Six Women attend and graduate from Cleveland Medical College in the 1850's
Dr. John Delamater
“Old Doctor Delamater commenced my examination, after ten minutes or so – he handed me over to Dr. Kirtland, from there I passed to Dr. Cassels, Dr. St. John and Dr. Jacob Delamater –Dr. Kirtland had desired me to return to his room before leaving, when he presented me with a bouquet of flowers with the remark that ‘It was not often that roses bloomed in Winter, and it was not often professors had such a student’ to which I of course replied that it was not often that a student received flowers with so much pleasure. I stopped at Mrs. Vaughn’s to borrow a novel and show my flowers – and now I am free.”
- Emily Blackwell, M.D. February 18, 1854
Although women had acted as community healers in colonial America, they were banned because of the supposed frailty of their gender from attending the medical schools established in this country after the 1770s. Many reformers in the early 19 th century believed that practicing medicine was a proper activity for women because of their maternal and nurturing nature.
Another path followed by women who desired to become doctors was to attend a separate school for women. The most important of these was the Female Medical School of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Schools of this type and their graduates were ostracized by the regular medical profession which identified women doctors with abortionists and irregular doctors.
Denied access to formal training, some women studied medicine privately and became lay practitioners. Dr. Harriet Kezia Hunt of Boston began treating women and children in 1835 and remained active for over forty years. The Female Medical College of Pennsylvania awarded her an honorary M.D. in 1852. After Harvard Medical School denied her application in the early 1850s, Dr. Hunt visited Cleveland and helped establish several women’s groups in the region dedicated to providing financial and morale support to women medical students.
Myra King Merrick
ca.1880
Myra King Merrick, a Cleveland resident, graduated from the Central (Eclectic) Medical College of Rochester, New York in 1852. Dr. Merrick returned to Cleveland where she became the first woman to practice medicine west of the Alleghenies. In 1867 she founded the Cleveland Homeopathic Hospital College for Women in protest to Western College for denying access to women for four years.
In 1878, together with Dr. Kate Parsons, a graduate of the Homeopathic School, Dr. Merrick founded the Women’s and Children’s Free Medical and Surgical Dispensary. She remained its president until her death in 1899. In 1913, the dispensary became Woman’s Hospital of Cleveland, presided over by Dr. Martha Canfield.
Hanna Myers Longshore was one of three daughters of a Columbiana County, Ohio family who became doctors in the 1850s. Her sisters, Mary Frame Myers Thomas and Jane Viola Myers, graduated from eclectic medical schools. Hannah was one of the first matriculants of the Woman’s Medical School in Philadelphia. She graduated from there in 1852. After her graduation, Dr. Longshore served as a Demonstrator of Anatomy at several schools and was the first woman doctor to open a private practice in Philadelphia.
In the early 1850s the medical department of the Western Reserve College, then known as the Cleveland Medical College, admitted several women as students. By 1856 six had been graduated. They each received the M.D. degree, qualifying them to practice medicine alongside their male colleagues.
On a “dare” from the students, the faculty of the Medical School at Geneva, New York allowed Elizabeth Blackwell to attend lectures. She graduated at the top of her class. Nonetheless, no American hospital allowed her to practice in its wards because she was a woman.
With the recommendations of several sympathetic Quaker doctors, Blackwell traveled to Europe for two years of clinical experience in British and French hospitals. Returning to America in 1851, she established a modest private practice and dispensary in a tenement district of New York City.
The graduation of women from Cleveland Medical College was a remarkable event. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn the M.D. from a “regular” co-educational medical college, had graduated from Geneva College just shortly before, in 1849. At that time, “regular” meant an orthodox, mainstream medical school. The women of Cleveland Medical College followed in Blackwell’s path by insisting on attending a “regular” school. As a result, they could not be faulted upon the basis of where they obtained their medical credentials.
Cleveland Medical College's
first building erecteed in 1846,
at the corner of St. Clair and Erie St.
At that time, the medical school was located in downtown Cleveland at the corner of St. Clair and Erie Street (Now East 9 th). The faculty of the CMC was well-respected in the city and in the profession and had taught together for almost a decade. Though they were all strong personalities with differing points of view, they respected Dr. Delamater’s judgment and were tolerant of his reformist tendencies. In November, 1850, two women, Nancy Talbot Clark and Eliza Brown of Cleveland, enrolled as students at the CMC. No exceptions or changes were made in the curriculum and the women were allowed to compete on an equal basis with the male medical students.
In 1853, the faculty of the CMC gave the dean a declaration of confidence in his leadership. With a unanimous vote, they empowered the dean to act at his discretion in the admission of women medical students to the CMC. Even the absent and frequently cantankerous Dr. Ackley had left work for a vote in the affirmative.
The first woman to matriculate and graduate from the Medical Department of Western Reserve College was Nancy Talbot Clark of Sharon, Massachusetts. Coming from an established New England family, Nancy Talbot married Dr. Champion Clark of Baltimore in 1845. Twenty-three year old Nancy was widowed in 1848 when her husband and infant daughter died of typhus. She and her brother, I. Tisdale Talbot, read medical texts together and studied with a preceptor. Needing a means to support herself, Nancy Clark appealed to Dr. John Delameter, dean of the CMC for permission to enter medical school in Cleveland.
Though the faculty of the CMC occasionally debated the presence of women students, the choice was always left to the discretion of Dr. Delamater. In 1852, Mary Frame Thomas and Eliza Lucinda Smith Thomas attended classes. In 1853, Emily Blackwell, sister of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, enrolled after having completed one session of study at Rush Medical College in Chicago where she would not have been permitted to graduate.
Two women, Sarah Ann Chadwick of Illinois and Marie Zakrzewska of Prussia became students in 1854. They were joined the next year by Cordelia Greene of Castile, New York and Elizabeth Griselle of Salem, Ohio, both of whom had attended their first session at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Ann Chadwick, M.D., class of 1856, never disclosed to her classmates or the faculty that she was a married woman and mother when she enrolled at the CMC in 1854. She divorced James Milligan of Lee County, Illinois before returning to Cleveland for her second session at the medical school. Little is known about her professional career until 1861. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Sarah Chadwick served as surgeon and assistant surgeon, uncommissioned, with the Seventh Illinois Volunteer Cavalry. Congressional records reveal that her medical skills were highly praised by the soldiers she had treated. Following the war, she married a farmer, Henry Clapp, from Lee County and did not practice medicine. Later, as a widow, she petitioned congress for her back pay as a fully-qualified surgeon-in-hospital during the war. Her request was verified by federal officials, but did not receive action for seventeen years. Finally, writing directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, she received her pay of $850. Dr. Chadwick died the next year, 1908, of old age.
The enrollment of Nancy Elizabeth Clark, the first woman to graduate from the CMC, was recorded briefly in the Registrar’s Book in the year 1850. She declared Sharon, Massachusetts her home and named the Dean, Dr. Delamater, as her Preceptor. This latter reference indicates the Dean’s support of women students from the beginning.
In 1854, Marie Zakrzewska, a native of Prussia, enrolled at the CMC through the referral of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell to Dr. Delamater. Also, Sarah Ann Chadwick arrived from Illinois to attend the medical school of Western Reserve. She named her brother-in-law, Dr. William Welch, as her Preceptor.
The second woman graduate of the CMC, Emily Blackwell, had attended her first session of lectures at Rush Medical College in Chicago. Arriving at the CMC late in 1853, she was the 133 rd student enrolled that season. While living with her sister, Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., she had already obtained clinical experience at Bellevue Hospital in New York. However, she declared Cincinnati her home and Dr. Davis of that city as her Preceptor.
Marie Zakrzewska
In the Registrar’s Book for 1855, Marie Zakrzewska was registered for her second session in medical school with Dr. Delamater listed as her Preceptor. The Dean had taken special care in tutoring the young Prussian midwife, including allowing her to assist him with patients during childbirth.
Cordelia Agnes Greene and Elizabeth Grisselle enrolled for the 1855 session together. Both had taken their first session at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. Grisselle listed her former professor of surgery, Dr. Kelsey Thomas, as her Preceptor. Greene, typically bold, declared the names of two preceptors: Dr. Jabez Greene, her father, and Dr. Thomas Seelye, her employer at the Cleveland Water Cure, both well known Hydropathists.
Mary Frane Myers Thomas, wife of a graduate of the CMC, was dismissed by the faculty from medical lectures at the CMC in 1854. It was learned that she had attended a course at the “ Penn University,” an eclectic school in Philadelphia where her sister, Dr. Hannah Myers Longshore, had taught.
The experience at the CMC was typical of all medical schools in the 1850s. It was expected that each student had spent a year or two studying medicine with a preceptor before enrolling. Attendance at two annual sessions (usually November through March) was required for graduation with a medical diploma. Each session consisted of lectures and demonstrations of exactly the same information. The CMC was considered a very desirable school because the students were permitted to observe surgeries performed by Dr. Horace Ackley, professor of surgery, whose reputation for daring and skill was well known. Because a medical degree was not necessary to become a licensed, practicing physician, frequently students only attended for one session. Before graduation, each student had to write a short thesis on a medical topic of his (or her) choice and pass an oral examination by the faculty and censors of the school.
Six of the women students at the CMC in the 1850s met all of the requirements and graduated with medical degrees. Though they had experienced little bias within the school, some members of the community saw them as odd or tainted women simply because they wanted to become doctors. A group of the wives of many of Cleveland’s prominent business men, led by Mrs. Caroline Severance, formed the Ohio Female Medical Education Society in 1852 to provide moral and financial support for the women medical students. This outspoken group of reformers loaned the women students money for tuition and books and arranged for them to board together at a local boarding house on Superior Street. Several of the group members tutored the Prussian Marie Zakrzewska in English so that she could write the required thesis. Except for Marie’s admitted difficulties with the language, all of the women excelled in their studies.
