Monthly Archives: November 2020

Highlighting NYAM Women in Medical History: Emily Dunning Barringer, MD

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By Paul Theerman, Director

Academy Fellows lead by serving, now during the COVID-19 crisis as in the past. This is the sixth entry in our 2020 series on early women NYAM Fellows and their contributions to society. For earlier posts, see Sara Josephine Baker, Martha Wollstein, Daisy Maude Orleman Robinson, Sarah McNutt, and Elizabeth Martha Cushier. Please also see our biographical sketch of Mary Putnam Jacobi, the first female Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

While Emily Dunning Barringer (1876–1961) shares many things in common with other early women Fellows of the Academy, she can claim one unique distinction: having her life story made into a feature film. The Girl in White—based on Barringer’s 1950 memoir, Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of New York’s First Woman Ambulance Surgeon—debuted in 1952 and starred June Allyson. In the film as in her life, Barringer overcame both institutional barriers and deliberate affronts as she pursued a career as a woman professional in an overwhelmingly male world.

June Allyson portraying Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer in the 1952 film The Girl in White. Promotional photograph from the private collection of NYAM Fellow Patricia Gallagher.

Barringer was born in 1876 to a wealthy family in Scarsdale, New York. Her parents, Edwin James Dunning and Frances Gore Lang, believed that all children, regardless of gender, should be educated and trained to support themselves. The family fell on hard financial times when Barringer was 10, and a well-meaning friend’s suggestion that perhaps the young girl should train as a milliner only served to strengthen Frances Dunning’s resolve for her daughter to receive a college education. With the support of her uncle, Henry Sage, one of the founders of Cornell University, Barringer did so, graduating from Cornell in 1897 before going on to medical school at the College of Medicine of the New York Infirmary, which merged with the new Cornell University School of Medicine during her time as a student.

The NYAM plaque honoring Barringer’s service as an ambulance surgeon in New York City hospitals.

Graduating from medical school in 1901, Barringer applied for a residency at New York City’s Gouverneur Hospital but was rejected despite receiving the second highest score on the qualifying exam. Undeterred, and with the help of Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, she reapplied the following year and this time was accepted, becoming the first woman to earn a position as surgical resident. Acceptance into the program, however, did not mean acceptance by other residents or their supervising physicians, and in her autobiography, Barringer recounted that she had been harassed and given the most difficult and unpleasant assignments and schedules. One difficult role, however, she sought herself, that of ambulance physician, and when she was given the position, she achieved a second “first”: the first female ambulance surgeon. Overcoming the skepticism of her male colleagues who felt that a woman would not be able to withstand the physical challenges of the role, she went on to earn not only their respect, but also the respect of city firefighters, police officers, and the patients she treated in Manhattan’s Lower East Side tenements.

She fell in love with fellow doctor Ben Barringer during her residency, and they married in 1904 when her residency ended. She immediately experienced frustration because her opportunities for work and further training were so much more constrained than her new husband’s. The pair lived for a short time in Vienna where both attended class, and then returned to New York City. Barringer took a position on the gynecological staff at New York Polyclinic Hospital and worked as an attending surgeon at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, where she specialized in the study of venereal diseases.

Poster for the 1952 MGM film The Girl in White. From the private collection of NYAM Fellow Patricia Gallagher.

During World War I Barringer served as vice chair of the American Women’s Hospitals War Service Committee of the National Medical Women’s Association (later the American Medical Women’s Association). In that role, she spearheaded a campaign to raise money for the purchase of ambulances to be sent to Europe. When the war ended, she became an attending surgeon at Brooklyn’s Kingston Avenue Hospital and subsequently its director of gynecology. She was a member of the American Medical Association and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and The New York Academy of Medicine. In 1941 Barringer was elected president of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA).

Over the course of her long medical career, Barringer advocated for legislation that would control the spread of venereal disease and authored numerous articles on gynecology. As Chair of the Special Committee of the American Medical Women’s Association, Barringer was decorated by the King of Serbia for championing the service of female physicians during World War I. As co-chair of the War Service Committee, she helped to organize the American Women’s Hospital in Europe, which provided medical and surgical care during the war and postwar reconstruction. During World War II, Barringer successfully lobbied Congress to allow women physicians (who had been allowed to work only as contract physicians and were consequently denied the benefits earned by their male counterparts) to serve as commissioned officers in the medical corps of the Army and Navy.

After World War II, Emily Barringer and her husband retired to Connecticut. She died there in 1961.

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References

Changing the Face of Medicine: Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer; National Library of Medicine. https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_23.html. Accessed November 10, 2020.

Women Physicians in WWII: Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer; American Medical Women’s Association. https://www.amwa-doc.org/wwibios/dr-emily-dunning-barringer/. Accessed November 10, 2020.

Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer; Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/emily-barringer. Accessed November 10, 2020.

Women in Medicine: Dr. Emily Dunning Barringer; Mental Floss. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63610/women-medicine-dr-emily-dunning-barringer. Accessed November 10, 2020.

Stephen Smith, MD, New York Pioneer of Public Health

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by Paul Theerman, Director

At its Annual Meeting of the Fellows, November 12, 2020, The New York Academy of Medicine is presenting the Stephen Smith Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Public Health to the Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of the State New York. The following appreciation of Smith is based on an exhibit that Historical Collections Librarian Arlene Shaner created in 2005 when the award was established.

Dr. Stephen Smith (1823–1922), Academy Fellow for 68 years, had a career as a Bellevue Hospital surgeon and a professor of surgery and anatomy at Bellevue Hospital Medical College and New York University. He wrote a field manual for Civil War army surgeons, was Health Commissioner of New York from 1868 to 1875, and was a founder of the American Public Health Association and its first president. Through his work the condition of the city, the state, and the nation markedly improved by the application of public health regulations for the common good.

Stephen Smith, MD, n.d. NYAM Library Carte-de-visite collection, http://dcmny.org/islandora/object/nyam%3A1012.

Stephen Smith was born on a farm in Skaneateles, New York, on February 19, 1823, the son of a cavalry officer in the Revolutionary War and his wife. [1] He first studied medicine at Geneva Medical College, where a fellow student was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman medical school graduate in the United States. He left Geneva for Buffalo Medical College and then relocated to New York City, where he finally received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1850. Smith completed his residency at Bellevue Hospital and became an attending surgeon there in 1854; the following year he was elected a NYAM Fellow. He served on the faculty of Bellevue Hospital Medical College from its founding in 1861 until 1874, when he joined the faculty in the medical department of New York University.

In addition to his work as a practicing physician and surgeon, Smith shared the editorial responsibilities for the New York Journal of Medicine with NYAM luminary Dr. Samuel Smith Purple and assumed the editorship completely when Purple retired in 1857. The journal changed its name to the American Medical Times three years later, and Smith continued as its editor until 1864. [2]

Mid-nineteenth-century New York City was subject to recurring outbreaks of deadly diseases. As Smith later proclaimed, “The unsanitary condition of the city prior to 1866 cannot be described so that an audience of today can fully appreciate the reality. Nuisances dangerous to life and detrimental to health existed everywhere.” [3] Smith used his investigative skill and editorial position to campaign for wide-ranging reforms, including sanitary inspections, street cleaning, garbage collection, and the regulation of tenement housing and slaughterhouses.

Stephen Smith. The City That Was (New York: Frank Allaben, 1911, frontispiece.

“[Smith] had no law on his side to begin with and he made his fight by publicity. He traced twenty individual typhus cases to one house in East Twentieth Street, which he found full of immigrant families suffering from typhus. Through the tax records he reached the owner, a wealthy and prominent man who flatly refused to do anything about it. Dr. Smith looked up the law and found that there was no way to proceed against the owner. He then went to William Cullen Bryant, then the editor of The New York Evening Post. ‘At the suggestion of Mr. Bryant,’ said Dr. Smith, ‘I finally succeeded in bringing the owner of the fever nest into court on the change of maintaining a nuisance. Bryant’s reporter, who had been instructed, so frightened the owner that he promised to close and repair the house if only the matter were kept out of the papers. Bryant agreed and the owner kept his promise.’” [3]

Smith’s work led to the noted Citizens’ Association 1865 investigation and report on sanitary conditions in the city [4] and the passage of the 1866 Metropolitan Health Law. He was appointed one of New York City’s first health commissioners, serving until 1875.

Once the Metropolitan Board of Health had been established, Smith argued for the establishment of a State Board of Health. To bolster his case, he used evidence from the success of other state boards of health and of the city’s board. He made his case in a series of publications, notably The Care of Health and Life in the State of New York and A State Board of Health. A Communication to a Member of the Legislature …, both published in 1880. [5]In the latter work he noted, “Already the agitation necessary and incident to the effort to secure the passage of this Bill has produced the most gratifying results in awakening thoughtful minds all over the State to the value of preventive medicine. Not only medical men, but laymen in every pursuit of business, have expressed their surprise at their previous apathy, and their determination now to press these questions upon the attention of the Legislature until adequate legislation is obtained.” The New York State Legislature created the State Board of Health that same year; in 1901 the board was reorganized as the State Department of Health.

In between, Smith’s ambitions reached the national scene. In 1872, he was one of the founders of the country’s premier professional public health organization, the American Public Health Association. He served as its first president up to 1875. [6]

From the book presented to Smith at a dinner in his honor, February 18, 1911. MS [Stephen Smith], a token of profound esteem and high regard from his many friends. [New York], Tiffany Co., 1911.

In later life, Smith was widely honored for his work in American public health. [7] He took time to reflect on the changes that his efforts achieved. His best-known book, The City That Was (1911), tells the story of the deplorable public health conditions that existed in New York City at the beginning of the 19th century and the measures he recommended to remedy those conditions, including regular sanitary inspections. [8]

Smith’s intertwined initials, from the book presented to him at a dinner in his honor, February 18, 1911. MS [Stephen Smith], a token of profound esteem and high regard from his many friends. [New York], Tiffany Co., 1911.

Smith believed man’s natural lifespan to be one hundred years, based on his contention that most animals live for five times the number of years required for the complete formation of their bones. He died on August 27,1922, some six months short of his 100th birthday. [3]

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Notes

[1] Jay H. Glasser, PhD, Elizabeth Fee, PhD, and Theodore M. Brown, PhD. “Stephen Smith (1823–1922): Founder of the American Public Health Association,” American Journal of Public Health, 2011 November; 101 (11): 2058. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2009.188920, accessed November 2, 2020.

[2] During the Civil War, he wrote Hand-book of Surgical Operations, with many printings in New York in 1862 and 1863. Its preface announced:

“This Hand-Book of Surgical Operations has been prepared at the suggestion of several professional friends, who early entered the medical staff of the Volunteer Army.”

After the war, Smith produced another surgical work: Manual of the principles and practice of operative surgery, which went through numerous editions between 1879 and 1887.

[3] “Dr. Stephen Smith Dies in 100th Year.” The New York Times, August 27, 1922, p. 28.

[4] Citizens’ Association of New York, Council of Hygiene and Public Health, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York Upon the Sanitary Conditions of the City (New York, NY: Appleton, 1865).

[5] Stephen Smith, The Care of Health and Life in the State of New York (New York, 1880)and idem, A State Board of Health. A Communication to a Member of the Legislature on Sanitary Organization and Administration in the State of New York (New York, 1880).

[6] “APHA Past Presidents.” https://www.apha.org/about-apha/executive-board-and-staff/apha-executive-board/apha-past-presidents, accessed November 2, 2020.

[7] Two examples:

On February 18, 1911, a dinner in honor of Smith’s 88th birthday took place at the Hotel Plaza. The Library holds both the program for the dinner and the speeches:

  • Dinner in honor of Doctor Stephen Smith and in celebration of his eighty-eighth birthday on Saturday evening, the eighteenth of February, one thousand, nine hundred and eleven at the Hotel Plaza (New York: Tiffany & Co., 1911).
  • Addresses in recognition of his public services, on the occasion of his eighty-eighth birthday, Feb. 19, 1911 (s.l., 1911).

Ten years later, the American Public Health Association published A Half Century of Public Health Jubilee Historical Volume of the American Public Health Association in Commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of its Foundation, New York City, November 14–18, 1921 (New York, 1921). The work began with Smith’s historical overview of public health. The commemorative medal has Smith’s portrait on the front, with this legend on the reverse:

To Commemorate the Semicentennial Meeting of the American Public Health Association 1872 – New York – 1922 Noteworthy because of the Participation of its Founder Dr. Stephen Smith Born Feb. 19, 1823.

[8] Stephen Smith. The City That Was (New York: Frank Allaben, 1911).