Nov 29, 2023
Caitlin "KT" Abadir-Mullally details the process of reparative archives and necessity revisiting the Mary Pauline Root Papers
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Feb 25, 2021
The murder of George Floyd turned the United States and the world into a state of chaos. He wasn’t the first person to lose his life to police brutality and unfortunately, probably won’t be the last. His death sparked many conversations about the racist violence and just plain racism that Black People endure while living in the nation. In the world of archives, conversations began about how to document the lives of Black People during this time and how to bring the hidden stories already acquired to the main dialogue of the archives' story.
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Sep 18, 2020
In the aftermath of the 1918 Flu Pandemic, health officials struggled on defining ways to better help individuals. Without immunization in sight for influenza, physicians needed to turn to different ways to better support their patients.
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Jun 11, 2020
Dr. Virginia Alexander graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1925. In the 1930s, she established a clinic from her home in Philadelphia to provide health services to the African-American community, mainly pregnant women. The blog describes how her work has impacted the African-American community and how her legacy lives on in Asasiya Muhammad, who runs Inner Circle Midwifery, and others who share her vision and values. (The Legacy Center Blog)
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Dec 05, 2019
The first 8 volumes (1867-1920) of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania clipping scrapbooks were digitized as part of a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for the In Her Own Right: A Century of Women's Activism, 1820-1920 project. These scrapbooks uniquely capture the conflicting opinions on women in the medical profession. This blog post explores two events that are documented in the clippings involving WMCP students, specifically the Jeering Episode and Dr. Richard Clarke Cabot's commencement speech.
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Nov 14, 2019
The Florence Haseltine papers are available at the Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center and are filled with the life of Dr. Florence Haseltine through documents and other mediums. This blog features a short account of Dr. Haseltine's life and her many contributions to the medical profession.
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Nov 08, 2019
Archives intern, Caren Teague, tells of her experience working at the Drexel College of Medicine's Legacy Center and the admiration she gained from working with a newly acquired collection, the Ruth Wilf papers. Dr. Ruth Wilf, an expert midwife, donated a collection of books, training materials, and photos and documentation that reflected her activities as a midwife for the last 50 years to the Legacy Center in 2019.
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Oct 19, 2019
Drexel University College of Medicine's Legacy Center houses the records of the Medical Women's International Association (MWIA) which features minutes, member information, history of the organization and ephemera. This blog post commemorates the centennial of MWIA and its origins during the Great War, when a group of women physicians discovered a need to have an organization to connect female physicians from around the world.
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Sep 26, 2019
The Ada Peirce McCormick papers at the Drexel College of Medicine's Legacy Center is made up largely of personal correspondence; namely, the letters she received from her friends Dr. Emma Elizabeth Musson and Dr. Elizabeth Clark over the course of 40 years, beginning in 1908. This blog post describes how the collection reflects the deep bonds and intimate friendships that can be maintained even through correspondence.
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Sep 12, 2019
Eugenic feminism was a movement that overlapped with the social hygiene movement, women's suffrage and the birth control movement, and explores the intersections of how women are responsible in making the right decisions for the better of the race. This blog post explores how women physicians' language used in the social hygiene movements were influenced by the eugenics movement, even though their ideology wasn't the same.
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Sep 05, 2019
The Isabel Smith Stein collection on Elizabeth Cisney Smith explores the life of Dr. Elizabeth Cisney Smith, a 1911 graduate of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. The collection includes school materials, diaries, memoirs, medical practice records, personal correspondence, photographs, audio recordings, and other writing and research related to Dr. Smith, most notably connected to her work in the suffrage movement. Much of the correspondence is between Dr. Smith and her husband, Edwin. This blog post explores one particular letter Dr. Smith sent to Edwin during the spring of 1901 regarding the affordability of bulk tea in a small town.
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Aug 08, 2017
The Doris Bartuska papers contain the work of Dr. Doris Bartuska, a 1954 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, in the field of medicine and beyond. This blog post explores Dr. Bartuska's time as a physician from the 1950s to the 1980s, her experience with sexism, and the barriers she broke in a male dominated sphere.
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Aug 08, 2017
Doris Phillips Wheeler was a 1941 Austrian graduate from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania who began medical school during the Third Reich. This blog post explores how archives are places where lost stories and new insights can be found, such as that of Doris Phillips Wheelers life in coming to America before a major war broke out in her homeland.
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Apr 18, 2017
Dr. Catharine Macfarlane was a pioneer in cancer research in determining that yearly exams were necessary in finding cancer in the early stages. This blog explores her journey from the 4th Congress of the Medical Women's International Association in Scotland to opening the first cancer prevention clinic in America which attracted both medical professionals and laypeople.
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Nov 29, 2016
Diana Lewis, 1912 graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Nurse's Training School served in the American Expeditionary Forces as a Base Hospital nurse in France during the Great War in 1917-1919 and kept a scrapbook as a record of her time. This blog post explains how the study of Nurse Lewis's scrapbook led to the discovery of Dr. Elizabeth Hocker's letters that spoke to how the women physicians and nurses surrounded by the male soldiers (wounded and dying) felt emotionally connected to them.
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Jul 27, 2016
The American Women Hospitals used photographs for fundraising for their foreign and domestic causes. This blog post explores how the AWH's photograph collection could be used as a teaching tool on how to analyze primary sources and the questions that students should ask to understand the source.
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Feb 02, 2015
Tuberculosis is caused by a bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis or one of a number of related bacteria. It most often affects the lungs, but can also cause harm to other parts of the body while spread through the air. This blog post shows how the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania Class of 1944 was affected by the disease with only 12 of the original 41 students graduating on time, and some never did graduate.
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Oct 03, 2014
Full article following initial blog post written by Virginia Metaxas, Ph.D., Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Southern Connecticut State University and Legacy Center 2010 M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner Fellow, about the American Women's Hospitals efforts in helping war torn Greece rebuild their country.
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Sep 23, 2014
Doctor or Doctress? is a digital history project of Legacy Center's collections designed to help students understand and interpret history through the lens of early women physicians. This blog post announces the official launch and future plans for the website.
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Sep 12, 2014
This blog post is an excerpt from Virginia Metaxas, Ph.D., Professor of History and Women’s Studies, Southern Connecticut State University and Legacy Center 2010 M. Louise Carpenter Gloeckner Fellow, about the American Women's Hospitals efforts in helping war torn Greece rebuild their country.
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Feb 13, 2014
Philadelphia high school students tested the basic version of the Legacy Center's digital history project. The blog post provides insight on the students' views of the website.
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Jan 30, 2014
The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories was created with the intent to make small archival collections known. Processing the collections, as this blog post explores, can be different depending on the collection and space allowed.
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Nov 13, 2013
Mary Putnam Jacobi is a 1864 graduate of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. This blog post explores her life and impact on medicine 150 years after she began practicing medicine.
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Oct 15, 2013
In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was difficult for women to become physicians, much less homeopathic physicians with a formal education in a male dominated field. This blog post introduces the Legacy Center's Early Women in Homeopathy: A Resource Guide.
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Jun 18, 2013
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African-American woman to earn her medical degree in the US from New England Female Medical College. As of 2013, there are no identifiable pictures of Crumpler.
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Mar 18, 2013
In the 1930s, over 63 hospitals and medical schools operated in Philadelphia, including Hahnemann Medical College, one of Drexel University College of Medicine's predecessors. This blog post describes a project to map locations of Philadelphia hospitals showing what the location looked like in the 30s versus now.
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Mar 04, 2013
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, suffragist and dress reformer. This blog post follows up from the previous blog post and continues with Dr. Walker's life after the Civil War. Part 2 of 2 posts.
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Jan 28, 2013
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker attended Syracuse Medical College after spending some time being a schoolteacher. After her marriage and practice failed, she joined the Union Army as a nurse and later surgeon. She was later captured and accused of being a spy. Part 1 of 2 posts.
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Feb 23, 2012
The Legacy Center presented a program to students from Springside Chestnut Hill Academy to assist in creating a newspaper based on “The Philadelphia You Never Knew.” The students were presented with "The Jeering Episode," an event that was followed by newspapers in Philadelphia and around the country regarding women medical students attending a medical lecture where the male medical students in attendance weren't so inviting. This blog post explains how the Legacy Center taught the Springside students the importance of bias and perspective and asking questions.
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Feb 07, 2012
The Legacy Center received a second donation of papers from Dr. Mary Bagan Dratman, a 1945 graduate of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP). Dr. Dratman taught at WMCP and the University of Pennsylvania and is known for her research in endocrinology.
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May 09, 2011
Students at Constitution High School worked with the primary sources of Eliza Grier (Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania graduate of 1897) and Matilda Evans (Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania graduate of 1897) to compare and contrast the lives and careers of the two physicians and to discover how students respond to how history is taught. This blog post describes the different methods used in the lessons and how these methods changed students' responses to the same questions.
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Oct 01, 2010
Syphilis is a disease that can be transmitted through simple affectionate actions such as a kiss. This blog post elaborates on the popularity of this topic in the early 20th century by using student theses from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and Jay F. Schamberg's 1911 article about the risks of holiday kissing.
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Sep 18, 2010
Interpretation, in the context of museum exhibits, refers to the way a museum staff uses artifacts and materials to relay and create a theme or story with an exhibit. This blog post explains why interpretation is so important and how it can be used by archives and museums alike to help people learn about collections. The blog post also announces several new exhibits at the Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center Archives.
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Mar 24, 2010
On May 23, 1921, the renowned radiologist Marie Curie visited the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and was granted an honorary degree. Mme. Curie was present at the College as a stop on her fundraising tour, led by Marie ‘Missy’ Mattingly Meloney, to help fund Mme. Curie’s research. This blog post, made in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, recounts Mme. Curie’s visit and her warm reception by Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania Dean Martha Tracy.
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Mar 24, 2010
Catherine MacFarlane graduated from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1898, and worked as a practitioner and lecturer on obstetrics and gynecology. MacFarlane is best known for founding the Cancer Control Research Project in 1938, where women could be screened for uterine cancer. The findings of the Cancer Control Research Project determined that through the use of regular cancer screenings on healthy women, various forms of cancer could be detected early on and prevented. This blog post, made in honor of Ada Lovelace Day, recognizes Catherine MacFarlane’s accomplishments and poses the question that if Ada Lovelace lived in MacFarlane’s time, could her deadly cancer have been prevented?
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Feb 26, 2010
The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania stood out in the number of foreign students who attended the college. Students such as Dr. Kei Okami, Dr. Sabat Islambooly, and Dr. Anandibai Joshee, all from the class of 1886, were often photographed in their native attire and written about in local newspapers. This blog post highlights the complex legacy of this diversity, focusing specifically on the experiences of several Japanese students who enrolled in Woman’s Medical College during the Second World War. Students such as Dr. Toshiko Toyota and Dr. Ruby Inouye enrolled while their families were in Japanese Internment Camps and faced many setbacks from administration. Overall, the blog post highlights the many sides of Woman’s Medical College diversity.
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Feb 17, 2010
Harriet is a complete dissection of the cerebrospinal nervous system, dissected and mounted in 1888 by anatomist Dr. Rufus Weaver of Hahnemann Medical College. This blog post highlights Harriet’s history, from her use as a teaching aid by Dr. Weaver in 1888 to the current exhibit at the Drexel University College of Medicine’s Queen Lane campus.
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Nov 11, 2009
The American Women’s Hospitals (AWH) was established in 1917 as an volunteer organization for women physicians to help refugees and civilians caught in the midst of the First World War. Originally named the War Service Committee, AWH was founded by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton as an extension of the newly established Medical Women’s National Association. AWH opened volunteer run hospitals across Europe and the Middle East. After the Sparkman Act of 1943 allowed women physicians to serve in the U.S. Army and Navy, many women physicians such as Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania Dean Dr. Margaret Craighill joined the military during World War II as physicians. This blog post details the history of woman physicians Volunteering in World War I and II, focusing specifically on Dr. Craighill and the AWH.
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Aug 26, 2009
Passed on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment created universal suffrage in the United States and after years of fighting, allowed women to vote. This blog post, written to honor the 89th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, looks at opinions on the suffrage at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. It highlights unexpected critics of the 19th Amendment through student editorials, and highlights suffragist faculty members of the college such as Dr. Ellen Potter and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw.
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May 21, 2009
Advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs in print media is a decades old phenomenon. This blog post features several pharmaceutical advertisements featured in The Medical Woman’s Journal and The Journal of the American Medical Women's Association between 1924 and 1958. It pokes fun at their dated quirks and points out the advertising ambiguities such as who they are marketed two. The blog post also points out the clear gendered marketing present in the drug advertisements.
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Apr 29, 2009
The American Civil War began in 1861 and was fought between the rebel secessionist Confederate States of America in the American South, and the rest of the United States of America, calling themselves the Union. The war ended in 1865 and resulted in over an estimated 850,000 deaths. The carnage of war was a clear cause for doctors and nurses to be utilized on and off the battlefield, and the American Civil War saw many women doctors and nurses take part in this medical effort. This blog post summarizes the story of several woman doctors and graduates of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania who served in the civil war. These women, Dr. Orianna Moon-Andrews, Dr. Chloe Buckle, Anne Smith, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, all have material stored in the Legacy Center Archives, and contributed their medical knowledge as nurses and physicians in the American Civil War.
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Apr 10, 2009
Dr. Rachel Bodley was a prolific chemist and botanist who served as Dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1874 to 1888. This blog post concerns a letter discovered in her collection written by an anonymous patient suffering from nymphomania. “The Patient” as she was known, was under the care of neurologist Dr. Charles K. Mills at the Women’s Nervous Wards at Philadelphia Hospital. As the blog explains, The Patient began a correspondence with Dr. Bodley and requested that upon her death, her body be dedicated to helping find a cure for nymphomania. The blog post covers the unusual archival item, and poses the questions of what became of The Patient after the letter was sent.
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Apr 02, 2009
The first sporting club at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania was fencing, which was designated an official athletic club in 1898. However, basketball soon rose to the top as the sport of choice at the college. This blog post delves into some of the history of sports and athletic leisure enjoyed by students at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in the late 1800s and early 1900s, looking specifically at student publications and photographs
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Mar 05, 2009
Women’s History Month is celebrated in the United States during the month of March, and largely corresponds with International Women’s Day on March 8. This blog post is a short early March reflection on Women’s History Day and the renewed interest in women’s history, and makes the point that at the Legacy Center archives, every month is Women’s History Month because so much of the archival material is centered around the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and the theme of women in medicine.
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Feb 26, 2009
Dr. Anna Longshore-Potts was a 19th century physician and a member of the first graduating class of Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania) in 1852. Dr. Longshore-Potts was a very prolific preventative health lecturer and public speaker who spoke all over the world. This blog post looks at Dr. Longshore-Potts' legacy and specifically about the challenges she encountered as an early woman in the medical field. While she was wildly popular she also faced huge backlash from many prominent male physicians, both in America and abroad, who strongly disregarded her as intellectually inferior because she was a woman.
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Feb 06, 2009
Dr. Rebecca Cole was a 1867 graduate of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and the second African American woman in the United States to recieve a medical degree. This blog post draws together disparate details on Dr. Cole and attempts to create a narrative of her 50 years of medical work that she undertook after her 1867 graduation and before her death in 1922.
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Jan 30, 2009
Dr. Amy Kaukonen was a 1915 graduate of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania who went on to become the mayor of Fairpoint Harbor, Ohio, and consequently one of the first woman mayors in the United States. This blog post is an a brief dive in Dr. Kaukonen's life, prompted by a research requeston her material from the Legacy Center Archives. It discusses her time as a student at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, and, with the aid of the New York Times archive and the researcher, her exciting time as mayor of Fairpoint Harbor. Overall, this blog post seeks to highlight an unusual and interesting story of a graduate of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.
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Jan 21, 2009
Dr. Eliza Grier was an African American physician who graduated from Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1898. Being born a slave, Dr. Grier came from a very low socioeconomic status and faced huge difficulty in gaining an education and financially putting herself through medical school. This blog post is a brief biography and overview of Dr. Grier's life through the materials available on her at the Legacy Center Archives. It takes readers from her scantly detailed early life to her undergraduate career at Fink University to her brief time practicing medicine in Atlanta, Georgia until her untimely death in 1902. Overall, the post celebrated Dr. Grier's achievements and hopes to preserve her story.
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