Human Anatomy Lecture
This 1888 photograph shows Joseph Leidy (standing next to the table on the right) lecturing on anatomy to medical students at the University of Pennsylvania. One impression you can get from this photograph is that 19th Century medicine was the domain of white males. Women and minority men were excluded from most university medical schools during the 19th Century.
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became one of the first women to graduate from an American medical school, but she and other women had to endure considerable opposition. The opportunity for women to enter medicine improved with the establishment of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (1) in 1850. This Philadelphia school became the first approved and legal medical school for women in the world. Soon other medical schools for women were established in other cities, including Boston, New York, Baltimore and Cleveland. The success of their graduates helped promote the acceptance of female physicians in the second half of the 19th Century, but university medical schools were slow to open their doors to women until the end of the century.
Leidy's views on women in medical schools is not known, but we do know that he was sympathetic to their participation in Natural History and Biology. Leidy welcomed women to his public lectures on Natural History at the University of Pennsylvania despite vocal objections from some men in the audience. There are at least two later episodes in which Leidy evidently facilitated the scientific education of individual women (2). Finally, as director of the newly created Department of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania Leidy welcomed the entering class of ten men and two women.
Notes:
- The
Female Medical College of Pennsylvania was later renamed the Women's Medical College
of Pennsylvania. It is now the Drexel University College of Medicine.
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In
1878, Grace Anna Lewis requested that she be allowed to attend Leidy's course
in comparative anatomy which was not normally open to women. Subsequent correspondences
between the two indicate that she did take the course.
In 1884, Adele M. Fielde approached Leidy and the Academy of Natural Science for assistance in her research interests. She was provided with facilities and guidance and later published on a wide variety of Natural History topics.
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