Lydia Folger Fowler

Lydia Folger Fowler
Born Lydia Folger
(1822-05-05)May 5, 1822
Nantucket , Massachusetts, United States
Died January 26, 1879(1879-01-26) (aged 56)
London, England
Nationality American
Fields Eclectic Medicine
Alma mater Central Medical College, New York
Known for Second female physician in the United States

Lydia Folger Fowler (May 5, 1822 – January 26, 1879) was a pioneering American physician, professor of medicine, and activist. She was the second woman in America to earn a medical degree.

Biography

Lydia Folger was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1822, to Gideon and Eunice Macy Folger, a historic Massachusetts family descended from Peter Foulger (1618-1690). Lydia was the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Peter Foulger and Mary Morrill Foulger,[1] through them she was the first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin.[2] Other notable family members included her extended cousins Lucretia Coffin Mott and Maria Mitchell [1] and her paternal aunt Phebe Folger Coleman. Lydia was also a member of the Starbuck whaling family of Nantucket through her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Starbuck Folger (April 13, 1738 - 1821). Her mother was notably a member of the Macy family of Nantucket, who's descendents would later found Macy's department stores.

Folger married Lorenzo Niles Fowler, a phrenologist, on September 19, 1844, after meeting him at the house of her paternal uncle, Walter Folger, Jr., an "eccentric and famous astronomer-navigator in Nantucket".[3] The couple had three daughters.[1] Two daughters, Amelia (b. 1846) and Lydia (b. 1850), died young; the third daughter, Jessie Allen Fowler (b. 1856 or 1860), was born in 1860 and was, like her father, also a phrenologist.[1] Like his brother, Orson Squire Fowler, Lorenzo Fowler was a well-known phrenologist; the New York Times noted in his obituary that "Prof. Fowler examined the heads of many distinguished men, among them Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant, Baron Rothschild, Li Hung Chang, and Sir Henry Irving."[4]

Folger attended the Wheaton Female Seminary (Massachusetts) at 16 years, and began teaching there in 1842 at the age of 20.[1] After establishing a lecturing and writing career, she began medical school and earned an M.D. from Central Medical College in Syracuse, New York in 1850, one of eight women entering the first coed medical school in the country; fellow students included Myra King Merrick and Sarah Adamson Dolley.[1] At the time, the eclectic medical school was the only school to offer admission to women; eclectic medicine became popular with those seeking to avoid the harsher methods of then-current professional medicine, such as bloodletting.[5]

Lydia Folger Fowler graduated as only the second woman in America to earn a medical degree, following Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849.[1] Fowler was in fact the first American-born woman to earn a medical degree,[2] and also the first woman to appear before a male medical society.[6] She practiced medicine in New York from 1852 to 1860,[1] and later joined the faculty of Rochester Eclectic Medical College, becoming the first woman professor in a professional American medical school.[6]

Folger was active in women's rights organizations, and participated in the Seneca Falls Convention and presided over the Women's Grand Temperance Demonstration in Metropolitan Hall.[2] Elizabeth Cady Stanton later dedicated The History of Woman Suffrage (1881) to Folger.[2] Fowler also frequently lectured to audiences, primarily women, on matters of hygiene and health.[2] The New York Tribune in 1855 described one of Fowler's lectures, to a P.T. Barnum-sponsored program on motherhood:

She was dressed in a very broadly striped silk, which was anything but a bloomer. Her hair was done up in a French twist with curls in front. Her face is pleasant, she has sunny blue eyes and a sweet mouth. She waved an elegantly embroidered handkerchief as she read her lecture. Quite a number of the little exhibited [babies] were present and contributed their full share to the festivities, at times almost drowning her voice, which is scarcely strong enough for a lecturer.[7]

The Fowlers moved to London in 1863, and Fowler became active in the British Women's Temperance Association, as well as continuing her work practicing medicine and teaching women about health, education, and parenting.[1] Fowler became ill in late 1878 and died on January 26, 1879.[2] Fowler is buried at Highgate Cemetery in London (Plot 23701).[2][8]

Selected writings

Young adult audience
Treatises and Lectures on Health
Fiction and poetry

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Alice Dixon, "A Lesser-Known Daughter of Nantucket: Lydia", Historic Nantucket, Winter 1993/1994 (Vol. 41, No. 4; incorrectly labeled Vol. 43, No. 4), p. 60-62.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Wheaton graduate becomes doctor", Wheaton College (last visited Aug. 23, 2012).
  3. ↑ Marion Sauerbier, "Lydia Folger Fowler", Crooked Lake Review, Oct. 7, 1988.
  4. ↑ "Noted Phrenologist Dead: Lorenzo N. Fowler Succumbs to a Paralyzing Stroke" (obituary), New York Times, Sept. 4, 1896.
  5. ↑ Ruth Clifford Engs, Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform, p.71, "The Fowlers" in "Inherited Realities, Phrenology, and Eugenic Undercurrents". Greenwood (2001).
  6. 1 2 Elizabeth Silverthorne and Geneva Fulgham, Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine, "Introduction", p.xxii.
  7. ↑ "Wheaton graduate becomes doctor", quoting the New York Tribune, June 8, 1955.
  8. ↑ Dr. Lydia Folger Fowler at Find a Grave

Further research and reading

References
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