{"id":7652,"date":"2020-06-01T09:27:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T13:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/?p=7652"},"modified":"2020-06-01T09:27:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T13:27:26","slug":"remarkable-woman-of-the-month-june-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/?p=7652","title":{"rendered":"Remarkable Woman of the Month, June 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In these difficult times we wish to recognize the heroics of the health-care professionals who are saving lives every day by honoring those of the past. Some of those may have been suffragists. All were brave.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sara Josephine Baker, MD, 1873 – 1945<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sara Josephine Baker hadn\u2019t planned on becoming a doctor. Born in 1873, the third daughter in a family of four children, she attended a small, undemanding school in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her father was a successful attorney and Josephine planned on attending Vassar just as her mother had before her. (Her family dropped the Sara part of her name when she was quite young and just called her Josephine, or Jo.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Josephine\u2019s pleasant life changed dramatically when her\nfather and brother died from typhoid fever, possibly from contaminated water in\nthe nearby Hudson River; at the age of sixteen she was left to support her\nmother and disabled sister. In a daring and controversial decision she announced\nthat she would become a doctor. The deaths of her father and brother may have\nconvinced her of the need for good medical care, and although there were then very\nfew women in the medical field, she knew that as a doctor she could always find\nwork. After a year of intense study she was accepted at Women\u2019s Medical College\nof the New York Infirmary in 1894. The school had been founded in 1868\nby Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the US to hold a medical degree,\nand was the only medical school that would accept women. She graduated in 1899.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Josephine\nsoon discovered that almost no one would seek the advice of a woman doctor, especially\na man. She made a small living as a medical inspector for a life insurance\ncompany, which led to a part time position as a medical inspector for the City\nof New York. In 1902 Josephine was offered the job of treating the frighteningly\nhuge numbers of ill children on the west side of Manhattan. The\narea\u2014appropriately called Hell\u2019s Kitchen\u2014was home to thousands of poor families\nand was also home to infant dysentery, a disease that claimed the lives of an\naverage of 1,500 babies each week. It paid the remarkable salary of one hundred\ndollars a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josephine began\na program of having nurses visit new mothers to teach them the values of\nroutine hygiene, pasteurized milk, and exposure to fresh air. The program was a\nhuge success, and led to her employment as the Head of the Division of Child\nHygiene, the first of its kind\nanywhere in the world. Josephine was the first woman to hold an administrative\nposition in any health department in the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1907 she was\nappointed assistant to the health inspector and was\ncharged with another challenge \u2013the arrest of Mary Mallon, better known as\n\u201cTyphoid Mary.\u201d Mallon had been working as a cook, and refused to stop cooking\nwhen told she was a carrier of typhoid fever, even though she herself had never\nbeen very ill. Josephine finally traced her to her present place of employment,\nand arrested her with the help of a young policeman. \u201cI sat on her all the way\nto the hospital,\u201d Josephine later recalled. \u201cIt was like being in a cage with\nan angry lion.\u201d Because she refused to stop cooking for a living, the Health\nDepartment was forced to keep Mary apart from society for the rest of her life,\nand she never stopped blaming Josephine for the part she played in helping to\nmake that happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While working to help impoverished families improve their\nlives, Josephine became active in the woman suffrage movement. \u201cIt was unfair\nand absurd,\u201d she said, \u201c that the male half of the world should possess\nresponsibilities from which we were excluded.\u201d Like most suffragists she\nbelieved the vote would result in decreased corruption, and the elimination of\nchild labor. She was on the committee chosen to visit President Wilson in the White\nHouse, and spent much of her limited free time marching in parades, and making\nimpromptu speeches from the back of her open car. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1918 Josephine was immersed in another battle, as the pandemic\nof influenza raced across the world, eventually claiming 675,000 lives in the\nUS alone. In her autobiography she recounts an eerie deja vu experience: \u201cThere\nwas a frightful sweep of disease, and not enough doctors and nurses to care for\nthe cases, nor undertakers to bury the dead.\u201d The nation\u2019s schools were closed,\nbut not in New York City. Josephine argued that the children could be better\ncared for in school where they received regular examinations and the few\nreported cases could be treated immediately. Her gamble paid off \u2013 the number\nof cases in school children was negligible and even absences from other\nillnesses were reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many women of her era who had chosen\ntraditionally male professions, Josephine often faced disapproval and\nostracism. She was no stranger to failure\u2014some of what she considered her best\nideas met with defeat. But she also met with unprecedented success. When she\nbegan her public health career in 1908, the infant mortality rate in New York\nCity was 144 per 1,000 live births. When she retired in 1923, it was 66, one of\nthe lowest of any of the major cities in the United States or Europe. Josephine\nspent her life trying to secure good health care for all women and children,\nbut she never forgot the thrill of saving a single life, the \u201cjoy she saw in a\nmother\u2019s eyes when her baby was assured of health.\u201d Although her life had been\na difficult struggle, she said in her autobiography, \u201cI would not have any of\nit different in any way. It was an altogether satisfactory life.\u201d She died in\nFebruary, 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Sara Josephine Baker, MD!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these difficult times we wish to recognize the heroics of the health-care professionals who are saving lives every day by honoring those of the past. Some of those may have been suffragists. All were brave. Sara Josephine Baker, MD, 1873 – 1945 Sara Josephine Baker hadn\u2019t planned on becoming a doctor. Born in 1873, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3G1zV-1Zq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7655,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7652\/revisions\/7655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/longislandwomansuffrage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}