Rebecca Barnard, MD and Mary Vincent O’Callaghan, MD: Worcester’s Answer to the ‘Woman Question’: Th

Madeline Ryan, PhD

Portrait of Dr. O'Cahhaghan

Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, the entry of women into medicine was hotly debated in medical societies across the United States. The Massachusetts State Medical Society first confronted the debate in 1850, when Nancy Talbot Clark, a graduate of the Western Reserve Medical College of Cleveland, requested admission. Dr. Clark’s application was declined, and the MMS effectively tabled the question until 1873, when it sent notices to local medical societies throughout the state asking them to weigh in on the issue. In response, Oramel Martin of the Worcester District Medical Society proposed a resolution that “the wish of [the WDMS] is that women be admitted to all the rights and privileges of the Massachusetts Medical Society upon the same conditions as men.” (1) While the other members did not reject the resolution outright, Dr. Francis proposed an amendment that effectively neutered it, stating “that the present exigency demands no action on our part in regard to the admission of females into the Massachusetts Medical Society.” Dr. Woodward concurred, arguing that “this was only an attempt to drag the Woman Question into the [MMS] and so add another bone of contention for the medical profession.” The debate was finally resolved with a compromise, changing the words of the original resolution to state that the society “has no objection to” the admission of women – a less enthusiastic statement that reflected the contentiousness of the issue. The ambivalence and inertia surrounding the “Woman Question” persisted until 1884, by which time the United States was witnessing a “national trend toward the acceptance of women” in medicine. (2) That year, the By-Laws of the MMS were finally changed to allow female members. A little under a year later, on May 13, 1885, the WDMS admitted its first women: Dr. Rebecca Barnard and Dr. Mary Vincent O’Callaghan. (3)

Despite their exclusion from the local and state medical societies, by the 1880s women had been practicing medicine in Worcester for more than forty years. One of the first female medical practitioners in the city was Maria Ann Barnard, who operated a practice in partnership with her husband, Franklin Barnard, on Goddard’s Row for over two decades, beginning in 1838. (4) The Barnards were students of Dr. Samuel Thomson, whose “Thomsonian system” substituted botanical remedies for the harsh heroic measures that were the mainstay of allopathic medicine at the time. The decision of local and state medical societies to admit women was partly a strategy undertaken to distinguish “legitimate” physicians from the practitioners of “alternative” therapies, such as Thomsonianism, homeopathy, and hydrotherapy. Because of the restraints placed on women seeking a medical education, many turned to these “unorthodox sects,” which were more accepting of female practitioners than regular medical schools. (5)

Had she decided to pursue admission to one of the regular medical schools in New England, Maria Ann Barnard would likely have faced the same obstacles that plagued Harriot Kezia Hunt, who launched an unsuccessful campaign to gain admission to the lectures at Harvard’s medical school in the late 1840s. While the school’s dean, Oliver Wendell Holmes, saw no objection to Hunt’s attendance, the male medical students vociferously disagreed. All but one of the medical students signed a petition to block Hunt’s admission on account of her sex. (6) By the 1860s and 1870s, however, the tide had begun to turn in women’s favor. When she decided to pursue medicine following a twenty-year career in teaching, the Barnards’ daughter Rebecca (born in 1837) had a number of options that had not existed for the previous generation. There were now a handful of schools that offered a medical education to women, including the New England Female Medical College (est. 1848) and the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (est. 1850). However, both of these institutions struggled to secure well-trained faculty and proper facilities due to blacklisting by male physicians. The Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, opened in 1868, enjoyed a better reputation, thanks in part to the rigorous standards set by its highly educated founders, Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell. (7) This was the school that Rebecca Barnard chose to attend, graduating in 1878. She practiced in Worcester for several years before becoming one of the first two women admitted to the Worcester District Medical Society.

The second of those women, Mary Vincent O’Callaghan (born in 1859), had the additional distinction of being the first Catholic woman to practice medicine in Worcester. Like Barnard, she had worked as a teacher for more than a decade before pursuing a medical career and had a close relative who was a physician: her older brother Thomas, a graduate of Holy Cross and McGill Medical College. After graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1885, O’Callaghan joined her brother’s practice in Worcester. In 1897, the siblings took on an additional partner: their niece Clara P. Fitzgerald, who had been inspired by her aunt to attend the Woman’s Medical College. The three lived together on Trumbull Street along with Thomas’s wife; the household would later expand to include several other nieces and nephews. Mary V. O’Callaghan succeeded her brother as the official physician of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur; served as physician for the State Industrial School for Girls at Lancaster and as the medical examiner for the Worcester County Courthouse; and was one of the founding physicians of St. Vincent Hospital. She died in 1930 at the age of 78 in City Hospital of injuries sustained from being hit by a car. At the time of her death, she had been practicing medicine in Worcester for over 40 years. (8)

Dr. Barnard had a similarly illustrious career. Described as “a woman of great executive ability and strong character” who was “very generally and favorably known throughout the city,” she ran a “large and lucrative practice” out of her home in the ancient Baldwin Eaton House on Main Street. (9) Like many female physicians at the time, she was active in educational reform, serving as a member of the city’s school committee – a role that drew upon both her medical expertise and her two decades of experience as a teacher. While neither she nor O’Callaghan married, they never lacked for company – O’Callaghan with her large extended family, and Barnard with her long-term companion and “beloved friend” Louisa P. Claflin. Barnard died in 1905 at the age of 68.

Barnard and O’Callaghan were only two among many dozens of women who practiced medicine in Worcester in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dr. Myrtle Smith, who operated a medical practice on Main Street in the 1910s (later moving to Shrewsbury), wrote that the “early reputation of Worcester as an educational and enlightened center attracted … able and progressive women physicians,” who became “pioneers of medicine in New England.” (10) In the 1870s and 1880s, around 10% of the physicians listed in Worcester’s city directory were women, representing a diverse set of educational backgrounds, personal histories, and specialties. Some existed outside the realm of medical orthodoxy, including homeopaths, metaphysical and magnetic healers, “medical clairvoyants,” botanic physicians, and at least two “Indian doctresses.” Others pursued careers that aimed to match their male counterparts’ achievements in allopathic medicine. After graduating from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Caroline A. Osborne worked at Memorial Hospital and earned a PhD in biology from Clark University, writing her dissertation on the role of sleep in infants’ physical and mental development. (11) Mary Studley, a graduate of Worcester High School and the New York Infirmary, became a successful lecturer and writer on medical topics relating to girls and women, advocating physical exercise and practical clothing and arguing that women had the potential to be just as accomplished as men, should they be given the opportunity. Studley herself had been denied a position at Charity Hospital in New York City due to her sex, despite ranking higher than all but two male candidates. Her friends attributed Studley’s 1881 suicide to the “despondency” she suffered as a result of her stymied career. (12)

The Worcester State Hospital offered employment to several prominent female physicians in the fields of psychiatry and pathology. Beginning in 1885, the hospital recruited women to head the female department of the institution. Emma W. Mooers served as the assistant pathologist at the WSH from 1897-1902; she later studied under Emil Kraepelin and Aloysius Alzheimer in Germany and became the custodian of the neuropathological collection of Harvard Medical School. (13) Women occupied the ranks of physicians at Memorial Hospital and City Hospital, and female homeopaths worked at Worcester’s Hahnemann Hospital.

While the majority of physicians – both men and women – were white, at least one woman of color practiced medicine in Worcester during this time period. Dr. Mary Schuyler may have been the first black woman physician in the city. Born in New York State in 1834, Schuyler came to Worcester in the late 19th century to join her daughter, Luella Coshburn, who operated a successful salon and retail store out of Barnard, Sumner, & Putnam. It is unclear where she received her training; given the obstacles to black women’s medical education, it is likely that she learned the practice of medicine from lay practitioners in her community. According to a contemporary news article, Dr. Schuyler was “well known” in Worcester “on account of the great work she has done among the poorer people of her race.” (14)

The admission of women into the Worcester District Medical Society in 1885, while an important achievement, represents just one point in the long timeline of the history of women in medicine in Worcester. Even before Maria Ann Barnard and her husband opened their joint practice in 1838, countless women – their names largely lost to history – took part in traditional, everyday practices of healing, nursing, and midwifery. With the professionalization of medicine that began in the mid-19th century, male physicians began a concerted effort to delineate the boundaries of “legitimate” medicine, thereby delegitimizing the many forms of healing practiced by women and relegating female practitioners to the sidelines. Nevertheless, women continued to strive to gain recognition and forge careers as medical practitioners, both inside and outside of medical orthodoxy. Worcester offered an environment that was relatively welcoming to female practitioners, enabling many to build flourishing practices. These practitioners played a crucial role in proving women’s aptitude as physicians, contrary to contemporary notions that depicted them as ill-suited to the profession, and thus forged the path for generations to come.+

References + Footnotes:

WDMS, Worcester Historical Museum. “Admission of Women,” Minutes of the Worcester District Medical Society, 9 July 1884, Collection of the WDMS, Worcester Historical Museum.

1. “Dr. Martins’ resolution in favor of admitting women,” Minutes of the Worcester District Medical Society, 12 March 1873, Collection of the

2. Kirschmann, Anne Taylor (1999). “Adding women to the ranks, 1860-1890: A new view with a homeopathic lens.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 73 (3): 429-446.

3. “Censors’ Meeting,” Minutes of the Worcester District Medical Society, 13 May 1885, Collection of the WDMS, Worcester Historical Museum.

4. Obituary: Maria A. Barnard. Undated newspaper clipping, Worcester Historical Museum.

5. Kirschmann 1999.

6. Notably, that same year, only 2/3 of the students petitioned to block the admission of three black male applicants, suggesting that sexual discrimination in medicine was even more pronounced than that of race. Glenn, Myra C. 2017. Women’s struggles to practice medicine in antebellum America: The troubled career of Boston physician Harriot Kezia Hunt. The New England Quarterly, 90 (2): 223-251.

7. Borst, Charlotte G. and Kathleen W. Jones. 2005. As patients and healers: The history of women and medicine. OAH Magazine of History 19 (5): 23-26.

8. Obituary: Mary V. O’Callaghan. Boston Globe, 1 November 1930: 13.

9. Crane, Ellery Bicknell. 1907. Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Worcester County, Massachusetts. Lewis Publishing Company, New York: 349.

10. Smith, Myrtle. Pioneer women physicians made Worcester home. Worcester Evening Gazette, 11 April 1914: 5.

11. 1910. Clark University Register and Twenty-Second Official Announcement. Worcester, Massachusetts.

12. A woman ruled out on account of her sex. Wilmington Morning Star, 29 May 1872: 2. Our girls. Lake County Star, 27 August 1874: 1. Suicide of Mrs. Mary L. Studley. Boston Globe 7 May 1881: 4.

13. 1911. Obituaries: Emma W. Mooers, MD. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal CLXIV (23): 835.

14. Dodson, N. Barnett. Mrs. Coshburn’s rare privilege: Former Whitehall (NY) girl who married Walter M. Coshburn occupies influential place in the business life of Worcester. Illinois Recorder 22 January 1910: 1.