America's First Female Doctor

I am over the moon excited! After publishing seven novellas with Barbour (with more to come next year), I finally have a novel coming out! Sand Creek Serenade will release on March 14, 2019, so in the coming months, I’ll be telling you about different aspects of the story. To start with, this novel tells of the romance between Dr. Sadie Hoppner, a young female doctor, and Five Kills, a Cheyenne brave, in 1864 Colorado Territory. 

In case you missed my earlier post, you can read about becoming a doctor in the Old West here. But have you ever thought about what it would’ve taken for a woman to become a doctor in that age? As I depict in Sand Creek Serenade, Sadie studied under her father’s and brother’s tutelage, reading medical texts, debating the merits of a certain course of treatment, and practicing procedures alongside them until she could competently treat patients on her own. However, that wasn’t the only way to become a full-fledged doctor. Many chose to attend expensive universities for their medical training.

At some point in history, the first woman had to make the choice to attend medical school. Who was she? What led her to study medicine? What battles did she face along the way? 

Miss Elizabeth Blackwell

Well, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first woman doctor. She is the trailblazing woman to first pursue a degree from a medical college. She was the trendsetter who opened the doors for every woman who dreamed of becoming a doctor. Elizabeth Blackwell was a life-long learner who challenged barriers and evened the field for all women.

Born in Bristol, England, in 1821, Elizabeth was the third of nine children. She and her siblings were educated at home, and in her early life, Elizabeth learned to speak German and French. But after a move to America, finally settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, Elizabeth’s father died unexpectedly when at her age eighteen. Across the next handfuls of years, Elizabeth and her siblings taught school or tutored students privately. However, Elizabeth longed for something more challenging.

The idea of pursuing medicine came from an offhand remark by a dying friend. Mary Donaldson, stricken with cancer, commented to Elizabeth that it was difficult and awkward to have exams and procedures done by male doctors. Knowing Elizabeth’s love of learning, Mary suggested that she study to become a doctor.

Miss Blackwell was repulsed! She was turned off by anything dealing with the body and had no desire to learn medicine. However, the idea wouldn’t leave her alone, so she discussed it with family and friends, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. With their encouragement and blessing, she set out to pursue a medical education. First, she had to work several years to save the $3000 she would need. She took teaching positions in different Asheville and Charleston academies, renting rooms from doctors who allowed her to peruse their medical texts by night. She also studied anatomy under the tutelage of a physician who thought her cause was a noble one. After three years of saving, she had the tuition money in hand.

As you might expect, applying and gaining acceptance to a medical school was an uphill climb. At that time, women were seen as unbusinesslike, lacking in logic and common sense, and morally unfit for such a profession. So her applications to the twenty-nine most prestigious medical colleges in Philadelphia and New York were rejected. Only when she applied to a smaller school, Geneva Medical College in western New York State, did she finally get an acceptance. She was twenty-four at the time.

However, when she set foot on campus, she realized her acceptance was a joke. The administration had asked the student body whether they should allow a woman to study medicine, and the student body agreed, expecting they’d get a good laugh at Miss Blackwell’s expense. The men were sorely mistaken!

Miss Blackwell entered Geneva Medical College in November—right in the middle of a term. The student body laughed at her. The townsfolk thought her insane or immoral. But she pushed through, rose to the top of her class, and graduated with a medical degree at the age of twenty-eight. 

Dr. Blackwell, later in life.

You might think she’d made it, but her battles were far from over. No one would allow her to set up
shop and practice medicine in America, so she returned to England, only to find the doors were closed there too. She finally took a student midwife position at La Maternite, a French hospital, and learned obstetrics. But she took a bad turn when she developed purulent ophthalmia, an inflammation of the eye, which led to her having to have her eye removed completely. Her dreams of becoming a surgeon were gone.

Not one to give up, she eventually returned to America, set up a private practice, and began giving lectures and writing articles on women’s health and the importance of physical education for girls. By 1853, Elizabeth’s sister, Emily, had also graduated from medical school and joined her sister. A German doctor, Marie Zakrzewska, also joined the sisters, and the trio opened a clinic in the slums of New York, treating women and children. After a few years, they closed the clinic and opened a different facility—the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857. The Infirmary not only provided much-needed care for New York’s residents, but it also became a training facility for women seeking to become doctors and nurses. 

1974 US Postage Stamp commemorating
Dr. Blackwell's great achievement

Later in her career, Elizabeth helped to train female doctors and nurses to do battlefield medicine during the Civil War, she founded the first American medical school for women—The Women’s Medical College, helped form the National Health Society of England, and assisted in the creation of the London School of Medicine for Women. As her health declined later in life, she turned her attention to writing, speaking out on various areas needing social reform. She penned her autobiography, at least four books, and various essays and articles on a full range of topics. Upon her death in 1910, there were over 7,000 women in American who were practicing medicine after having received a degree from a medical training institution. That is quite a legacy!

It's Your Turn: Have you heard of Elizabeth Blackwell? What do you find most impressive about her life?

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has finaled and won in numerous writing competitions, and been on the ECPA best-seller list numerous times. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son, and four fur children.

The Mail-Order Brides Collection: available now.

What kind of woman would answer an advertisement and marry a stranger?

Escape into the history of the American West along with nine couples whose relationships begin with advertisements for mail-order brides. Placing their dreams for new beginnings in the hands of a stranger, will each bride be disappointed, or will some find true love?

The Brigand and the Bride by Jennifer Uhlarik
1876, Arizona
Jolie Hilliard weds a stranger to flee her outlaw family but discovers her groom is an escaped prisoner. Will she ever find happiness on the right side of the law?

Blood Pressure: from Horses to Humans

When you go to the doctor today, you probably think little to nothing when the nurse takes the blood

pressure cuff, wraps it around your upper arm, and proceeds to take your blood pressure. But taking one's blood pressure hasn't always been so easy. In fact, it used to be an extremely painful process.

The first blood pressure measurement was taken in 1733 on a horse. Reverend Stephen Hales inserted a glass tube directly into the horse's artery and watched as the blood was forced up the tube. Thank goodness we don't still take blood pressure that way!

The first sphygmograph (not to be confused with the sphygmometers used today) was developed over 100 years later in 1854 by Karl von Vierordt. This was the first non-intrusive way to estimate blood pressure. His sphygmograph was a series of levers that hooked to a pin which rested on the artery in a person's wrist. The small machine measured how much pressure it took to stop the blood flow in the artery.

A decade later a physician by the name of Etienne-Jules Marey improved the sphygmograph into a portable device that also included pen and paper hooked to the series of levers. This allowed a sketch of the blood pressure measurement to be recorded. The sketch would probably look something like the display of a person's heartbeat seen on medical equipment today.

In 1880, a physician by the name of Samuel von Basch developed the sphygmomanometer, which is still in use today, although once again, the device has been improved several times.  The sphygmomanometer differed from the sphygmograph because it used water inside a rubber ball and mercury to measure a person's blood pressure.

In 1896, another physician added a cuff that wrapped around the arm to the device. This addition has stuck for over a hundred years, as I'm sure many of you are familiar with the cuff that gets wrapped around your arm whenever your blood pressure is taken. In 1896, mercury was still used to measure the amount of pressure needed to stop blood flow, though sphygmomanometers were eventually adapted to use dials rather than mercury.

Finally, in 1905, Dr. Nikolai Korotkoff discovered systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and the sounds he used to discover the difference in pressure are even named after him--the Korotkoff sounds.

These sounds are still used for blood pressure measurements today, and although the appearance of
sphygmomameters has changed and they are now available in models that use everything from mercury to electricity, the basics of the sphygmomanometer haven't changed. Furthermore, blood pressure measurements have become a basic medical assessment that can give doctors insight into everything from heart disease to pregnancy complications.

Personally, I'm very thankful for our modern sphygmomanometers--and that we're not still measuring blood pressure by sticking glass tubes into arteries. (Yes, I'm shuddering as I write that.)

~.~.~.~.~ 

A mother of two young boys, Naomi Rawlings spends her days picking up, cleaning, playing and, of

course, writing. Her husband pastors a small church in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, where her family shares its ten wooded acres with black bears, wolves, coyotes, deer and bald eagles. Naomi and her family live only three miles from Lake Superior, where the scenery is beautiful and they average 200 inches of snow per winter. She is looking forward to the release of her fourth novel, Falling for the Enemy, in January 2015. For more information about Naomi, please visit her website at www.NaomiRawlings.com.

The Five and Dime--A Historical Dollar Store

by guest blogger Melissa Jagears

In my novel, A Bride in Store, I wanted my heroine to have new ideas on how to run a store that would go against the traditional running of a mercantile, so I had her come from Scranton, Pennsylvania where the Woolworth brothers pioneered the Five and Ten store model. She has ideas of her own, of course, but she was impressed by her visit to the new Woolworth store before leaving Pennsylvania as so many others would be as well, since soon after, five and ten stores started popping up all over the country.

One of Woolworth’s new-fangled ideas was setting out price tags. Can you imagine going into a store and nothing is priced? I leave garage sales when there’s nothing priced—probably because I’m too introverted to have to ask the owners a hundred times how much things are! So instead of relying on the shopkeeper’s memory for prices, shoppers could know what the item they were considering cost immediately.

Another thing Woolworth was good at was customer service. Even the owner himself would work the sales floor and help customers find things.  Which is a great way to get sales if someone’s unsure about where something is or what they want, they won’t walk out before they know if the store can help or not. Now, there used to be a store in the mall in Fayetteville, Arkansas that my husband and I dared each other to go into and walk the perimeter and get out before a sale clerk accosted us—so there’s a difference between friendly customer service and sales clerk vultures! (By the way, we never left there without having to insist we didn’t need help at least twice before getting out of the store!) But of course, Eliza in my novel is the helpful sort of sales clerk.

Woolworth also began buying in bulk and joining other store owners in purchasing inventory to cut down on costs, hence being able to offer a lot of things for nickels and dimes. Now, it did mean the quality might not have been top-rate, but when you’re poor, a spoon is a spoon, yes? But as a poor person myself, I like having cheaper options—and so many homesteaders back then, I’m sure, loved having cheaper options when they went to town in the lean years. If Woolworth and Eliza were around in our lifetime, I’m sure they would have embraced the internet, because they looked to give people choices and options—cheap ones at that! I wonder if they got as much flack as Walmart and Amazon do now…

Have you ever visited a Five and Ten? There is one in Branson, Missouri where I grew up, and I loved going in there as a kid. It was filled with every imaginable thing all the way up to the ceilings—though there were a lot more than five and ten cent sticker prices!

If you’d like to see if Eliza succeeded in her quest to set up a similar five and ten store in Salt Flatts, comment and we’ll put you in for a drawing!

A Bride in Store
Impatient to meet her intended groom and help him grow his general store, mail-order bride Eliza Cantrell sets out on her travels a week early. But her plan goes sadly awry when her train is held up by robbers who steal her dowry and Axel, her groom-to-be, isn't even in town when she finally arrives.

Axel's business partner, William Stanton, has no head for business and would much rather be a doctor. When his friend's mail-order bride arrives in town with no money and no groom in sight, he feels responsible and lets her help around the store--where she quickly proves she's much more adept at business than he ever will be.

The sparks that fly between Will and Eliza as they work together in close quarters are hard to ignore, but Eliza is meant for Axel and a future with the store, while Will is biding his time until he can afford medical school. However, their troubles are far from over when Axel finally returns, and soon both Will and Eliza must decide what they're willing to sacrifice to chase their dreams--or if God has a new dream in store for them both.

For more information about Melissa and her books, visit www.melissajagears.com. And don't forget to leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for a free copy of A Bride in Store.

Becoming A Doctor In the Old West--and a Giveaway

Hi everyone, it’s Jennifer Uhlarik again. Glad to be back with you again this month. Make sure to read to the end to find out about my surprise giveaway.

Today, I wanted to share a bit about one of the recent topics I’ve been researching—how a person became a doctor in the Old West. I would guess most people have heard of some of the abominable practices of early medical doctors. Bloodletting, purging, leeches. Or later on, the use of the toxic and ineffective combination of calomel and castor oil for various ailments. Or the Civil War surgeons who performed amputation after amputation without disinfecting anything or anesthetizing their patients. It gives me the shivers to think what sick or wounded people were subjected to in order to feel better—only to grow worse and die in many cases.

Doctors today go through many years of schooling, residency, and fellowships, and most (if not all) mortgage their future to pay for it all. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in the 1800’s, there were three methods in which a person could become a doctor.

Attend medical school.
Apprentice under a knowledgeable doctor.
Purchase a diploma from a diploma mill.

Yikes! Purchase a diploma and become a doctor? Yes. Somewhere around the early 1850’s, states began requiring credentials to practice medicine, and not long after that, diploma mills began popping up. If you could pay the fee, you could receive a diploma titled in your name, stating you were capable to practice medicine. What a frightening thought. No training. No lectures. No tests. Just pay the cash, and here’s a diploma to flash.

A more respected route was the apprenticeship. Many who wanted to learn medicine but couldn’t afford to attend medical school would choose this route. What this entailed was for the apprentice to work with a local doctor who was willing to teach him about medicine. When apprentices first started their apprenticeships, they would likely spend more time caring for the doctor’s horses than real patients. Apprentices would chop and carry wood, clean the doctor’s office, run the doctor’s non-medical errands, all to pay for his training and upkeep. He would also ride along on calls or watch procedures performed in the office. And eventually, after watching, listening, and learning, the apprentice would be given the opportunity to attempt the procedures himself.

The length of apprenticeships varied, and it depended largely on how much the doctor could teach and how quickly the apprentice learned. Once the doctor had taught all he could to his student, he would write up a document that stated the apprentice was knowledgeable in the practice of medicine and was capable of practicing on his own. The apprentice then could start his own office as a full-fledged doctor. This method of study produced many very qualified doctors in the Old West, but began to fall out of favor in the early 1870’s. I’m sure some continued to apprentice under local doctors for a bit longer, but this time frame was also when medical schools began to grow, both in number and quality.

© Dana Hughes

In 1850, there were approximately forty medical schools in the United States. That number swelled to more than sixty by 1876. Many of these schools were found out West, and the cost to attend was very affordable, since the residents of the western states and territories tended to be less than affluent. During this time period, students were required to attend two four-month-long sessions. These sessions would occur a year apart. Students would hear lectures on anatomy, physiology, midwifery, chemistry, and surgery, and the teachers would present some cases using cadavers obtained by grave-robbing. Anyone who could pay the money and completed both four-month sessions would be given a diploma. These newly-graduated doctors often went on to apprentice under a more established physician, but that practice began to fall out of favor by the early 1870’s.

By the turn of the century, medical schools began to improve. Prior to this point, there were few admission requirements other than to pay tuition. Shortly before 1900, medical school admission became more selective, coursework grew longer, and more hands-on practice in autopsy and dissections was given. Students were required to spend more time studying pathologies of disease. They attended conferences where strange maladies were presented. Hospitals were used for teaching on live patients with real maladies and injuries. But it wasn’t until 1910 that true standards of medical education were created, causing many of the Western medical schools to close because they couldn’t comply.

© Jennifer Uhlarik

So now it’s your turn. If you had lived during these times and wanted to be a doctor, which path would you have taken—diploma mill, apprenticeship, or medical school? Leave your email address if you would like to be entered in the drawing for two handmade soaps (Rosemary and Smashed Pumpkin Pie scents).

Thanks for visiting. See you all next month!

Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen, when she swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she has won the 2012 CWOW Phoenix Rattler, 2012 ACFW First Impressions, and 2013 FCWC contests, all in the historical category. She is also the winner of the 2013 Central Florida ACFW chapter's "Prompt Response" contest. In addition to writing, she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing director, and her favorite--full-time homemaker. Jennifer is active in American Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, teenaged son, and four fur children.