Lydia Folger Fowler

American physiologist

• Born: May 5, 1822
• Birthplace: Nantucket, Massachusetts
• Died: January 26, 1879
• Place of death: London, England

The first woman to become a professor at an American medical school, Fowler became well known as a lecturer on physiology, temperance, and women’s rights during the years in which the medical field gradually opened to the entry of women.

Early Life

The daughter of Gideon and Eunice Macy Folger, Lydia Folger was born on the small island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts. Her father, who had spent various periods in his life as a mechanic, a farmer, a candlemaker, a shipowner, and even a sometime politician, was a direct descendant of Peter Folger, who had arrived on Nantucket in 1663 as one of the earliest settlers of the island. The Folger clan, which also includes Benjamin Franklin, can be traced back to English nobility in the person of the earl of Shrewsbury.

Another well-known relative of Lydia Folger Fowler was her distant cousin Maria Mitchell, who grew up in Nantucket as a contemporary of Fowler and who would one day become a professor of astronomy at Vassar College. In fact, it was through Maria Mitchell’s father, a popular teacher in the community, that Fowler gained a consuming interest in her studies, particularly in math and science. Additionally supported by an uncle who fancied himself an amateur astronomer, Lydia Folger Fowler felt a special devotion to the field in which her cousin Maria would find such distinction. All in all, Fowler’s early education, with its inclusion of subjects generally thought of as unsuitable for women students, appears to have been quite extensive when compared with that of other women of the era.

One possible explanation for this circumstance is the distinctive character of the community in Nantucket. For the most part, the men of Nantucket worked in seafaring trades—trades that demanded that they leave the island for weeks and months at a time. Such necessities helped to form an atmosphere of independence and self-reliance among the women of the island, who were often forced to run the affairs of the community while the men were away. Lucretia Mott, one of the early leaders of the women’s rights movement and a native of Nantucket, is a good example of the kind of attitudes fostered there. Add to this the fact that the island at this time was inhabited primarily by Quakers, who were defined by an openness to social reform and a devotion to the ideal of equality, and one can begin to imagine more clearly the environment from which Lydia Folger Fowler emerged.

Life’s Work

Lydia Folger left Nantucket in 1838 to study for a year in Norton, Massachusetts, at the Wheaton Seminary, where she would later spend two years (1842-1844) as a teacher. This stint ended with her marriage, on September 19, 1844, to Lorenzo Niles Fowler. They would have but one child together, a daughter named Jessie Allen, born in 1856.

Lorenzo Fowler was at this time one of the best-known and most vocal proponents of the budding science of phrenology. He and his brother Orson had been exposed to phrenological theories during the 1830’s while they were both studying at Amherst College in preparation for a life in the ministry. Convinced of the tenets of this new science, the brothers became two of its most famous adherents by embarking on numerous lecture tours and even establishing the publishing house of Fowlers and Wells in 1842 in order to become the publishers of the American Phrenological Journal .

Beginning in 1845, Lydia Folger Fowler accompanied her husband during the journeys to his speaking engagements, and later, in 1847, she began to give lectures of her own at the opening of each congregation. These lectures covered such topics as anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, and formed the basis for the two books Fowler would publish in 1847 through the auspices of her husband’s publishing operation. Familiar Lessons on Physiology and Familiar Lessons on Phrenology (to be followed in 1848 by a third volume, Familiar Lessons in Astronomy ) appeared as books intended for young readers and enjoyed some sales success.

Heartened by her successes as a lecturer and author, Lydia Folger Fowler decided to pursue a medical degree and enrolled at Central Medical College in November, 1849. Located first in Syracuse, New York, and later moving to Rochester in 1850, Central was the first medical school to make a regular policy of admitting women. The school even included a so-called “Female Department,” of which Fowler served as principal during her second term of study. Although there was this emphasis on Central’s campus and though there were several other women who joined her entering class, Lydia Folger Fowler was the lone female graduate in June of 1850, making her only the second woman ever, after Elizabeth Blackwell, to receive a medical degree in the United States.

Fowler was soon to achieve a first of her own. After she had worked briefly as a “demonstrator of anatomy” to students at Central, Fowler was promoted in 1851 to the position of professor of midwifery and diseases of women and children, thereby becoming the first woman professor at an American medical college. The professorship was not long-lived, however, because Central Medical College merged with a rival institution in 1852 and Fowler left to practice privately in New York City. While in New York, Fowler resumed teaching, and in 1854, she began a series of private medical lectures for women at Metropolitan Medical College, a physiopathic school that existed between 1852 and 1862. Fowler also succeeded in publishing three articles in the pages of Metropolitan College’s alternative medical journal. These articles were entitled “Medical Progression,” “Female Medical Education,” and “Suggestions to Female Medical Students.” These articles argued the necessity of women physicians, noting that women needing medical care were often precluded by their modesty from seeking help from the heretofore exclusively male profession.

The early 1850’s also witnessed Fowler’s increased politicization, as she became involved in several causes for reform. Twice she served as secretary to national women’s rights conventions (1852 and 1853), and once she was a delegate to a meeting of the state Daughters of Temperance (1852). In February of 1853, Fowler presided over a women’s temperance meeting in New York City, during which she utilized her well-honed skills at public speaking. In addition to supporting these reform movements, Fowler continued to give public lectures on the topics of physiology and hygiene. She remained in New York City until 1860, when she left with her husband as he embarked on a speaking tour of Europe. After spending the year studying and working in Paris and London, Fowler returned to New York in 1861. In 1862, she became an instructor in midwifery at the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College. The next year, Lorenzo Fowler left the publishing house, and he and Lydia Fowler moved to London, where they would spend the rest of their days.

While in London, Lydia Folger Fowler chose not to practice medicine but continued to remain extremely active within the temperance movement , becoming an honorary secretary of the Woman’s British Temperance Society. This period also allowed Folger the leisure to focus on her writing. Nora: The Lost and the Redeemed , a temperance novel that earlier had been serialized in America, appeared in book form in 1863. A series of Folger’s lectures on child care was published in 1865 as The Pet of the Household and How to Save It . Finally, in 1870, a book of poems entitled Heart Melodies became Folger’s last published work. Lydia Folger Fowler died in London of pleuropneumonia on January 26, 1879.

Significance

Lydia Folger Fowler’s list of accomplishments easily leads one to see her as an inspiring symbol of women’s determination to break down the social and institutional barriers that excluded them from the study and practice of medicine. The fact that she made such great strides and enjoyed so much success at Central Medical College, becoming the second American woman to receive a medical degree and the first to become a professor in an American medical school, secures forever Fowler’s place among the early pioneers of women’s rights within the medical field.

To stress Fowler’s symbolic importance, however, is to misrepresent the true nature of her influence upon the other women of her era. Fowler’s efforts were of a much more practical kind. During her many extended tours of public lectures, Fowler addressed wide and varied audiences, meeting and speaking with countless admirers and skeptics. It was during these moments, when she brought her message and personal example so immediately to those in attendance, that Lydia Folger Fowler had her greatest impact. No other woman physician of the moment could claim to have influenced so many people in so direct and intimate a manner. Although it is true that much of Fowler’s lecturing was done in connection with the thoroughly debunked science of phrenology and that she continually found herself working in alternative or marginal situations, this does not seem so surprising if one considers the hostility she must have felt emanating from a medical institution that sensed that its days as a closed fraternity were numbered.

Bibliography

Abrams, Ruth J., ed.“Send Us a Lady Physician”: Women Doctors in America, 1835-1920. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. Collection of essays compiled to accompany a museum exhibit. The essays describe the experience of women in the health professions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A good book for placing Fowler’s experiences into historical context.

Hume, Ruth Fox. Great Women of Medicine. New York: Random House, 1964. Fowler is mentioned as an able practitioner though a graduate of an eclectic college. The portrayals of the six women in the book—Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake, Mary Putnam Jacobi, and Marie Curie—provide the reader with a good introduction to the medical profession during in the nineteenth century.

Lopate, Carol. Women in Medicine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968. In the first chapter, Lopate provides good background concerning the entrance of American women into the medical profession. She explains the importance of eclectic schools such as the one Lydia Folger Fowler attended in offering women entrance.

Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Reprint. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000. The best discussion of Lydia Folger Fowler appears in this comprehensive history of women in American medicine. Morantz-Sanchez explores the role of feminism in this history as well as the unique contributions women made to the field of medicine.

More, Ellen S. Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Fowler is mentioned twice in this history examining how women physicians work to balance the demands of their profession with society’s expectations for women.

Stille, Darlene R. Extraordinary Women of Medicine. New York: Children’s Press, 1997. A four-page biography of Fowler is included in this collection of brief biographies aimed at young adult readers.

Walsh, Mary Roth.“Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply”: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977. Lydia Folger Fowler is mentioned on the first page of this book as the first American woman to be graduated from an American medical college. This book is an excellent study of the barriers women faced in entering the medical profession in the United States as well as a good overview of the progress of medicine in the nineteenth century, helping to put Fowler in perspective.

Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. Lone Woman: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the First Woman Doctor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. Wilson shows how Elizabeth Blackwell’s achievement led to the adoption of a coeducational policy by the Rochester Eclectic College of Medicine. Fowler was the first woman graduate of Rochester and thereby benefited from Blackwell’s endeavor.