“No Small Part”: Utah Women in Medicine, Nursing, & Midwifery, 1873 – 1930
History of Medicine
From early colonial times, most medical practitioners in America were trained as apprentices to practicing physicians. In the eighteenth century, more aspiring physicians studied medicine in institutions based in hospitals and universities. The first such American medical schools were founded in the 1760s in Philadelphia and New York. These cities were centers of medical education in America for the next century.
For millennia disease was thought to be caused by an imbalance of bodily humors such as blood, bile, and phlegm, and depended on individual characteristics and the environment. Development of anatomical study through the dissection of human cadavers and breakthroughs in physiology revolutionized ideas about distinct diseases and their causes and treatments. Other nineteenth-century breakthroughs in anesthesia, germ theory, and aseptic technique revolutionized surgery.
Formal medical schools were not open to women. It was thought that medical education would be degrading to women and would be impossible to accomplish in mixed company. The rough and rowdy medical student was a Victorian stereotype. Parents who would be proud to have a son study medicine would be appalled at the idea of having a daughter as a medical student. Elizabeth Blackwell caused a sensation when she succeeded in being admitted to New York’s Geneva Medical College in 1849, opening the way for other women to study medicine.
In Utah, Brigham Young was wary of regular medical doctors. He recognized that all men in the new territory needed to work the land to provide food rather than trying to make a living at other pursuits. Moreover, President Young believed regular doctors often did more harm than good. By the 1870s, however, his stance regarding physicians had softened in light of new medical treatments, the abandonment of harmful medicines such as arsenic and calomel, and dedicated women’s medical colleges. He believed that medical work would best be done by women and publicly called for women to volunteer for formal training in the latest medical practices.
Careful study of post-mortem anatomy and pathology revolutionized ideas about the causes and treatment of disease. Alfred Loomis’ 1884 2nd edition of A Textbook of Practical Medicine (the first two images above) includes a discussion of “cerebral softening” focusing on the post-mortem findings of patients who had experienced a wide range of symptoms from fever, headache, and vertigo to convulsions, to loss of memory in old age. The 1901 edition of James Anders’ A Textbook of the Practice of Medicine (images 3 and 4 above) reflects a significantly more refined understanding of the etiology and treatment of neurological conditions and the term, “cerebral softening” had disappeared. Both of these texts are in a private collection.