Announcing the 2019-2020 Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellow

By , July 2, 2019

The Archives for Women in Medicine and Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation are pleased to announce the 2019-2020 Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine Fellow: Heather Munro Prescott, Ph.D.

Heather Munro Prescott, Ph.D. 2019-2020 Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellow

Heather Munro Prescott is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. She specializes in the history of women in medicine and women’s health issues with an emphasis on the post-World War II era. Her first book, A Doctor of Their Own: The History of Adolescent Medicine, which drew on archival materials in the Countway Library and Boston Children’s Hospital, received the Will Solimene Award of Excellence in Medical Communication from the New England Chapter, American Medical Writers Association. Her most recent book is The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception, published by Rutgers University Press in 2011. She has also published articles on the history of medicine in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and Technology and Culture. She has also received numerous grants and awards, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Fellowship in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and publication grants from the National Library of Medicine. Her Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellowship will be used to conduct archival research for a book on the cultural history of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.


The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellowship is offered in partnership with the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation (formerly the Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine). Information regarding the Fellowship program is available at http://www.wimlf.org/fellowships and https://www.countway.harvard.edu/chom/archives-women-medicine-fellowships.

The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation was founded with the strong belief that understanding our history plays a powerful role in shaping our future. The resolute stand women took to establish their place in these fields propels our vision forward. We serve as stewards to the stories from the past, and take pride in sharing them with the women of today. Our mission is to preserve and promote the history of women in medicine and the medical sciences, and we look forward to connecting you to our collective legacy that will empower our future.

A program of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, the Archives for Women in Medicine actively acquires, preserves, promotes, and provides access to the professional and personal records of outstanding women leaders in medicine and the medical sciences.

Remembering Amalie Kass

By , June 10, 2019

It is with great sadness that I report that Amalie Moses Kass passed away on May 19, 2019. Amalie was a great friend to the Archives for Women in Medicine and Countway Library, both as a patron but also as a researcher and writer. Amalie was a lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and a historian of medicine. She published Midwifery and Medicine in Boston: Walter Channing, M.D., 1786-1876 (a short biography of Dr. Channing written by Amalie was published in Harvard Magazine) and co-authored Perfecting the World: The Life and Times of Thomas Hodgkin, MD with her late husband Edward H. Kass.

Amalie (right) and Eleanor Shore speaking at “Celebrating 10 Years of the Archives for Women in Medicine”

Amalie was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1928, and attended Wellesley College. She received her master’s degree in education from Boston University, and spent many years teaching high school in Newton. In addition to her position at Harvard Medical School, she was the first woman to chair the Massachusetts Historical Society’s board, and served as an associate editor for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. In addition to her academic pursuits, Amalie raised eight children. She had five children with her first husband, Malcolm Hecht Jr., and welcomed three stepchildren when she married fellow widower Edward H. Kass in 1975.

I met Amalie in 2015 when I became the Archivist for Women in Medicine. She and her research partner, Eleanor Shore, were working on a piece about the life of Anne Pappenheimer Forbes (1911-1992). Dr. Forbes was a pioneer in endocrinology, a Harvard Medical School professor, and a mother of five. Eleanor and Amalie dove into the Forbes papers and painstakingly looked at every document in the collection in order to illuminate her story. The duo were fixtures in the reading room, and their tireless efforts led to an article in Harvard Medicine and a presentation at the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Archives for Women in Medicine attending by many of the Forbes children and other descendants.

Next, the research duo moved on to Mary Ellen Avery (1927-2011). Dr. Avery was the first woman to head a major clinical department at Harvard Medical School and physician-in-chief at Boston Children’s Hospital; among her many achievements and contributions, her identification of surfactant saved the lives of countless premature babies suffering from respiratory distress syndrome. Amalie and Eleanor’s meticulous research led to an article on Dr. Avery’s life and achievements, published in the Harvard Magazine.

Amalie (left) and Eleanor, conducting research in the archives, from The Benefactor, Spring 2017

Amalie’s presence and dedication to highlighting the overshadowed achievements of women will be missed at the Center for the History of Medicine. Her passion for the history of medicine and telling these stories was only matched by her generosity. A 2016 $500,000 gift from Amalie has supported advancing the mission and work of the Archives for Women in Medicine to collect, preserve, and share the achievements of women leaders in medicine. Her philanthropy, in addition to her research in the archives, has empowered the history of medicine to inform and shape contemporary medicine and society. I can only hope that her legacy will inspire others to follow in her footsteps.

May 16: Measures of Power? Gender, Phrenology and 19th Century Cultures of Medicine

By , May 6, 2019

Measures of Power? Gender, Phrenology and 19th Century Cultures of Medicine

Join us for the 2019 Fellow’s Lecture with Carla Bittel, PhD, Associate Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University

Illustrated diagram of the phrenological faculties from How to Read Character by Samuel Roberts Wells, 1890.

Phrenology, considered a “science of the mind” in the nineteenth century, purported to measure the “power” of human mental faculties. This talk will examine the role of gender in the making of those measurements, and demonstrate how middle-class women—as practitioners and consumers—merged phrenology with multiple forms of medical and domestic knowledge.

May 16, 2019
4:00 – 4:30pm – Reception / Meet and Greet
4:30 – 5:30pm – Welcome and Lecture
5:30 – 6:00pm – Reception Continues

Minot Room, fifth floor
Countway Library of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
10 Shattuck Street, Boston MA 02115

Free and open to the public, registration is required. Register online now through Eventbrite.

Sponsored by the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation, in partnership with the Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library.

About Carla Bittel, PhD

Carla Bittel, Ph.D.

Carla Bittel is Associate Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is a historian of nineteenth-century America, specializing in the history of medicine, science, and technology.

Her research focuses on gender issues and she has written on the history of women’s health, women physicians, and the role of science in medicine.

Bittel is the author of Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, published with the University of North Carolina Press in 2009. She has published in the journals Centaurus and Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and contributed to the edited volume, Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine.

Her research has been supported by several grants, including a Scholar’s Award from the National Science Foundation. She is also a co-organizer of the Working Group, “Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge,” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Black History Month: Celebrating Leaders and Innovators

By , February 12, 2019

This February, the Countway Library is celebrating Black History Month with a series of events, lectures, and exhibits. A full calendar of events is available.

As part of Longwood Black History Month, and with the support of the Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion, Joan Ilacqua, and Master of Bioethics student Keona J. Wynne, organized a series of Black History Month profiles highlighting the achievements of black leaders and innovators in medicine and the medicine sciences.

Each profile was written by students from Harvard Medical School’s masters programs, and will be on display at the Countway Library and across campus. Profiles include:

The entire set is available for download as a .pdf file.

Our thanks to Keona Wynne, Marie-Angele Messou, Kela Roberts, Jonnell Small, and Allura Landsberg for participating!

#ColorOurCollections 2019

By , January 31, 2019

 

From February 4th through 8th, cultural institutions from around the world are sharing coloring pages on social media with the hashtag #ColorOurCollections.

This year, our coloring book includes new and favorite images, anatomical drawings and prints, medical teaching resources, biodiversity, bookplates, and more!

We’re sharing our coloring pages here and on Twitter and Instagram (@HarvardHistMed).

Click here to download our entire 2019 coloring book.

Be sure to share your work using the hashtag #ColorOurCollections and we’ll retweet our favorites!

Continue reading '#ColorOurCollections 2019'»

Dr. Fe del Mundo

By , November 27, 2018

Fe del Mundo’s 107th Birthday Google Doodle

 

Dr. Fe del Mundo is celebrated in today’s Google Doodle. She was the founder of the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines, and she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines as well as the Order of Lakandula, one of the highest honors given by the Philippines. She is also often called Harvard Medical School’s, or even Harvard University’s, first woman student.

While Dr. Del Mundo was remarkable in many ways, the evidence that she was a medical student at Harvard Medical School is largely anecdotal and not well sourced. As far as my research using Harvard Medical School catalogs and records shows, she earned her Medical Degree from the University of the Philippines Manila in 1933, and in 1936, came to Boston to further her studies in pediatrics. The fact that Harvard Medical School did not admit women students and Dr. Del Mundo already earned her medical degree suggests that she was not admitted as a student, even in error, and I cannot find proof that she graduated from Harvard Medical School.

Instead, it seems more likely that she completed graduate work at Harvard Medical School through an appointment at Boston Children’s Hospital. Women physicians were admitted to courses in the Harvard Medical School Graduate School of Medicine (later called the Courses for Graduates) beginning in the late 19th century. The 1936 announcement of the Courses for Graduates clearly states that women could be admitted to graduate courses: “Women are not admitted to the regular undergraduate classes of the Harvard Medical School. The admission of women to the various courses offered under the department of the School is at the discretion of the instructor in charge of the course. The catalogue usually states in connection with each course whether or not it is open to women.”

There is very little archival documentation about the graduate courses from this period, and no list of enrolled students, but Dr. Fe del Mundo is listed as an Assistant Physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and a Research Fellow in Pediatrics in 1940. Further suggesting that she was a graduate student and not a medical student, in her autobiographical statement in Women Physicians of the World (1977), Dr. Del Mundo explains “I spent three years of my postgraduate studies at the Children’s Hospital in Boston and at Harvard Medical School, one year at the University of Chicago, six months at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and short terms in various pediatric institutions, all to round out my training.”

Furthermore, other women studied at Harvard University before 1936, such as the women who studied at the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers (later the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) including its first woman graduate Linda Frances James (who completed her certificate in 1917). Two additional women, Ann Hogue Stewart and Hester Balch Curtis, were both awarded the Master of Public Health in 1936.

Given the restrictions placed on student records, and the fact that Harvard Medical School did not celebrate or acknowledge the academic work of women prior to officially accepting women students in 1945, it is difficult to determine if Dr. Del Mundo was Harvard Medical School’s first woman student. Given her degree and course of study, it is unlikely.

If Dr. Fe del Mundo is not the first woman graduate of Harvard Medical School, does that mean her story isn’t important or isn’t a part of Harvard Medical School’s history? No. I cannot yet determine if she was the first Filipina or Asian woman admitted to the Courses for Graduates, but I imagine that she is among the first. Currently, the Center for the History of Medicine, in partnership with the Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership, is funding research on Harvard Medical School’s other “firsts,” searching our archives for evidence of students who represent ethnic and cultural backgrounds that have been historically marginalized. I’m not sure who we’ll find in the archives, but at the conclusion of this project, I hope to surface other stories like Dr. Del Mundo’s. I can only imagine the pushback that a woman doctor from the Philippines may have encountered when she came to Boston in the 1930s. Despite not being Harvard Medical School’s first woman student, Dr. Fe del Mundo is still an important and inspirational figure in the history of Harvard Medical School and the history of medicine in the Philippines.


Please send any questions to Joan Ilacqua, Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion.

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