Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi – Medical Practitioner & Women’s Rights Advocate (1842-1906)

As part of our blog series about women medical pioneers, meet Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi, the first woman to study medicine at the University of Paris. Find out more about her long career practising medicine, teaching, writing, and advocating for women’s rights, especially in medical education.

Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi was born in London in 1842, the eldest of 11 children. Her American parents, George Palmer Putnam and Victorine Haven Putnam had moved to England to establish a branch office of his New York publishing firm.

The family returned to New York when Mary was 6 years old, and Mary was home-educated by her mother who encouraged her to read great works of literature and write essays about them. This kindled her talent for writing, and she later became a prolific author.

From the age of twelve years Mary was formally educated. After graduating from a Girls’ School in Manhattan in 1859, she told her father of her intention to become a doctor.

Disappointed with his daughter’s decision, and no doubt influenced by the prevailing perception that higher education rendered women less feminine, her father responded:

“Now Minnie…you know that I am proud of your abilities and am willing that you should apply them even to the repulsive pursuit of Medical Science. But… Be a lady from the dotting of your i’s to the colour of your ribbons—and if you must be a doctor…be an attractive and agreeable one.”

At that time, Medical Schools in New York were only open to men, so Mary studied privately with Dr Elizabeth Blackwell. She enrolled in the New York College of Pharmacy and became the first woman to be awarded a degree by this institution in 1861.

Mary subsequently gained admission to “The Female Medical College of Pennsylvania” in Philadelphia, (the first medical institution in the world to train women as doctors) and was awarded an MD in 1864.

Upon entering clinical practice, however, Mary found that she didn’t feel competent or confident to work as a doctor. She understood that Women’s Medical Schools could not yet grant the same level of education as Men’s as they lacked access to affiliated large teaching hospitals.

So, Mary opted to pursue scientific research whilst she took French lessons and prepared to move to Paris to seek further medical training.

She became the first female student to attend “L’Ecole de Medecine” in Paris in 1868. She graduated in 1871 and returned to New York where she finally felt able to establish her own medical practice.

In addition, she taught at the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, recently opened by Drs Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. Mary also worked in the slums of New York.

She founded the Association for the Advancement of Medical Education of Women in 1972 and campaigned fervently for gender equality throughout her life.

Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi’s feelings about women’s place in American society were strongly expressed:

“No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitute a political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.”

In 1973, Mary married Dr Abraham Jacobi, a German-Jewish Professor, who is often referred to as “The Father of American Paediatrics”. They had 3 children, though tragically, only their third child, Marjorie, survived to adulthood.

As one of only a handful of female doctors, Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi battled against negative attitudes towards women pursuing professional careers. The belief that women were biologically inferior to men was widely held, even among male doctors.

Harvard Professor, Dr Edward Clarke asserted that women who engaged in sustained vigorous mental activity risked atrophy of the uterus and ovaries, masculinisation, sterility, insanity, and even death.

He advised that women should study for no more than 4 hours each day, with an intermission of both study and physical exercise during menstruation. He concluded that women could certainly not be relied upon as doctors in medical emergencies.

Rest was commonly recommended as a treatment for all kinds of illness in the 19^th Century and was particularly enforced upon women with mental illness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who became a patient of Mary’s, paints a poignant portrait of male dominance and female subordination in her semi-biographical novel, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” inspired by her own experience of postnatal depression.

It depicts a “hysterical” new mother who is separated from her baby and imprisoned in a room with yellow wallpaper for her own welfare. Her husband refuses to acknowledge any of her opinions and instead advises complete physical and mental rest.

Tortured by the lack of stimulation, the woman begins to imagine a life-form within the wallpaper until, by the end of the chilling novel, she is completely psychotic.

Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi fervently disagreed with the “rest cure.” In 1874, she set out to scientifically disprove Dr Edward Clarke’s unsubstantiated personal opinions about feminine weakness.

She conducted a study of 268 menstruating women, taking measurements of variables including muscle strength, energy levels, exercise endurance, pain levels, and physical observations throughout their menstrual cycles.

She submitted her results anonymously to a Harvard University essay competition in a paper entitled “The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation.”

Mary’s paper won the Boylston Medical Prize. It proved that women were not, in fact, incapacitated each month and made a mockery of Dr Edward Clarke’s assumptions. However, on discovering that the essay was submitted by a woman, the horrified prize committee refused to publish it.

Mary continued to write and authored 100 medical papers during her career. A true researcher until the very end of life, her final publication was entitled “Description of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumour Compressing the Cerebellum. From Which the Writer Died. Written by Herself.” It was published in 1905, shortly before her death in June 1906.

Dr Mary Putnam Jacobi’s tenacity to challenge societal attitudes towards women, and particularly her mission to disprove the misconception that menstruation made the female body biologically inferior, opened the doors a little wider to women who wished to enter higher education.

Thanks to her, many more girls were granted the liberty to go to university and pursue their chosen vocations.

“A career is open to women in the medical profession, a career in which they may earn a livelihood; a career in which they may do missionary work among the poor of our own country, and among their own sex in foreign lands; a career that is practical, that is useful, that is scientific.”