[Marxism] Pioneer Woman Physician - And a Leader in Fight for Women's Equality

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Unfortunately this three-week exhibit is over. It included  
information and stills from the 1952 movie "Girl in White" starring  
June Allyson as well as newspaper and magazine articles on Dr.  
Barringer. (These are also available to people with access to  
ProQuest.) However the summary description of it below is an  
excellent short biography.

Dr. Emily Barringer, RN Sue Dauser, and attorney Dorothy Kenyon  
played key roles in establishing equality of rank and pay for women  
during WWII.

Brian Shannon

===================

The title of the exhibit, From Bowery to Hollywood: Emily Dunning  
Barringer, MD, Fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine, is derived  
from Barringer’s 1950 autobiography, Bowery to Bellevue: The Story of  
New York’s First Woman Ambulance Driver. She wrote her memoir at the  
age of 74, covering the first 28 years of her life, from her birth in  
1876 on her parent’s estate in Scarsdale, New York, through 1904,  
when she completed her training as a doctor and married Dr. Benjamin  
Barringer. In her book, Barringer relates the compelling story of her  
desire to become a doctor at a time when few women aspired to such a  
vocation, and her fight to obtain the same medical residency and  
training opportunities as were available to men. Her story was made  
into the 1952 Hollywood film, Girl in White, starring June Allyson.  
[Some highly favorable reviews on IMBD
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044663/usercomments]

Barringer grew up in a well-to-do New York family that fell on hard  
financial times when she was eight years old. As a result of their  
circumstances, the daughters of the family, who were being raised to  
marry well, faced the need to pursue careers instead. While  
Barringer’s mother accepted their new and difficult situation, she  
was determined that her daughter Emily would attend college rather  
than become apprenticed to a craftsperson. When Barringer came of  
age, it was unusual for a woman to attend college, but, fortunately  
for her, her uncle Henry Sage was a founder of Cornell. He arranged  
for her to attend his progressive co-educational university and paid  
her tuition. After graduating from Cornell, Barringer chose to attend  
the College of Medicine of the New York Infirmary, the only medical  
school in New York City open to a woman apart from a homeopathic  
college. The College of Medicine was founded by three equally  
pioneering women, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and Dr. Mary Putnam  
Jacobi – Barringer’s mentor and the first female Fellow of The New  
York Academy of Medicine.

In Barringer’s sophomore year, the College of Medicine merged into  
the new Cornell University School of Medicine, and so she acquired an  
excellent foundation as a doctor, only to realize as graduation  
neared that few opportunities for residency training were available  
to women. Their senior year, the men in her graduating class took a  
special course to prepare them for competitive residency exams, but  
the women did not, as they were not admitted as residents to general  
hospitals. The women instead trained at hospitals for women and  
children or in the private practices of individual doctors. In her  
autobiography, which is on display, Barringer admits that she “would  
not be satisfied to accept an appointment in one of the hospitals for  
women physicians, if there was any chance of obtaining an internship  
in a general hospital.”

Barringer lobbied successfully to join the men in the highly rigorous  
“Hospital Quiz” course that prepared them for their exams and, even  
though she had no chance of gaining a general hospital residency  
appointment, she sat for the exam. Although she received the top  
score in her class, she discovered this only by accident over thirty  
years later. She began training with Dr. Mary Jacobi Putnam in her  
private practice and on Putnam’s advice, sat for the residency exam a  
second year, this time gaining one of four training spots at New York  
City’s Gouverneur Hospital. Medical training then entailed serving as  
an ambulance surgeon, and in her memoir, Barringer describes becoming  
a physician through caring for the suffering immigrant populations of  
New York’s Lower East Side, which is where Gouverneur is still  
located. She also tells of the hazing she endured from her male  
colleagues.

The display cases offer early 20th century pictures of the young Dr.  
Barringer on a horse-drawn ambulance in New York City, along with  
copies of newspaper and magazine articles about her, her  
autobiography, and memorabilia related to the movie Girl in White.  
But, as other items in the exhibit reveal, her triumphs as a young  
medical student and doctor-in-training merely preceded a trailblazing  
career as a physician and activist. A practicing gynecologist,  
Barringer wrote about venereal disease in women at a time when the  
subject was seldom discussed, cared for female prisoners at a time  
when they were not considered worthy of medical attention, and,  
during the Second World War, successfully lobbied for female medical  
personnel to be admitted into the Armed Forces as doctors and nurses.  
Papers, photos, and articles from these varied and impressive sides  
of Barringer’s long life – she died in 1961 at the age of 85 –  
provide much food for thought.

IN FULL AT
https://www.nyam.org/news/2653.html




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