Medical School: Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania

Specialty: Gynecology

Career Highlights:

• 1909 – Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton was the first chair of the Public Health Education Committee of the American Medical Association.
• 1912 – Dr. Morton was one of the first women faculty members at the New York Polyclinic Hospital and Post-Graduate Medical School.
• 1916 – Dr. Morton was the first woman faculty member at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
• 1917 – Dr. Morton was appointed chairman of the War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association.

Service with AMWA: Chair of the War Service Committee in the Medical Women’s National Association (subsequently, AMWA) where she raised support for the American Women’s Hospital

Quote: “International and cooperative peace will dawn upon the earth when every life is accorded value for survival instead of applause for extinction.” (A Woman Surgeon 355)

Biography:

A pioneer in medicine and advocate of gender equality in healthcare, Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton was born on November 28, 1872, in Lynchburg, Virginia. Coming from a wealthy family with a long-standing history of  male physicians, Dr. Morton faced opposition from her own family when she decided to pursue a medical career.  She was expected to follow the norm for well-bred females of her day by marrying and raising a family. “My entire upbringing and education had been designed, as it was for all Southern girls, to make me a capable wife—not to imbue me with a desire for a career.” Dr. Morton  joined the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1893, and graduated four years later with the top two honors in her class. After completing her residency at Alumnae Hospital and Dispensary, she left the United States to practice medicine internationally.

Dr. Morton completed post doctorate work studying under renowned physicians in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and London. She also collaborated with the British Laboratory in India devising treatments against bubonic plague. Upon her return to the United States in 1902, she established a successful gynecological practice in Washington D.C. After marrying attorney George Morton, she moved her practice to New York where she became a faculty member at the New York Polyclinic Hospital and Post-Graduate Medical School in the gynecology department. In 1916, she became the first female faculty member in the surgical department at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

During the First World War, Dr. Morton dedicated her services to treating wounded soldiers. In 1916, the Red Cross appointed her as the Special Commissioner giving her the task of organizing transport of hospital supplies from Paris to the war front. Upon her return to the United States, Dr. Morton used the experience she gained in field hospital management to open the American Women’s Hospital program in Europe. After joining the Medical Women’s National Association, Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen, president, appointed Dr. Morton chairman of the War Service Committee. In this capacity Dr. Morton went on to collect support for the first American Women’s Hospital which opened in France in 1918.

After World War I ended, Dr. Morton continued her work of helping and educating men and women in war-torn European countries such as Yugoslavia and Serbia. She believed that international health, defined as freedom from disease, was a commanding goal of the post-war world. She put this belief  into action through engagement in the International Serbian Educational Committee and a disease prevention project sponsored by the American Medical Association. Because of her wartime experiences and expertise, and her belief in the primacy of global public health, Dr. Morton became the first chair of the Public Health Education Committee of the American Medical Association.

After a stellar career that touched so many lives across the globe, Dr. Morton passed away at age 96 in 1968.

Medical School: University of Oregon Medical School, 1894

Specialty: Obstetrics & Gynecology

Career Highlights:

Chairman, Portland Board of Health (Oregon)

Service with AMWA: President 1932-1933; Chair, American Women’s Hospitals Service 1919-1965; President, Medical Women’s International Association 1919-1924

Quote: I am most proud of the work of the women of the American Women’s Hospitals and what they have accomplished. They are doing in a practical way the things that everyone else is discussing – their bit to build and create friendly relations with the peoples who have undergone such frightful suffering.

Biography:

Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy, MD was born in 1869 and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She admired the woman doctor who delivered her youngest sister, and so she began her studies at the University of Oregon’s Medical School in 1894.  She married a classmate, Emil Pohl, and they lived in Portland where she worked as an obstetrician and her husband, a surgeon.  The couple had a son in 1901, and left him to be cared for by her mom while she worked in Vienna, Austria and campaigned for women’s suffrage at home.  Dr. Pohl returned to Portland in 1904 and was the first woman to direct the Portland Board of Health.  The Board of Health had several advances while she was the lead, including regulating the milk supply, providing funds for school nurses, and securing Portland a national reputation for its high sanitation standards.  In 1908, she lost both her son and her husband to medical tragedies.  She continued to work, despite the deep losses and later would establish the Pohl Memorial Fund at the University of Oregon Medical School, in their memory. In 1912, Dr. Clayson Pohl married Portland businessman, George Lovejoy a marriage that would last for the next 7 years.

Dr. Lovejoy was a staunch supporter of women’s suffrage, the League of Nations, and Prohibition.  She also ran for Congress, though unsuccessfully.  After the start of World War I, Dr. Lovejoy helped establish the American Women’s Hospitals Service (AWHS), a program within AMWA which brought humanitarian relief to areas ravaged by war, famine, and natural disasters.  She directed that program for 47 years.  In appreciation of her service in Greece, she was presented with the keys to the city of Retimo where a street was also named in her honor.

In 1919, Dr. Lovejoy helped found the Medical Women’s International Association, which brought together medical women from all over the world. A portrait of Dr. Lovejoy is displayed in the Esther Pohl Lovejoy Hall at the Philippine Medical Women’s Association building in Manila.

Dr. Lovejoy published 4 books – Women Physicians and Surgeons, Women Doctors of the World, House of a Good Neighbor, and Certain Samaritans, the last of which chronicles the noble work of AWHS in Europe and the Near East.  She lived a long and productive life for 97 years, ever a supporter of women in medicine.

Medical School: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1914

Specialty: Surgery

Career Highlights:

• Dr. Karpeles was first woman to be appointed as a contract surgeon with the army, during WWI.

Service with AMWA: President, 1938-1939; First Vice-President, Legislation Chairman; District of Columbia Medical Women’s Society President

Biography:

Dr. Kate Karpeles became a physician following in the footsteps of her father. He encouraged her to study medicine and, after completing an undergraduate degree at Goucher College in Baltimore, she chose Johns Hopkins University for medical school, based on its high admission standards and its well-known revised curriculum (following the Flexner report). She earned her medical degree in 1914, but she had a difficult time obtaining an internship, as many programs denied her entrance based on her gender. She later became the first female intern at Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C.; however, that hospital was considered of lower quality than someone of her training at Johns Hopkins ought to have been able to attain.

She continued to press forward in her career and became the first woman to be appointed a contract surgeon with the United States Army.  She was given a relative rank of first Lieutenant and was stationed at the emergency dispensary of the War Department in Washington, D.C.  After World War I, she continued a career in surgery, as well as pushing for women’s rights.  She served as president of the American Medical Women’s Association from 1938-39, where her main goal was to increase membership in the organization.  As AMWA president, she also advocated for equal pay and treatment of women physicians in the US Military.

Dr. Karpeles is buried next to her husband Dr. Simon Karpeles in Arlington cemetery due to their service with honor in World War I.

Medical School: University of Minnesota Medical School, 1902

Specialty: Ophthalmology

Career Highlights:

• State Health Director for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
• Physician for the State Reformatory for Women at Shakopee
• Worked as an opthalmologist with the French Army in World War I through the Women’s Oversea Hospitals

Service with AMWA: Regional Director for the Northwest Central region of AMWA, President of the Minnesota Branch

Biography:

Dr. Nellie O. Barsness was a pioneer in more ways than one.  Not only was she one of the first women physicians in Minnesota, but also her family was amongst the first of Norwegian settlers in western Minnesota.  Her father, after serving in the Union Army in the Civil War, took up a homestead south of Glenwood, in Pope County.  Dr. Barsness was born in Barsness Township, the township named for the family.

After teaching school for a few years, she entered the University of Minnesota Medical School, and received her medical degree in 1902.  She interned at Luther Hospital in St. Paul.  At about this time the first x-ray machines were being used.  Dr. Barsness lost no time in learning to operate one, and she attended the first x-ray conferences ever held, at Niagara Falls in 1904.

In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, women physicians were not accepted in the Medical Corps; but they were in the French Army.  Dr. Barsness was appointed ophthalmologist at a hospital in Cempuis (with the Women’s Oversea Hospitals) where gassed solders were treated.  She was decorated by the French Minister of War for her work done under the most hazardous of conditions.  After the armistice, to give respite to the French doctors who had worked so hard during the four years of war, Dr. Barsness conducted clinics in Nancy and in Rheims.

Returning to St. Paul late in 1919, she was physician for the State Reformatory for Women at Shakopee.  For several years, Dr. Barsness was State Health Director for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and helped to stimulate greater interest in health measures throughout the State.

She took on postgraduate work in Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Chicago.  Her studies included otolaryngology, ophthalmology, and dermatology, and she made good use of those specialties in her general practice.

Dr. Barsness was past Regional Director for the Northwest Central region of AMWA and past president of the Minnesota Branch.  Through her labors and her triumphs, younger generations of women physicians have been inspired.  Her accomplishments stimulate and encourage progressive interest for young and old alike; her honors reflect honor on all women physicians.

Adapted from Bernard MT, “Nellie O. Barsness, M.D.” JAMWA April 1953, p. 151.

Photo Courtesy of Drexel University School of Medicine, Archives and Special Collections.

Medical School: University of Nebraska Medical School, 1913

Specialty: Obstetrics, Anesthesiology

Career Highlights:

• Emeritus Professor, University of Nebraska College of Medicine
• Chair, Department of Hygiene and Social Service in Prague
• Medical Director AWH units in Loutraki and Macronissi Islands (Greece)
• Chairman, Health Department of the YMCA (Czechoslovakia)

Service with AMWA: President 1930-1931, First Vice-President, Treasurer, Medical Director AWH units in Loutraki and Macronissi Islands (Greece), Delegate at 1925 International AMWA Conference

Quote: (on her desire to participate help in the war effort in 1918) “I want to get to France, even if I have to scrub floors.”1

Biography:

Olga Stastny was born in Nebraska, the second of eight children born to Czechoslovakian parents Francis and Teresa Sadilek. In 1895, she married Charles Stastny, who became a dentist. The couple dreamed of pursuing medical studies, but Charles died at age 28, leaving her to raise their two children alone. Olga later enrolled in the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, graduating in 1913 as the only woman in her class. After an obstetrical internship at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, she returned to Nebraska to practice. She became an active member of the Medical Women’s National Association (later renamed AMWA) and worked to promote equal opportunity for women physicians.

At the advent WWI, Dr. Stastny was a fervent supporter of the war efforts. She joined the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH), a relief agency founded by AMWA and helped organize the Americanization Department of the Nebraska Council of Defense. In 1919, she joined AWH Unit #1 in France to aid the reconstruction efforts. For her service, the French government awarded her the Medaille de Reconnaissance . Dr. Stastny later relocated to Czechoslovakia to serve as chair of the Department of Hygiene and Social Service in Prague. There, she established a child welfare station, campaigned against tuberculosis, and lectured extensively on preventive medicine and sexual hygiene. She continued her work in health prevention programs until the death of her son Robert, after which she returned to the U.S. to grieve her loss.

Dr. Statsny would work abroad again as medical director of the AWH units in Loutraki and Macronissi Islands in Greece, where she coordinated care for thousands of Greek refugees  from the Near East. She received the Cross of Saint George from the Grecian government for her heroic work, despite dangerous and desperate conditions. Back in the U.S., Dr. Statsny continued her involvement in AMWA and was a delegate to the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA). In 1931, she received the Noguchi Gold Medal for her work in preventive medicine; in 1948, she became professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. She served as trustee of Doane College (Crete) and the University of Nebraska Foundation and remained an active volunteer until her death at the age of 74.

Photo Courtesy of Drexel University, School of Medicine, Archives & Special Collections

References:

¹ “Omaha’s Grandmother Doctor Awaits Her Call.” Omaha World-Herald, 1918, in Olga Stastny

Collection, State Archives, Nebraska State Historical Society.

Andrews-Koryta, S. “Dr. Olga Stastny, Her Service to Nebraska and the World.” Nebraska

History 68 (1987): 20-27.

Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer

The first appointed woman to serve on the staff of a general municipal hospital in New York City, Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer served the United States as the Vice-Chair of the American Women’s Hospital War Service Committee during World War I. Daughter of Edwin James Dunning and Frances Gore Lang, Dr. Barringer was born in 1876 in Scarsdale into a well-to-do New York family. When her family fell under hard times, with the support of her uncle Henry Sage, she attended Cornell University’s Medical Preparatory course graduating in 1897. After which she attended the College of Medicine of the New York Infirmary, which during her second year, merged with Cornell University School of Medicine.

After graduation Dr. Emily Barringer applied for an internship at New York City’s Gouverneur Hospital however her application was denied. However without being deterred, using the aid of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and others, she applied again the following year when she was accepted. In her autobiography Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of New York’s First Woman Ambulance Surgeon she writes that even after her acceptance her fellow residents harassed her in many forms and assigned her difficult schedules and duties. However, instead of staying quiet and turning away, she harnessed the power of her education as well as the necessary help from others, to overcome the challenges that also many other women physicians faced during her era. She became the first woman medical resident in 1902 at the Gouverneur Hospital as well as being the first woman ambulance physician to work there. After Dr. Barringer finished her residency in 1904 she got married to Benjamin Barringer.

When World War I broke out in the early 1900s, Dr. Barringer spearheaded a campaign with the purpose of raising money for the purchase of ambulances to be sent to the warfront in Europe. Along with other women physicians such as Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton, Dr. Barringer served as a co-chair of the War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association. This committee helped provide medical and surgical care to the soldiers during the war and to the people during the post-war reconstruction.

During her distinguished medical career that spanned almost 50 years in length, Dr. Barringer served many roles. She served on as one of the gynecological staff at New York Polyclinic Hospital and after World War I as director of gynecology at the Kingston Avenue Hospital. She also served as an attending surgeon specializing in the study of venereal diseases at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. And she was a member of the American Medical Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer made significant efforts to help fellow women physicians serve their country during World War II. During that time it was the rule that while women physicians could serve in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as contract surgeons, they could not receive the accompanying military benefits available to their counterparts – the commissioned male officers. In 1941 when Dr. Barringer was elected president of the American Medical Women’s Association, she chaired a special committee that lobbied Congress and Senator John Jackson Sparkman from Alabama for military commissions for women physicians. She fought for a woman physician’s right to hold appointments during World War II in the Army and Navy Medical Corps. And in 1943 the Sparkman Act, which allowed women physicians to be commissioned as officers in the armed forces, was signed into law. Dr. Barringer died on April 8, 1961 in New Milford, Connecticut.

Jessie Myers Weston was born in Cherry Hill, Maryland in 1872. Most of her youth was spent in
and around Dover, Delaware. In 1893, she graduated from Woman’s Medical College of
Pennsylvania.

Jessie’s path brought her to Middletown, CT, where she worked for 14 years as a clinical assistant
(4 years) and assistant pathologist (10 years) at what was then the CT Hospital for the Insane. In
1897, she married Dr. William Edwin Fisher. In 1904, their son, William Weston Fisher was born.
Dr. Jessie Fisher established the Department of Pathology at Middlesex Memorial Hospital in
1916.

She worked as a pathologist (including a period of study at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital),
bacteriologist, and serologist (study of blood serum) until 1918, when (at the age of 45) she
requested a leave of absence to volunteer with the American Red Cross. Without her family’s
approval, she left her home, her husband and her son in Middletown and traveled to France where
she worked for the American Red Cross in a hospital at Beauvais in Picardy.

In 1923, she was offered the position of chair of the Department of Pathology at Woman’s Medical
College, Philadelphia. In 1943, she was assigned by the Governor to the board of trustees of the CT
State Hospital. In 1954, upon her retirement, a laboratory at the hospital was named after her.
She published numerous articles in medical journals. Among other noteworthy milestones in her
career Jessie interviewed and wrote on the serial killer Amy Archer-Gilligan, whose true-life
murderous career was the inspiration for the play and movie “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Jessie lived to be 89 years old, and died in 1962.

Dr. Caroline Sandford Finley (1875–1936). The New York-born Finley graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1901. She was on staff at the Elizabeth Blackwell-founded New York Infirmary for Women and Children. From November 1917 to June 1919, she headed an all-female U.S. hospital unit in France under the auspices of the Women’s Oversea Hospitals (supported by $200,000 from the National American Woman Suffrage Association) and held the rank of lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the French army. At Chateau d’Ognon in summer 1918, German planes bombed her hospital. For her service, she received the Croix de Guerre from the French government, and on November 22, 1919, the Prince of Wales awarded her an MBE on the HMS Renown in recognition of her care in Metz of former British POWs suffering from influenza.

Dr. Margery Gilfillan
1876-1970

Dr. Margery Gilfillan was born in East Brook, PA. She graduated from Westminster College, PA,
the Women’s Medical College at Philadelphia, and Rush Medical College in Chicago (MD, 1908).
She worked as a general practitioner initially and later worked at the state mental hospital in
Hastings, Nebraska before moving to Kalamazoo to join the staff at the state hospital. During
World War 1, Dr. Gilman was a contract surgeon in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
After the war, she joined the staff of the Battle Creek Sanitarium where she remained for the
next 30 years. She was a member of the Battle Creek Altrusa Club, the American Medical
Association, and the American Psychiatric Association. She passed away at the age of 94

Dr. Harriett Alleyne Rice
Dr. Rice’s Medal of French Gratitude (1919)

Medical School: University of Michigan

Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, Graduated 1891

Career Highlights: First African American to graduate from Wellesley College (1887)

Medal of French Gratitude (1919)

Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (1981)

Service with AMWA:

WWI French Hospital 1915-1918

Dr. Harriett Alleyne Rice, was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1866. Always an exceptional student, she attended Wellesley College in 1883 and became the first African American to graduate from the institution. In her senior year, Rice experienced a fall, but this did not set her back and she graduated from Wellesley in 1887. In September 1888, she enrolled at the University of Michigan medical school, yet her partial recovery from the fall caused her to drop out after her first year. She received two operations. In September 1890, Rice enrolled in the medical program at the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. She earned her M.D. in 1891 and interned at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

By 1896 there were 115 African American women doctors, and Dr. Rice was amongst the second generation of African American women doctors and second generation of women doctors. Rice continued internship at the women’s hospital in Philadelphia and later, at age 27, joined Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr at Hull House Chicago, providing medical treatment for poor families. Despite racism against black physicians and discrimination against women physicians, Rice continued to care for her patients. She worked at the medical dispensary and clinic in Hull House providing care for the working poor. Only 1.3% of the population in Chicago in 1890 was black, and the unbearable discrimination forced Dr. Rice to pursue other outlets.

After spending 8 years in college, medical schools, and postgraduate internships and training, Dr. Rice finally opened her own private medical practice. In 1896, Rice produced her first publication “Tabulation of Records of Cook County Institutions with Notes” in conjunction with the Illinois Board of Charities. A year later, Dr. Rice became the only doctor at the Chicago Maternity Hospital and Training School for Nursery Maids. In 1899 she became seriously ill once again and returned to Newport for surgery. She returned in 1901 hopping from the charity office to the Hull-House cashier. Dr. Rice took a broad range of jobs from assistant in pathology laboratory at the Boston Dispensary to the chapter of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross Episcopal sisterhood.

When WWI broke out, Dr. Rice was there on the frontlines. At 49 years of age, Dr. Rice practiced as a medical intern at a hospital in Poitiers, France. She cared for the wounded soldiers for three and a half years, staying well after the war ended to make sure every soldier received the proper treatment. In gratitude for her ceaseless efforts during WWI between 1915 and 1918, the French embassy awarded her the bronze medal of Reconnaissance Française for her “immense services” and for “her devotion and ability in caring for the French wounded”. In 1933, Rice worked at a laboratory at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Although her medical career may not have been all she expected it to be, her unparalleled dedication and bravery in her works is a testimony for all medical women facing prejudice. Dr. Rice died in 1958 in Worcester, Massachusetts at age 92 and was buried in an Episcopal service in Newport. She is remembered as “a woman of valor.”

Adapted from Louise W. Knight, “Harriet Alleyne Rice,” in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001): 740-2.

Photo Courtesy of Stokes, Keith. “A Woman of Valor.” Eyes of Glory, 3 Oct. 2014, eyesofglory.com/a-woman-of-valor.

Dr. Anna Tjomsland (1880–1968). Born in Norway, Anna Tjomsland earned her bachelor’s and medical degrees from Cornell; she became a naturalized American citizen in 1917. She interned and then became a staff member at Bellevue. Tjomsland went to Vichy as a contract surgeon, serving as an anesthetist in the “Bellevue Unit” (aka U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 1). Her book, Bellevue in France (1941), describes experiences of the unit such as the following:

To the severely ill or wounded the thought of sleep was far away. They did not sleep—merely dozed. Vague dreams of details unending, of empty canteens and blown-up rations, of dead buddies; sudden sharp visions of home and mother, of familiar faces and things chasing through their brains; held between a desire to live and the end of suffering, they lay in impassive silence, wailing now and then in their delirium, we who cared for them mute witnesses to their suffering and patience.

Update, 30 July 2017: The AMWA is accepting donations for a short documentary on U.S. female physicians in World War I, which will be shown in Sept. 2017 at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City.