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The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West.
Eighteen year-old Nellie Mattie MacKnight stepped confidently into the spacious dissecting room at San Francisco’s Toland Hall Medical School. Thirty-five male students stationed around cadavers spread out on rough board tables, turned to watch the bold young women enter. The smell of decomposing corpses mixed with tobacco smoke wafting out of the pipes some of the students were puffing on assaulted Helen’s senses. Her knees weakened a bit as she strode over to her appointed area, carrying a stack of books and a soft, rawhide case filled with operating tools.
To her fellow students Nellie was a delicate female with no business studying medicine. Determined to prove them wrong she stood up straight, opened her copy of Gray’s Anatomy and removed the medical instruments from
It was the spring of 1891. She nodded politely at the future doctors glowering at her. A tall, dapper, be speckled professor stood at the front of the classroom watching Nellie’s every move. The sour look on his face showed his distain for a woman’s invasion into this masculine territory. “Do you expect to graduate in medicine or are you just playing around,” he snarled? The blood rushed to Nellie’s face and she clinched her fists at her side. She had expected this kind of hostile reception when she dared to enroll, but was taken aback just the same. “I hope to graduate,” she replied firmly. Disgusted and seeing that Nellie could not be intimidated, the professor turned around and began writing on a massive chalk board behind him. The students quickly switched their attention from Nellie to their studies. Nellie grinned and whispered to herself, “I will graduate…and that’s a promise.”
To learn more about Nellie MacKnight and other women physicians of the
Old West read
The Doctor Wore Petticoats.
