The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West (2 page)

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Authors: Chris Enss

BOOK: The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West
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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 profitable 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.
 
In the fall of 1861, Bethenia again enrolled in school. The principal of the institution assisted her with her work when needed. She awoke at four o’clock every morning to study, determined to take full advantage of the “great opportunity” she had been given. Within nine months Bethenia had completed her high school education. Before and after attending classes, she kept up with her variety of labor-intensive jobs and gave special attention to her son.
Bethenia’s thirst for knowledge did not subside after graduation. Her fondness for nursing and caring for sick friends and family sparked a desire to study medicine. Her superior talent in hat design and dressmaking helped her to raise the necessary funds to attend medical school. She became truly committed to the calling after witnessing an elderly doctor’s inability to care properly for a small child:
The old physician in my presence attempted to use an instrument for the relief of the little sufferer, and, in his long, bungling, and unsuccessful attempt he severely lacerated the tender flesh of the poor little girl. At last, he laid down the instrument, to wipe his glasses. I picked it up saying, “Let me try, Doctor,” and passed it instantly, with perfect ease, bringing immediate relief to the tortured child.
 
That momentous event set in motion the course of Bethenia’s new profession.
Words of encouragement for Bethenia’s goal were few and far between, however. In fact, once she made her career plans known, only two people supported her. One was a trusted physician, who loaned her his medical books; the other was a judge, who applauded her ambition and assured her that she “would win.” Most of Bethenia’s family and friends were opposed to her becoming a doctor. They sneered and laughed and told her it was a disgrace for a woman to enter into such work. Bethenia disregarded their warnings and criticism, and pressed on toward her objective.
Bethenia began her studies at the Philadelphia Eclectic School of Medicine in 1870. Students at the college learned ways to treat the sick using herbs, mineral baths, and natural medicines. After a two-year absence from her home and son George, who was with her parents, Bethenia returned to Roseburg eager to set up a practice. The controversy that surrounded her after the autopsy incident, however, forced her to open an office in Portland instead. The ground floor of her Portland facilities had two rooms that she fitted for eclectic and medicated baths. Several patients sought out her unorthodox method of dealing with sickness and pain, and in no time, her business was making a profit. Bethenia could then afford to send nineteen-year-old George to the UC Berkeley Medical School. He graduated in 1874.
Although Doctor Owens’s eclectic medical practice was prosperous, she was not satisfied. She pined for more knowledge in her chosen field. On September 1, 1878, she left Portland for Philadelphia, to seek counsel from a professor at her former college. She was advised to attend the University of Michigan, and she left at once to enroll:
Arriving there, I was soon settled, and in my seat for the opening lecture. . . . During the ensuing nine months, I averaged sixteen hours a day in attending lectures, in hard study, and in all exercises required in the courses, after which I put in ten hours a day (except Sundays) in study during vacation.
 

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