Unpublished Manuscript Medical Journal Prepared By and Actually Used in the Practice of One of the First 100 Female M.D.s in the United States

The Birth of Medical Education for Women

The Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, founded in 1850 as the Female Medical School of Pennsylvania, was the first school in the United States established to train women in medicine and to offer them the M.D. degree. Indeed, many consider it to be the first such medical school for women in the world. At the school’s first graduation ceremony in 1851, one of the founders, a professor, told the 8 graduating students that “this day forms an eventful epoch in the history of your lives, in the history of woman, in the history of the race.”

Susan Parry graduated in the class of 1858, and with that class the college increased to 42 the number of M.D. degrees it had cumulatively issued to women. Up to that point, new women’s medical colleges in Cleveland and Boston had granted another 19 or so, and the co-ed college in Syracuse had awarded 4, one of which was to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman M.D. It is therefore safe to say that Dr. Parry was comfortably among the first 100 (and quite probably among the first 65) women issued M.D. degrees by medical colleges in the United States. Today, some 30% of physicians and 47% of medical students are female. Interestingly, her brother, George F. Parry, graduated from the Boston Veterinary Institute in 1859, and was one of the first trained veterinarians in the country.

Dr. Susan Parry practiced medicine in Bucks County, PA, until her death in the 1890s. Starting on June 19, 1873, she kept a journal of over 200 pages (humorously entitled “S. Parry’s Book of Recipes”), in which she described diseases, treatments, recipes for prescriptions, along with some homeopathic remedies. She also mentioned source books to which she referred, and listed other medical professionals with whom she maintained relationships. The inside front cover contains the name and address of S. Weir Mitchell, a Philadelphian and one of the country’s foremost doctors at the time. The journal has a wealth of information, giving a full picture of the medical practice of this pioneering woman physician. A very tiny portion of the text, giving a general sense of the whole but by no means beginning to cover it, is below.

Dr. Susan Parry's unpublished journal

She starts out discussing details of an early plastic surgery – reconstruction of a nose by Dr. Gross, made famous by the painting of him in his clinic by Thomas Eakins. She seems to have seen the operation and spoken with Dr. Gross.

Immediately after she gives instructions for a remedy for pain in the uterus, acne and advises camphor to keep bugs from biting. She follows with some prescriptions for skin diseases, referring to another female physician as the source for one of them. One of the prescriptions to treat such skin maladies consists of white lead, lard, coal oil, and sassafras oil. From the perspective of today, this seems a mixed bag; the white lead seems like a bad idea as it can cause lead poisoning, while a variant of the coal oil is efficacious and is still used. Other topics covered early on include constipation, hair growth, dentistry, and bronchitis. For pharyngitis she used a “mucilage of flax seed with as much carbolic acid that could be borne, swabbed morn and night.” There is a page on hypodermic injections, the method of giving them, what to avoid, best place for administration, etc.

The next section is on bladder and kidney afflictions, including Bright’s disease. She has a great deal of belief in Dr. Fell’s remedy, which for kidneys was “Apply a plaster of the gum copaiba but, with as much gum camphor worked in it as you can get in it!” There was not much to be done for diabetics back then, and her prescription seems to involve drinking a quantity of spring water. This is followed by sections on eye and ear maladies, with a prescription of zinc sulphas and aqua pura used for simple inflammation or irritation. There is a very long discussion of cholera, effects and remedies, and she provides prescriptions to alleviate this; at one point noting that “20 drops every two or three hours or oftener, this most used in Women’s Hospital.” This is followed by discussions and prescriptions for liver and gynecological ailments. Scarlet fever and diptheria are also dealt with.

For nervousness, she states that taking 240 grams of bromide potassium is very effective, and cured a case of insanity. She then writes of the administration of that drug. The subjects are as varied as snakebites, burns and scalds, sprains, paralysis, allergies, and sunstroke. Of typhoid fever, she says “Ascent quite regular and gradual for four or five days. Evening temperatures about 2° higher than the morning and there is a remission about 1° compared with the previous evening. A daily rise of about 1% until it becomes 103- 104 degrees. The stationary period varies, usually 105-106 in the evenings with only slight morning remissions. May reach 107 or 108. Decline takes place gradually. In three or four days evening temperature… During the second week the thermometer shows whether a case will be severe or not. Prognosis unfavorable according to height of temperature and duration…A marked rise or rapid fall is a bad sign. A marked rise or fall often warns of the approach of intestinal hemorrhage.”

At one point she discusses in detail how to tell “neurasthenia [anxiety or depression] as distinguished from organic or structural nervous disease.” She gives a few ways: “1. the symptoms of organic disease are usually fixed and stable, while very many of those of neurasthenia and allied states are fleeting, transient, metastatic and recurrent. 2. in organic disease, reflex activity is generally diminished; in functional disease, reflex activity is generally increased.” A lengthy discussion follows. For syphilis, she prescribes a wash of ammonia ferric alum and aquae, and to clean the system of the disease, a mixture of red iodide mercury, iodide potassium and distilled water. For gonorrhea a wash of balsam copaibai, camphora, and mucil acacia. One decidedly unusual remedy is for asthma where first she prescribes the burning of leaves. She then suggests smoking two cigarettes, composed of belladonna leaves, stramonium, opium, and phallandrium. Another suggestion was in hailing a combination of nitrate potassium, belladonna and ammonium.

In a substantial section entitled “Diseases of Women,” she provides a number of prescriptions in cases of weakness or excessive bleeding from menses. One remedy was wine of ergot, tincture of ferric chloride and water; another was take opium with Monsell’s salts. She also covers many other topics, such as pregnancy, obstetrics, nervousness and rheumatism, to name a few.

This existence of this journal was unknown until its discovery very recently. It is a veritable storehouse of information, a primer of medicine in the Centennial decade. Moreover, it is one of the earliest medical resource manuscripts by and actually used in the practice of a college-trained female physician to survive, complete with its discussions of maladies of women. It must be seen for its scope to be fully appreciated.

Also included is a scrapbook she kept, with with a lengthy manuscript essay she wrote on author Robert Burns, short ones on Shakespeare, Emerson, and John H. Payne, and other musings.