When I was in high school, girls who had their period were allowed to sit out of gym. While that has certainly changed, the practice grew out of the 19th century belief that women were deathly sick during their menses. Most physicians believed that women did not have the strength to attend institutions of higher learning or pursue physical activity when menstruating and that they risked serious illness and even infertility unless they rested completely.
One physician of the times did not.
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906) was one of the few women to become a physician in the 19th century. Despite her father’s belief that medicine was repulsive, he allowed her to attend the New York College of Pharmacy where she was the first woman graduate (1863). She then attended the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania earning her medical degree (1864). She went on to practice at the New England Hospital for Women and Children and serve as a medical assistant during the Civil War in Louisiana, where she had gone to help her ailing brother. During this period, she also wrote fiction stories for the Atlantic Monthly.
She ran a private medical practice in New York City and served at the NYC Medical College of New York Infirmary and at Mount Sinai Hospital. She married Abraham Jacobi in 1873 and they had three children, two of whom died in childhood. Her husband is now recognized as the “father of American pediatrics”.
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi did not stop practicing medicine after marriage. Instead, she went on to achieve numerous firsts for women in the field of medicine and to take up the fight for women’s suffrage.
In 1875, she wrote an essay, later published as a book The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation, in response to the article by Dr. Edward H. Clark titled “Sex Education or A Fair Chance for Girls” in which he proclaimed that mental and physical activity when menstruating would cause infertility. The following year she won the Boylston Prize from Harvard University for this essay. Based on a survey of almost 300 women, physical examinations, and a detailed analysis of existing theories, she determined that mensuration was not an illness and bedrest and educational restrictions were not required.
In 1867 she was the first woman admitted to the École de Médecine of the University of Paris. As a woman she had to enter through a separate door and sit near the professor.
The following two letters from Paris at the beginning of her medical studies there in 1867, show the dynamic personality and self-confidence that made Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi such a driving force.
Paris, May 12th 1867
My Dear Mother—
I do not see why you did not close with Aunt Elizabeth’s proposal to come with her to Paris-It would have done you both a world of good and Oh, how glad I should be to see you! It would be too cunning to trot you around. As for me, I am a born Bohemian and cosmopolite, and I begin to think Parisian as well, for I adapt myself so easily to the ways and manners, I always feel perfectly at home. Is it brass, or is it a comfortable lack of self-consciousness? –Whatever it is I know I surprised Dr. Hérard a little the other day by being at my ease when he expected me to be flustered. Il s’agissait concerning an observation that I had taken of a new patient, and which I had to read aloud before him and the students. I had been doing this for several weeks at Beaujon, and so was accustomed to it, but it happened that the system of taking observations in this manner had only just been inaugurated in Dr. Hérard’s service, and it was at my own request that I engaged with the rest in the problem of diagnosis and observation. When we came to my patient, Dr. Hérard inquired if I would read, with entirely the expression as if he supposed my courage was going to fail completely at the last moment, at which I was so much amused that I passed the little ordeal with so much the more composure. I am happy to say that Dr. Hérard commended my ” observation” quite highly.
PARIS , May 29th.
MY DEAR MOTHER.-
I have just received a letter from you in which you called my last ” charming,” a little remark which gave me a stock of happiness to last a week. It is so delightful to be called charming by one’s mother, especially if she happens to be a little woman rather exigeante comme toi, n’est ce pas? If father could only bring you out! I hope he certainly will come. It seems to me-being in Europe,—that the importation of classical standard and scientific books ought to be of the utmost importance. The scandalous duty ought to be abolished nearly a hundred percent.
If father comes, I mean to take him to Lariboissière and present him to Dr. Hérard. I should enjoy seeing his face during a visit through the wards. He so adores sick people! I must tell you that the little anatomical professor has just obtained for me from the Dean of the Faculty permission to attend a class of operative surgery at the Ecole Pratique, which commences in the Fall. This Ecole is literally and figuratively, at the very doors of the École de Médecine and is one of the institutions that Dr. Blackwell prophesied that I could not enter. I do not feel perfectly sure of the entrance yet, as the time is so far off, but it is very nearly certain, as the official promise has been given, though verbally, by the Dean.
from Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi pp 143-144
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi’s Writings (a selection)
1868 Found and Lost (a collection of her magazine stories)
1876 The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation
1882 Shall women practice medicine?
1894 “Common sense” applied to woman suffrage
1906 Descriptions of the Early Symptoms of the Meningeal Tumor Compressing the Cerebellum. From Which the Writer Died. Written by Herself. (This was written after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor)
1925 Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacoby edited by Ruth Putnam
More about Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi
Mary Putnam Jacobi: Still Famous after 150 Years Drexel Legacy Center
Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine n the Nineteenth Century a biography by Carla Bittel
Pioneer for Women in the Medical Professions. Women’s History Blog
“It is one thing to say, “Some men shall rule,” quite another to declare, “All men shall rule,” and that in virtue of the most primitive, the most rudimentary attribute they possess, that namely of sex.”
Mary Putnam Jacobi