Distaff. April 15—May 15, 1975 when I entered Sara Mayo Hospital in New Orleans to have my baby I took with rrya the Biographv 0' Virginia Woolfe and counted on several women friends to help pass the time in the labor room. To my great surprise and delight I learned from the brochure handed me at the registration desk that I was in a hospital created by a group of eight women doctors for the express purpose of treating and healing other women in a direct affront on the male rnedical.system that ex- cluded women doctors. Talk about women's |iberation—end in New Orleans in 1905! In researching the full story on Sara Mayo Hospital I found one of the most excitirg and interest- ing historical accounts oi woman uniting to assert themselves and to better the lot of us all. Sara Mayo Hosp 1} to 9;“; women physicians access to clinical and hospital experience and 2} to give women and children of small or no financial means access to services of women physicians free of cost. It would be staffed and administered only by women. The area chosen to locate the women's hospiiilil ‘'39 in the Irish Channel because of the rnanY P°°"""'9'3""‘ women and children who lived there without adequate medical care. The eight women Pi'|Y5i0l3"5 °i'il‘-led 3 range of services including internal medicine, surgery. pediatrics, dennatologv. 9Y1"3¢°l0'lJV. |"|€|-|r°l°lJY- obstetrics and dentistry. They opened in a small, four story house with a minimum of money and supplies but an excitement and commitrnant that fully compensated for any material ital -- ll Surprising History tions for the hospital's start. Clothilde Jecquet was the first native New Orleans woman to study medicine and Elizabeth Bass went on to become the first woman professor of med icine at Tulane University. The women were not above uSi|'|9 P67-'-0|'|8| i|‘|flUB|"i°e to keep the hospital in business. An interesting anac- dote is that of Edith Loeber. one °f ‘“° eight. who married Marshall Bullard, editor of the Itan, an influen- tial daily paper in the city. She persuaded him to issue a Woman’: Item for the May 22, 190'.‘ edition and sell copies for ten cents, giving all proceeds to the hospital. Included in the Women's Item was "A Careful lndetuzlf Eligible Men of All Ages Compiled for the Needs of Wishful Spins-ters." Needless to say, the pater up: I tremendous hit and brou ht in $10,000 for the haem- by Mary Gehman Sara Mayo and her partners who founded the hos- pital rank among the city's most irrpressive pioneers. Ironically, they are hardly remembered today. The public library gives no references in its card catalogue neither to Sara Mayo nor to the hospital. The only comprehensive material I could locate was an entry in Notable Amuican Women 1307-1950. The public relations office of—the hospital headed by Mary Lee Elurck, was more helpful by making available scrap- books of news clippings and memorabilia. But she too admitted that very little has been published about Sara Mayo and her women's hospital. The New Orleans Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children opened its doors in 1905 in a small building at 1823 Annunciation in the _Irish Channel. They were humble beginnings; $25 capital. borrowed furniture and eight patients treated the first day. What was unusual about the hospital was that it offered treatment only to women and children, and all the doctors working there were women. The director, Sara Tew Mayo, called fondly "Daisy" by her patients, was a strong, vibrant woman in her mid thirties. She had earned her medical degree with a specialty in surgery at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and returned to her native Louisiana to practice her profession. A medical career was at that time still unthinkable for a Southern woman, but she was not alone. In New Orleans at the turn of the century there were seven other women trying to break through the barriers of discrimination against women in med lcine: Clara Glenk, Susanna Otis, Elizabeth Bass, Cora Bass, Clothilde Jacouet, Edith Loeber and M. Blanche Fussy. They hed all taken their degrees outside Louisiana as the medical school of Tulane University would not accept women students. These women were barred from the all male Orleans Parish Medical Society and shut out of the city’s hospi- tal and clinical facilities. most of them ended up servirq in the free clinic of Kingsley House. the New Orleans social settlement headed by Eleanor McMain. There they became acquainted with each other and began to plan a strategy to correct what was obviously an in- tolerable inlustice. History does not record what discussions they had in coming to the eventual decision to open their own hospital and treat only women patients. Surely some of the women doctors must have argued for the more direct route of crashing the medical society and forcing the local hospitals to accept them. But the separatist tactic won u_|t_ I -r Ia-.-. -..-l.|.-'1 .-. |.: I II I.r ' I" vi a -. YWCA RAPE CRISIS SERVICE (504) 821-6000 2! hr. Rape Crisis Line Staffed By Women shortcomings. According to the hospEta|’s archives. the New Orleans Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children was a real community affair. People in the Irish Channel—the men were docl-cworkers and seamen. their wives kept house and raised the children——gathered driftwood from the Mississippi River to stoke the hospital's furnace, and when frequent storms threaten- ed they collected tallow candles and kerosene lamps 10 keep the hospital open. SARA TEWS MAYO The eight women doctors depended solely on dona- tions and a small subscription list to keep operatirg. They dispensed free service and medicine to anyone who needed it and charged small fee: to those who could pay. In the first year alone they treated 3,750 patients. Men patients were accepted only in cases of emergency and were kept there until they could be safely transferred to another hospital. There was a strict rule against treatim males except for emergencies. Although the hospital had a consultant staff of thirteen prominent men physicians, the women's pilot project was "received with tolerant shrugs where com- ment was kindest" among the medical professional circles in the city. The eight women doctors continued their fight for equality elsewhere. Their primary co_ncem was to gain edmittance to the Orleans Parish Medical Society. in 1913 after eight years of discussionlll women were finally granted membershio. There were other distinc- ra|_ That is a fundraising success not so be laafii a:.' even today. I Dr. Ma-yo, recognized as the group's leader, leda life full of service and ground breaking events. 3 ‘die! administering the hospital, she served for many 5&5 a doctor at the St. Anna's Asylum for destitute n and children and was a member of the staff at Touro Infirmary and the Baptist Hospital. She persuaded the Sickles _Fund, founded by a Philadelphia philanthropist, to provide free drugs for the sick poor in New Orleans, to tabliah a station in her hospital, and as a result was appointed by the mayor of New Orleans to the fund’s commission. She belonged to the YWCA and to the Era Club, an association founded by Kate Gordon and others to work for woman sufferage and social and civic reform. Dr. Mayo received in 1913 the Times-Picayune loving cup, an award given annually for outstarding service to the New Orleans community. The women’: hospital was an instant success. Three years after it opened the state legislature appropriated $1,000 to it annually to be increased by $1,000 more each year. This enabled the hospital to expan d construct its own building. A nursing school was ; the first student graduated 1911. In 1940, ten years after Sara Mayo died at the age of 61, the ground where the hospital stood was included by the city in a piece of land it needed to build a low rent hcusing development {now known as the St. Thomas Proiectl. The hospital was moved into a vacant children's home on Jackson Ave. In 1948 it became known as the Sara Mayo Hospital in memory of its kind and generous founder. By that time a man had been admitted as administra- tor and the policy toward excluding man began to change. Men were however not admitted as patients and board members until 1969 when the present buildirg at 825 Jackson Ave. opened with equal care facilities for all. it is not clear exactly why this happened; indica- tions are that the trend in medicine wu toward I hospital facilities, making others uneconomical. I asked Doris Toups, current administrator of Sara Mayo Hospital, what the famous founder would say if she were able to return to the modern, 146 bed, fully accredited hospitai today that bears her name. Toups laughed and said, “She would roll over in her grave because of- all the men. She was dead set against them. She would have never given in." EXTRA CASH NOW! W9 GIVE YOU 10 cents per copy of Dietafl 3°'d- Y0" but the paper from us at 15 '-‘W115, sell It for a quarter. can 335.7243. C0-HPL!HEflTS OF 0 lEllEB'@Rl2rill]l3’l 3-IUTDIII T Pfl Illa L11-I MOIIQI to n urn 151 DISCOUNT 535-533: —:_,:—_\_j _ .1... _u_ _.- .- -u.--— --.-.—|....¢|._1r -