Farrell et al., ”Women Physicians in Medical Academia,” JAMA 241 (29 June 1979): 2808-12.