The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West (9 page)

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Authors: Chris Enss

BOOK: The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West
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On Sunday, September 26, 1847, Patty assisted in the birth of the first male born in the Salt Lake Valley. Her role in the momentous occasion was predicted long before the boy was born. Her journal entry for that day does not tell who predicted the event, but the midwife was honored to be a part of history:
It was said to me more than five months ago that my hands should be the first to handle the first born son in the place of rest for the saints even in the city of our God. I have come more than one thousand miles to do it since it was spoken.
 
 
Patty Bartlett Sessions’s journey began thousands of miles from Utah in the small New England town of Newry, Maine. She was born on February 4, 1795, to Enoch and Anna Bartlett, and was the first of nine children the couple had together.
Like all her brothers and sisters, Patty was raised on the family farm and was required to do a variety of chores. She excelled in spinning, weaving, and sewing. The intricate stitching she used on her samplers would come in handy with stitching of another kind once she entered the medical profession. Although her mother and father did not require their daughters to attend school, Patty sought out an education. She learned to read and write from the Newry schoolmistress and was a gifted math student.
On June 28, 1812, Patty married a farmer named David Sessions. The newlyweds moved in with his parents in the nearby town of Ketchum. David’s mother, Rachel, suffered from rheumatism and required constant care. While David tended to the crops, Patty tended to her mother-in-law. The daunting responsibility inadvertently led the teenager to pursue a career as a midwife.
Before Rachel had become disabled, she was the trained attendant who neighbors and friends sought help from with obstetrical cases. One afternoon she received a frantic summons to the bedside of an expectant mother who was very ill. Physically unable to get to the mother-to-be quickly, Rachel decided to send Patty to lend a hand. She reassured her daughter-in-law that she had the compassion and common sense necessary to be of help, and Patty agreed to go.
When she arrived on the scene, the expectant mother was in labor and very sick. Patty thought the woman was dying. What she lacked in practical knowledge, she made up for in nerve and courage. Patty’s presence and calming attitude comforted the distressed woman. She took charge of the situation, ordering the expectant mother to breath easily through the contractions.
By the time the doctor arrived, the baby had been born, and mother and child were resting comfortably. The pair were thoroughly examined and given clean bills of health. Patty was commended by the physician for a job well done and encouraged to enter the business. He told her the need for her skills was in great demand and promised that she would prosper in the profession.
Patty was intrigued with the prospect, but it wasn’t until she experienced the thrill of helping to deliver another child that she decided to become a midwife.
Her education in the field would be well rounded. She studied obstetrics under Doctor Timothy Carter, a physician in Bethel, Maine; she learned about natural herb remedies from Native Americans; and she interned with elderly midwives in the area. Patty Bartlett Sessions devoted herself to learning all she could about natural labor and prenatal care. She earned a reputation as one of the best practitioners of her kind in the territory.
When Patty wasn’t helping to deliver babies, she and her husband were working the land on their 200-acre homestead. With dedication and hard work, they grew their farm to include a large house, two large barns, several sheds, a sawmill, and a gristmill. Over the course of their twenty-five-year marriage, the couple had eight children. Only three of their children lived to adulthood. Typhus fever swept through the area, claiming the lives of two of the Sessions children and countless other residents in the small farming community.
Patty dealt with the loss as best she could while continuing to serve the town as midwife. David struggled to come to terms with the death of his offspring and sunk into a deep depression. The pair’s spirits never fully recovered.
In 1833, a group of Mormon missionaries made their camp near the Sessions home and began ministering to them.
Their message changed Patty and David’s life and brought them out of the deep pit of despair. Close to a year later, the husband and wife adopted the Mormon religion and were baptized into the faith. At the urging of the church leaders, David moved his family from Maine to Kirkland, Ohio. Patty’s services continued to be greatly required. In addition to performing her daily household duties, she attended to numerous obstetrical cases. Her journal contains several entries describing the events and their outcomes, such as this account from May of 1836:
 
In 1842, the Mormon Church leaders again called upon the Sessions family to relocate. This time they were to go to Nauvoo, Illinois. While in Nauvoo, Patty and David met the town founder, Joseph Smith. Smith was also the president and prophet of the Church of Latter Day Saints. He was taken with Patty’s medical ability and the role she played as caregiver for other migrating Mormons. In keeping with the religion’s polygamist practice, Patty accepted a proposal of marriage from Joseph Smith. On March 9, 1842, the two exchanged vows.
Smith and the Mormon Church put Patty’s skills to work, and she began teaching young wives about motherhood and the importance of a proper diet for themselves and their children. From 1842 to 1847, the accomplished midwife assisted in bringing hundreds of babies into the Mormon family. Patty continued to provide expert services to mothers after the church made a mass exodus from the Midwest to Utah.
Patty Bartlett Sessions Smith was forty-nine when she arrived in the Great Salt Lake Basin. Her medical duties expanded well beyond her initial training and duties as a midwife. Using a medical guide called
The Family Physician,
she now provided a wide variety of healthcare treatments to members of the congregation. Those whose health she had helped restore lovingly referred to her as “Doctor Patty.”
The leaders of the Mormon Church wholeheartedly approved of Patty’s title and work, and would later encourage other females to enter the profession. In January 1868, Brigham Young announced, “The time has come for women to come forth as doctors in these valleys.” Patty adhered to the church’s practice of healing the body using natural herbs and foliage. She served as an officer on the Council of Health, an organization that believed that the “Creator placed in most lands medicinal plants for the cure of all diseases incident to that climate.” Patty was an expert at mixing natural concoctions that calmed the senses and eased a myriad of pains.
Throughout her life Patty maintained meticulous lists that included the activities of the Mormon Church as they made their way west, the families she assisted, the babies she helped bring into the world, the classes she taught, and the other healthcare tasks she performed from day to day. Archivists consider her on-the-spot chronicle of the Mormon trail experience and life in early Utah a great contribution to history.
After having lost both her husbands, Joseph in 1844 and David in 1850, Patty married for a third time. In March of 1852, she pledged her devotion to John Parry. John was the first leader of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They were married seventeen years before he passed away.
Patty’s career as a midwife and healthcare provider crossed over several states and spanned seven decades. In that time she helped deliver close to 4,000 babies.
Doctor Patty died of natural causes on December 14, 1892, in Bountiful, Utah. A biographical sketch of her life, published in the Utah Journal on the day of her death, notes the legacy she left behind:
She lived to see her 4th generation and has left two sons, thirty-three grandchildren, one hundred and thirty-seven great-grandchildren, and twenty-two great-great-grandchildren. Total posterity, two hundred and fourteen. She was ever a true and faithful Latter Day Saint, diligent and persevering, her whole soul, and all she possessed being devoted to the Church and the welfare of mankind. She has gone to her grave ripe in years, loved and respected by all who knew her.
 
 
Doctor Patty is recognized by the Mormon Church as the “Mother of Mormon Midwifery.”
NELLIE POOLER CHAPMAN & LUCY HOBBS TAYLOR
 
DENTAL PIONEERS
 
 
If we ignore them and downplay their efforts they will be forced to
abandon the idea of being part of medicine.
—Doctor A. E. Regensburger, in his address to the
California State Medical Society, regarding women
as doctors and dentists, 1875
 
 
Frantic pounding on the front door of Nellie Pooler Chapman’s home forced the petite woman out of a deep sleep, off of her bed, and onto her feet. She quickly lit a nearby candle, threw on her robe, and hurried to answer the desperate person knocking and calling out for help.
As soon as Nellie opened the door, a scruffy miner pushed his way inside. His left hand was holding his left cheek and tears were streaming down his face. “I’ve got to see the doc,” he pleaded. Nellie left the door standing open as she brushed her mussed hair from her face. “The doctor isn’t here,” she informed the man. “He’s in Nevada looking for silver.” The miner groaned in pain and cried even harder. “You’ve got to help me,” he insisted. “I’ve got a bad tooth and it’s killing me.” Nellie stared back wide-eyed at the suffering man. “I’m not a dentist,” she told him. “I don’t know how to remove a bad tooth.”
The man drew in a quick breath and winced. He was in agony. “You’ve watched him work, though,” he reminded her. “You know what to do. Please,” he begged. Nellie thought about it for a moment, then ushered the tormented patient into the dental office in the back of the house. “I’ll try,” she told him.
Nellie’s introduction into the field of dentistry was dramatic, but it suited her. Prior to helping her husband with his busy practice, she had aspired to be a poet. After working as his assistant for some time, she realized her calling was in an area of medicine few women had sought to enter.
Nellie Elizabeth Pooler was born in Norridgewock, Maine, on May 9, 1847. Like many families of that time, the Poolers traveled west in search of a better life in the California Gold Fields. Arriving in the Gold Country in 1855, fourteen-year-old Nellie met and fell in love with forty-four-year-old dentist Allen Chapman. The pair married on March 24, 1861.
Doctor Allen Chapman established his practice in Nevada City, California, in 1856. Shortly after their wedding, Nellie began training as his assistant. Her duties included sterilizing the dental equipment, applying iodine and pain relievers to patients, and handing her husband the tools he needed to work.
Allen proved to be a wonderful teacher, sharing his knowledge of dentistry with his wife and encouraging her to acquire a license of her own. After eighteen years of marriage, the bulk of which was spent learning about dental health, Nellie decided to make it official. In 1879, she became the first licensed woman dentist in the West.
The Comstock strike in Nevada attracted many fortune-seekers to the hills around Virginia City. In 1865, Allen Chapman was one of the thousands who hurried to the new state to strike it rich. Not only was Allen a miner in Virginia City, but he ran a dental practice there as well. Confident that Nellie could handle the practice alone with the training that he had given here, Allen turned his attention to mining.

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