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Women in Medicine United Hospital and Dispensary Advisory Board Papers Promoting Treatment by Female Physicians in Boston 1887

1887réf. 164541887. United Hospital and Dispensary advisory board papers 1887 document a Boston medical institution publicly offering women the option of receiving treatment exclusively from female physicians. The papers include an invitation to join the hospital's advisory board and an accompanying information sheet naming several women doctors among those associated with the institution. The hospital explicitly advertised that "women may be treated by competent female physicians exclusively if they so desire" placing women physicians in direct clinical roles at a time when medical education hospital appointments and professional advancement remained restricted for women. The advisory membership also includes Mary A. Livermore the journalist reformer suffragist and former Civil War relief organizer. Two documents relating to the United Hospital and Dispensary Baldwin Place Boston 1887: a typed signed letter and an informational sheet concerning the hospital advisory board. 1 United Hospital and Dispensary. Advisory board invitation letter. Boston May 18 1887. Typed signed letter inviting the recipient to join the hospital's advisory board. The letter records the institution's effort to enlist outside supporters in its administration and public work. 2 United Hospital and Dispensary. Advisory board information sheet. Boston 1887. Lists members connected with the advisory board including several women physicians and Mary A. Livermore and emphasizes the hospital's provision that "women may be treated by competent female physicians exclusively if they so desire." The statement documents an institutional response to women patients seeking medical care from practitioners of their own sex and identifies female doctors as active members of the hospital's professional structure. The papers date from a period in which women physicians were establishing hospitals dispensaries and professional networks partly in response to barriers within established medical institutions. Contemporary references confirm the United Hospital and Dispensary's operation in Boston and its employment of physicians in specialized departments. Very good condition. The two documents preserve specific evidence of women's participation in late nineteenth-century Boston medicine and of a hospital making female medical attendance an explicit option for its women patients. unknown books