UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Educating Women Physicians of the World: International Students of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1883-1911 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9gh5b9j1 Author Pripas-Kapit, Sarah Ross Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Educating Women Physicians of the World: International Students of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1883-1911 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Sarah Ross Pripas-Kapit 2015 © Copyright by Sarah Ross Pripas-Kapit 2015 ! ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Educating Women Physicians of the World: International Students of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1883-1911 by Sarah Ross Pripas-Kapit Doctor of Philosophy in History Professor Ellen Carol Dubois, Chair This dissertation presents a comparative examination of a cohort of international students who attended the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) from the years 1883 to 1911. The dissertation consider how these women came to study medicine in the United States, their experiences in the U.S., and how they later practiced medicine in their home countries. The dissertation argues that the global dissemination of modern medicine, and the maintenance of U.S. imperial power, has been in part enabled by the willing cooperation of transnational intermediaries such as these women. However, the students’ lives were in large part shaped by changes within American medicine during this period, in which medical education was changing rapidly. Although students who attended the college in the 1880s and early 1890s were able to forge a space within the college that permitted forms of medicine other than Western allopathic medicine, later generations of students tended to be more beholden to the idea, then in its early development, that “scientific medicine” represented the only valid form of medicine. These later students tended to be more interested in transferring a distinctly American form of healthcare to their home societies. ! ii! The dissertation of Sarah Ross Pripas-Kapit is approved. Mishuana Goeman Joan Waugh Ellen Carol Dubois, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 !iii! I dedicate this work to my husband, Neil Kapit, and my parents, Donna Ross and Howard Pripas. !iv! Table of Contents: Acknowledgements vi Curriculum Vita ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Hindu Lady Physician: The Transnational Lives of Dr. Anandibai Joshee, 1865-1887 18 Chapter Two: Physician of the Omaha: Susan La Flesche Picotte and the Challenges of American Indian Progressivism, 1865-1914 74 Chapter Three: Healing Bodies and Saving Souls for the Empire: South Asian Missionary Physicians, 1888-1922 107 Chapter Four: Healing Bodies and Saving Souls for China: Chinese Missionary Physicians, Imperial Affiliations, and the Nation, 1894-1949 154 Chapter Five: Birthing Colonial Modernity in the Philippines: Filipina Physicians and American Empire, 1905-1970 223 Conclusion: The Personal, the National, and the Imperial 276 Bibliography 298 Images, Figures, and Tables: Figure 1: “A memento of the Dean’s reception” 2 Figure 2: “Outline map of the locations of graduates” 6 Table 1: Patients and receipts at Woolsoton Memorial Hospital, 1900-1918 206 Figure 3: Graph from article on pelvimetry by Acosta-Sison and Calderon 242 Table 2: Maternal mortality rates in Manila, 1914-1951 275 ! v! Acknowledgements: As difficult as completing this dissertation was at times, completing it would have been impossible without the help of these individuals. First, I would like to thank my dissertation committee: Ellen Dubois, Mishuana Goeman, Andrea Goldman, and Joan Waugh. Ellen, in particular, has been the best adviser I could have hoped for. Although I was initially taken aback when, in my first year of graduate school, she told me my dissertation topic ideas weren’t good enough for me, I am glad she has taken an active role in my intellectual development, insisting that I pick a better topic than my first year graduate student ideas. I think I found one. I have also been fortunate enough to work with other faculty members at UCLA that have shaped this project. I would also like to extend a particular thanks to Ben Madley, whose guidance has been invaluable. I also much appreciate feedback on this project that I’ve received from Marcia Meldrum, Mary Terrall, Alice Wexler, and Juliet Williams. From both UCLA and the University of New South Wales, Ian Tyrrell has exerted a significant influence on this work that is felt throughout. Other scholars who have provided me with valuable feedback along the way include Laura Ishiguro, Connie Shemo, Jacqueline Wolf, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of Gender & History. I’d also like to thank Juliet Liss and Rita Roberts of Scripps College, who started me on the path of becoming a historian. Archivists are the unsung heroes of all historical research, and there are many archivists who have my gratitude. I would like to thank all of the archivists at the archives listed in the biography. My particular thanks goes to Matthew Herbison of the Drexel College of Medicine Legacy Center, for all of the help provided in Philadelphia and remotely. Betty Bolden of the Rare Books and Archives at Burke Library of Columbia University also provided much help. Thank you also to the archivists of the General Commission on Archives and History of the !vi! United Methodist Church, who kindly sent me a document at the last minute when I needed it. No less important has been Yogini Joglekar, whose translation services were critical for the research for chapters one and three. Throughout my time in graduate school, I’ve been lucky enough to receive excellent funding. I am grateful to the U.S. Department of Education. The Jacob K. Javits fellowship I received from the department supported me for four out of my six years at UCLA. I am also indebted to the UCLA Graduate Division, which provided me with a Dissertation Year Fellowship for my final year of study. Additionally, I have received research funds from numerous other sources at UCLA, including the History department, Center for the Study of Women, and Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library. Some materials in this dissertation are under copyright and used with permission. Much of chapter two appears in the winter of 2015 issue of Great Plains Quarterly, published by the University of Nebraska Press and the Center for Great Plains Studies. This text is used with permission. Images one and two are used with permission from Drexel College of Medicine Archives and Special Collections. I extend thanks to these institutions for permitting me access to reprint these materials. Interested parties can see the full text of my article here:! http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/catalog/CategoryInfo.aspx?cid=163 https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/great_plains_quarterly/v035/35.1.pripas-kapit.html Last but not least, I want to thank the many people who have provided me with personal support over the last six years—and, indeed 20-something years before that. I’d like to thank my parents, Donna Ross and Howard Pripas, for being supportive when I said that I wanted to be a historian. My sister, Emily Pripas, has also been great—even reading my articles before I sent them off for publication. My in-laws, Laurie and Wynne Kapit, have also been a constant source !vii! of support in more ways that I can count. Thanks also to my aunt and grandparents, Edith Dorsen, Charles and Pearl Pripas, and Ray Ross. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Neil Kapit, who was there for me during every step of the way. Thank you, to everyone who made this accomplishment possible. !viii! Sarah R. Pripas-Kapit Curriculum vitae EDUCATION C.Phil. Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles 2012 Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies, UCLA Department of Gender Studies, 2013 M.A. Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 B.A. Department of History, Scripps College, Claremont, CA (magna cum laude), 2009 PUBLICATIONS Refereed Journal Articles 2015 “’We Have Lived on Broken Promises’: Charles A. Eastman, Susan La Flesche Picotte, and the Politics of American Indian Assimilation During the Progressive Era," Great Plains Quarterly 35:1 (Winter): 51-78. In Press "Piety, Professionalism, and Power: Chinese Protestant Missionary Physicians and Imperial Affiliations between Women in the Early Twentieth Century." Gender & History 27: 2 (August 2015). Encyclopedia articles 2012 “The General Federation of Women’s Clubs,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History, p. 447-448, ed. Lynn Dumenil. Oxford University Press. FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS 2014-2015 Dissertation Year Fellowship, UCLA Graduate Division 2010-2014 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education 2013-2014 Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. Award, UCLA Center for the Study of Women 2014 American Association of the History of Medicine Student Travel Grant 2013 Carey McWilliams Summer Travel Grant, UCLA History Department ! ix! 2011-2012 Ahmanson Graduate Student Research Grant in the History of Medicine, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library (UCLA) CONFERENCE ACTIVITY Panels Organized 2014 "Race and Healthcare in U.S. History," American Association of the History of Medicine, Chicago, IL, May 16-18. Papers 2014 “Birthing Modernity in the Philippines: Dr. Honoria Acosta-Sison and the Politics of Obstetrics,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Toronto, ON, May 22- 25. 2014 “The Mismeasure of Woman: The Debate on Pelvimetry, Obstetrics, and Race in the United States, 1870-1920,” American Association of the History of Medicine, Chicago, IL May 8-11. 2013 “Saviors of Body, Soul, and Nation: Chinese Women Physicians at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Western Association of Women Historians Conference, Portland, OR, May 16-18.