Jacobi, Mary Putnam

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JACOBI, Mary Putnam

Born 31 August 1842, London, England; died 10 June 1906, New York, New York

Also wrote under: Mary Putnam

Daughter of George Palmer and Victorine Haven Putnam; married Abraham Jacobi, 1873

The descendant of American Puritan families and the eldest of 11 children, at fifteen Mary Putnam Jacobi traveled to the first public high school for girls in Manhattan, where her writing received critical attention. Her story "Found and Lost" was published in the Atlantic Monthly when she was seventeen, while another, "Hair Chains," appeared there in 1861. The family expected Jacobi to be a writer, but she tended toward medicine.

In 1863 Jacobi was the first woman to receive a degree from the College of Pharmacy in New York City. Since no male medical school would accept women, Jacobi attended the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. Believing that only in Paris, where no woman had ever studied medicine, could she find proper training, Jacobi went there and fought to enter the École de Médicine. She supported herself by writing sketches, stories, and even a short novel for the New Orleans Times, the New York Evening Post, and both Putnam's and Scribner's magazines. Because she felt writing fiction took more from her and left her poorer, she began her prolific medical writing (printed in medical journals and collections) with a series of charming, literate medical letters from Paris.

Jacobi won a bronze medal for her thesis and graduated in 1871. Returning home one of the best-prepared physicians in America, she was ready to teach at the fledgling women's medical school of the New York Infirmary, to practice medicine, and to continue scientific research. From this point forward, Jacobi wrote no more fiction.

Jacobi married a prominent physician and had two children, but continued her profession. In 1896 came the onset of Jacobi's final illness. Brain tumors had been a subject of her medical writing, and she was the first to diagnose her own condition. Her description of her symptoms, published after her death, is a classic of medical literature.

All but one of Jacobi's magazine pieces were republished in Stories and Sketches (1907). The writing is graceful and lucid, with incident and character captured in concrete images. "Found and Lost" is a philosophical adventure story about a German who has found the source of the Nile, but loses it again when an American, seeking to commercialize it, goes with him. The best of this early writing, "Some of the French Leaders," presents incisive portraits of ineffectual politicians. A critic considered it "one of the ablest ever printed in an American magazine," with "intellectual grasp" and "grim and elucidating wit."

One of Jacobi's many interests was improving primary education. She taught her own daughter, afterward writing Physiological Notes on Primary Education and the Study of Language (1889). She believed experiments in geometry and science came first, then language—direct contact with things before symbols of things. Languages were to be taught three at once. The description of her experience is pertinent and interesting, but the rest is dated. A rare attempt at popularizing scientific material was her expansion in 1874 of her husband's book, Infant Diet. She felt the material deserved wider distribution, believing women wanted explanations as well as directions. Although some critics felt Jacobi's material was too unsparing of detail, demand for Infant Diet required annual editions for many years.

The remarkable Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation (1877), which won the prestigious Boyleston Prize from Harvard University, reflects classical background, research into medical literature, and questionnaires to women in all walks of life. Prepared with Jacobi's thorough, commonsense approach and literary flair, it should have forever retired the belief that women must inevitably withdraw from ordinary activity during menstruation. In the excellent historical overview, she points out that only in women have normal functions been considered pathological. Beliefs in temporary insanity, instability, or inability to make decisions during menstruation are demolished. Some of the medical theory is no longer valid, but the conclusions and recommendations are sensible, still pertinent, and thoroughly convincing.

Jacobi's writings about women's roles began with an article in the North American Review (1882), "Shall Women Practice Medicine?" In surveying the history of women in medicine, she noted it was not an innovation at all. Women practiced freely when medicine was unpaid. Her contribution to Century 's symposium on women in medicine (1891), part of the successful campaign to open the Johns Hopkins medical school to women, was followed by the extensive "Woman in Medicine," in Annie Nathan Meyer's pioneer compilation, Woman 's Work in America (1891). An erudite factual history, it is full of original views, such as her comparison of the arguments against male midwives and those against women physicians.

"Common Sense" Applied to Woman Suffrage (1894) combines history, clear dissection of the current situation, and incisive argument. "No one expected the vote to raise women's wages or drastically reform the social order," she wrote, "but what is…very seriously demanded, is that women be recognized as human beings." Her letter on "Modern Female Invalidism" (1895) comments: "Too much attention is paid to women as objects" while they remain "insufficiently prepared to act as independent subjects."

Despite her talent for imaginative literature, Jacobi wrote little fiction and stopped entirely before she was thirty. She was a pioneer in medicine, both as a woman and simply as a physician, while successfully combining marriage and a profession and doing humanitarian social work. Commenting on her Paris thesis, a French medical journal noted her "poetic form, which does not detract from the value of the statement." She excelled in clear, incisive writing on controversial topics. The voluminous medical writings are characterized by wit, clarity, and literate style.

Other Works:

De la graisse neutre et de les acides gras (1871). The Value of Life: A Reply to Mr. Mallock's Essay, "Is Life Worth Living?" (1879). On the Use of the Cold Pack Followed by Massage in the Treatment of Anaemia (with V. A. White, 1880). Essays on Hysteria, Brain-Tumor, and Some Other Cases of Nervous Disease (1888). Uffelman's Manual of Dietetic Hygiene for Children (edited by Jacobi, 1891). Found and Lost (1894). From Massachusetts to Turkey (1896). Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D.: A Pathfinder in Medicine (1925).

The papers of Mary Putnam Jacobi are at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bibliography:

Emerson, R., Journal of Ruth Emerson's Travels in Greece, 1895-1896 (1995). Hume, R. F., Great Women of Medicine (1964). Hurd-Mead, K. C., Medical Women of America (1933). Irwin, I. H., Angels and Amazons: A Hundred Years of American Women (1934). Marks, G., and W. K. Beatty, Women in White (1972). In Memory of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1907). Putnam, R., ed., Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1925). Reed, E.W., American Women in Science Before the Civil War (1992). Stille, D. R., Extraordinary Women of Medicine (1997). Truax, R., The Doctors Jacobi (1952). Creative Couples in the Sciences (1996).