Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi: Releasing Women from the Prison of Their Own Bodies
When 19th century physician Edward Clarke argued that women were not suited to higher education due to their “periodical tides and reproductive apparatus,” he was merely expressing a belief common among medical professionals at the time. The notion that women, especially while on their periods, were weak and prone to various physical and psychological woes—including infertility—was widely held in the medical community.
What Clarke and his colleagues didn’t know was that Mary Putnam Jacobi, MD, was running her own research that would later prove them all wrong. In fact, when Clarke published a book detailing his unsupported opinions, Dr. Jacobi wrote a scathing rebuttal claiming that his research lacked proper experimentation, employed embellished facts, and was swayed by non-scientific interests.
Dr. Jacobi’s willingness to buck the status quo began well before she officially entered the field of medicine. Born in London in 1842, she spent most of her formative years in New York where she was homeschooled before graduating from a public school for girls in New York City. She then set her sights on practicing medicine, even though no medical schools admitted women and her aspirations were against her father’s wishes (although he did eventually support her decision). Undeterred, Dr. Jacobi went to study privately under Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn a medical degree, while attending the New York College of Pharmacy—all while the Civil War raged in the background.
Dr. Jacobi then attended the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later named Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania) and earned her medical degree in 1864. She began studying clinical medicine in Boston before deciding she needed additional education.
She moved to Paris in 1866 to attend classes at the Ecole Practique before applying for admission to the L’Ecole de Medecine of the University of Paris, which had, until then, refused to admit women. However, the minister of education intervened, forcing the school to admit her. She graduated as the second woman to receive an MD from the elite school and was lauded for her prize-winning thesis.
Perhaps Dr. Jacobi’s most crucial contribution was debunking the generally accepted notion that women should be confined to their beds during menstruation. According to Elinor Cleghorn’s Unwell Women, Dr. Jacobi monitored women’s energy levels and vital signs throughout their whole cycle and found that women were not, in fact, incapacitated each month—a discovery that would begin to release women from the male-imposed prison of their own bodies.
Throughout her impressive and barrier-busting career, Dr. Jacobi wrote over 120 scientific articles, nine books, and numerous political and fiction essays. This, plus her impressive research and support of women’s health issues, led her to become one of the most influential voices of her time.
Sources:
Cleghorn, Elinor. Unwell Women. New York City, Penguin Randomhouse, 2021.
Bittel, Carla. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America (Studies in Social Medicine). Chapel Hill, North Carolina, UNC Press, 2009.