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Pocket instrument case of Elisabeth Griselle c. 1870
A pocket instrument case ranked high among a doctor's most valued possessions. With the small selection of instruments in such a case -- scalpel, scissors, probes, and the like -- the physician treated a wide variety of minor complaints, especially when making the rounds to patients' homes. A pocket case was often the first purchase made by a doctor upon graduation, and it remained close at hand for the duration of their medical practice. Nineteenth-century physicians often sat for carte-de-visite portraits with a pocket case standing open on a table at their side, emblematic of their calling.
What makes this pocket case noteworthy is its owner; it belonged to Elisabeth Griselle (1830-1910), who graduated from the Medical Department of Western Reserve College in 1856. Griselle was a pioneer, as was Western Reserve, in the medical education of women. Six of the first seven women to obtain regular medical degrees in America prior to the Civil War graduated from Western Reserve, also known as the Cleveland Medical College in the 1850s.* After Griselle graduated in 1856, she chose to remain in Ohio and was the only woman in the group to do so. She practiced for six years in Cleveland before returning to her home in Columbiana County. There, in the town of Salem, Griselle established a practice specializing in the treatment of women and children. In 1864 she became a founding member of the Union Medical Society, one of the first women to gain access to a local medical society. Elisabeth Griselle retired in 1906 after fifty years of successful medical practice. 
The women who attended Western Reserve did so at a time when it was not thought fitting or proper for them to pursue careers as physicians. They were drawn by the prospect of receiving their medical degree from a coeducational, orthodox (or allopathic) institution. Degrees granted by homeopathic, eclectic, or all-female schools were roundly denigrated in the established medical profession of the mid-nineteenth century. Credentials from Western Reserve, on the other hand, stood above reproach. However, they did not guarantee a successful career. Making one's way in a man's medical world would prove daunting. There was no single path to success, as revealed by the varied experiences of these women.
At Western Reserve, the medical education of women began at the urging of reform-minded Dean John Delamater. Delamater was in turn backed by the Ohio Female Medical Education Society, formed in 1852 to provide moral and financial support for the women medical students. Despite their efforts, the Western Reserve faculty voted to put an end to Delamater's policies in 1856, finding it "inexpedient" to continue admitting women. (The AMA also adopted a report in 1856 advising against coeducation in medicine). Western Reserve resumed admitting women in 1879, but did so only sporadically for five years. Admission of women at Western Reserve (now Case Western Reserve University) recommenced on a continuous basis in 1918.
* The other women medical graduates of Western Reserve College, 1852-1856, were Nancy Talbot Clark (1852), Emily Blackwell (1854), Sarah Ann Chadwick (1856), Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska (1856), and Cordelia Agnes Greene (1856).
Linda Lehmann Goldstein, Roses bloomed in winter : women medical graduates of Western Reserve College, 1852-1856. PhD dissert., Case Western Reserve University, 1989.
Thomas Neville Bonner. To the ends of the earth : women's search for education in medicine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992.
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