SARAH HACKETT STEVENSON WAS FIRST FEMALE MEMBER OF AMA

Highly Regarded Physician Was Ground-Breaker on Many Fronts

By Tom Emery

In the 1860s, few women graduated from college, and of those that did, most ended their careers when they married. But some, like Sarah Hackett Stevenson, managed a lifetime of professional achievement in a time of overwhelming oppression.

Stevenson, a member of the Illinois State University Class of 1863, became a highly regarded physician, and the first female member of the American Medical Society.

Born in present-day Polo, Ill. on Feb. 2, 1841, Stevenson attended Shimer College before graduating with honors at ISU in the fourth Commencement in school history. She then spent four years as a teacher in Bloomington, followed by teaching stints in the northern Illinois communities of Mount Morris and Sterling, where she was also the principal.

At some point, however, she decided on a career change. As a result, she settled in Chicago and studied anatomy and physiology at Woman’s Hospital Medical College, which was established in 1870 and later became part of Northwestern University.

In 1874, Stevenson graduated with highest honors. During her time there, she spent a year of study in London under the renowned anatomy expert Thomas Huxley.

Stevenson, who never married, then returned to Europe for postgraduate work in London and Dublin. At one point, she studied under Charles Darwin, who was famed for his theory of evolution. While she was overseas in 1874, Illinois Gov. John Beveridge named her as a delegate to the fourth International Sanitary Conference in Vienna, which addressed disease epidemics.

After a year abroad, Stevenson returned to Chicago and served as physiology chair of the Woman’s Hospital Medical College from 1875-80, concurrently teaching physiology and histology in the department. Later, she was a professor of obstetrics at the school. She was also elected as a member of the Illinois State Medical Society, and directed the society’s committee on progress in physiology.

**Editor’s Note: If you find the story here of value, consider clicking one of the Google ads embedded in the story. It costs you nothing but Google will give the website owner a few cents. This is a way to help support local news at no cost to the reader.

In 1876, she was an alternate delegate to the AMA convention in Philadelphia, and acted as a full delegate when a scheduled presenter could not attend. In turn, she was accepted as the first female member of the AMA. It was a quick departure from the AMA’s previous policy; just five years earlier, the group refused to discuss female membership.

Stevenson attended three more AMA conventions, chairing a special committee in 1878 for the advancement of physical sciences. The following year, she presented research on the sympathetic nervous system.

Back in Chicago, Stevenson became the first woman appointed to the State Board of Health for Illinois in 1893. She was also the first female physician on staff at the Cook County Hospital.

In 1880, she helped found the Illinois Training School for Nurses. Stevenson was also a consulting physician at Bellevue Place in Batavia, a facility for the mentally ill. For four months in 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of the assassinated President, had been confined at Bellevue.

A skilled writer and researcher, Stevenson published Boys and Girls in Biology, a volume for high school students based on her study under Huxley. In 1880, she published The Physiology of Women and eight years later, produced Wife and Mother: Or, Information for Every Woman, which advised women on pregnancy.

In 1893, Stevenson successfully lobbied the Chicago Woman’s Club to establish a safe home for women and children who needed shelter, but had no money.

Stevenson was forced to retire in 1903 from a cerebral hemorrhage. Her health deteriorated from there, and she spent the last year of her life in a coma before her death on Aug. 14, 1909.

Sarah Hackett Stevenson was one of many women among the early ISU graduates who left an imposing legacy, helping countless others with a myriad of professional and personal achievements.

Tom Emery may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.