Dixon Jones, Mary Amanda (1828–1908)

American physician. Name variations: Mary Dixon Jones. Born Mary Amanda Dixon, Deb 17, 1828, in Dorchester Co., Maryland; died 1908 in NY; dau. of Noah and Sarah Turner Dixon; graduate of Wesleyan Female College, 1845; studied medicine with Henry F. Askew and Thomas E. Bond Jr., a prominent Baltimore physician; graduate of Hygeio-Therapeutic College in NY, 1862; m. John Q.A. Jones (lawyer), 1854; children: 3, including Charles Jones (physician).

One of the 1st American women physicians to become a successful gynecological surgeon and the 1st American surgeon to perform a successful hysterectomy for fibroid tumors (c. 1887), established successful private practice in Brooklyn, NY; at 44, enrolled at Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, graduating with highest scores in school's history (1873); attended Emeline Cleveland's lectures; completed a 3-month preceptorship with Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi; employed as chief medical officer of Women's Dispensary and Hospital in Brooklyn (1882); after a trip to Europe to study operations with physician son Charles (1886), performed a new method to successfully remove cancerous uterus (c. 1887); became editor of Woman's Medical Journal; involved in the sensational case, People vs. Mary A. Dixon Jones and Charles Dixon Jones, Physicians (1890), which, though unfounded, permanently scarred her reputation; with help of surgeon and microscopist Charles Heitzman, discovered cancer of uterine lining (endothelioma) and cancer of the ovary (gyroma, 1876).