A Quaker teacher, Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912) earned obstetrics and gynecology degrees from two medical colleges, one specializing in homeopathy, and one in “eclectic” medicine (herbalism). While operating a clinic and a free kindergarten, Stockham embraced suffrage and the nonviolent philosophies of iconic writers like Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy Stockham’s Tokology (Greek for “obstetrics”), which […]
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Dr. Rachel Brooks Gleason (1820-1905) was a largely self-taught physician who assisted her husband, Dr. Silas O. Gleason, in allopathic medicine. The couple successfully appealed for women’s admission to Central Medical College, and, in 1851, Gleason became the fourth American female medical doctor. Both her daughter and her sister would also become physicians. Gleason went
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Born in Illinois, Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915) was eighteen when she lost her mother and baby brother to a grueling six-month journey on the Oregon Trail. Duniway married a Lafayette farmer; when he was later incapacitated in an accident, she taught school and sold ladies’ accessories to support their six young children. Provoked by stories
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Elizabeth Edson Evans (1832-1911) was an artist and writer of poetry, fiction, and essays, who explored the possibility of spirituality beyond religious dogmatism in books like A History of Religions (1893). Evans married Edward Payson Evans, a professor of modern languages and German literature who worked with Ralph Waldo Emerson and wrote prolifically on the
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