Dr. Florence Sabin, ca 1922

Dr. Florence Sabin (1871-1953) was one of the first women doctors to build a career as a research scientist.

Sabin was interested in math and science from the beginning. She attended Smith College, where she majored in zoology. One of her professors encouraged her to study medicine at Johns Hopkins new co-educational medical school.[1]

Sabin worked for three years as a high school teacher before she had enough money to pay the tuition for her first year of medical school.  She entered the program in 1896, one of fourteen women in a class of forty-five.[2] While still a student, she made a model of a baby’s brain stem that would be used in medical textbooks for years to come. She graduated with honors in 1900 and then served three internships .

She went on to have a spectacular career of “firsts.” In 1902 she became an assistant professor of embryology and histology[3] at Johns Hopkins, the first faculty position to be held by a woman. She was promoted to associate professor in 1905 and to full professor in 1917—again the first woman to hold either position. She was the first woman president of the American Association of anatomists in 1924 and the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1925. That same year, she left Johns Hopkins to join the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research as head of the Department of Cellular Studies. She was—you guessed it—the first woman to be a full member of the Rockefeller Institute.

Sabin was dubbed “the [ahem] First Lady of American Science.” During her years at Johns Hopkins, she did pioneering work on the development of the lymphatic system, overturning accepted knowledge, and perfected the technique of supravital staining, which allows scientists to observe the structures of living cell tissue. At the Rockefeller Institute, she led research on the pathology of tuberculosis. She made major contributions to medical knowledge at both institutions.  It was a solid career by any standard.

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In 1938, at the age of 67, Dr. Sabin retired and moved back to Denver, where she had spent part of her childhood. She planned to spend her time reading, studying, and taking road trips in the mountains with her sister, who had also recently retired, after forty years teaching math in the Denver public schools.  ( I must say sounds pretty wonderful.)  Instead she found herself on a crusade to improve public health conditions in Colorado.

Sabin did not go looking for the cause, it came to her.

Out of 20 major causes of death in the United States, Colorado exceeded the national average in 13, including diphtheria, bubonic plague, typhoid and tuberculosis. . Many of those deaths were the result of inadequate laws controlling waste disposal and milk inspection.

Politicians in Colorado knew that conditions were bad in the state, but they had no interest in changing public health laws, which had last been updated in 1897 . Local health officials were patronage positions, generally appointed as a reward for political loyalty without regard for medical qualifications. Even if local officials raised concerns about conditions lobbyists for the mining, meat packing, and dairy industries, all of which had considerable power, ensured that expensive new laws were not enacted.

When the governor asked Sabin to head a committee to inspect health conditions in the state in 1944, he did not expect the retired scientist to do more than hold a few meetings, file a report, and go away. Apparently he hadn’t bothered to look learn anything about Dr. Sabin before he appointed her.

Sabin began by collecting data. She visited every county in the state, inspecting dairy floors and the public drinking water supply. Appalled at what she found, she drafted a group of health bills that required milk be pasteurized, sewage be treated, and patronage appointees in the local health offices be replaced with trained medical professionals.

The lobbies fought back. Legislators buried her bills in committees and walked out when she spoke at the capitol.

When the legislature failed her, Sabin drove across the state stirring up support for health reforms. Her motto was simple, “Health to match our mountains.” She spoke at town hall meetings and grange halls.[4] (When a group of local politicians told her they didn’t have the budget to treat sewage, she pulled a jar of local, unfiltered water out of her bag and set it on the table in front of them.) More importantly, she met with women’s clubs, church groups and parent-teacher associations, telling women about the health risks to their children. She talked about sewage, contaminated milk and high rates of preventable deaths.Thousands of letters from angry mothers poured into the capitol. Harder to ignore, politicians who actively opposed the Sabin Health Bills were voted out of office in 1946.[5] The Sabine Health Bills passed in 1947. Colorado became a model of public health.

Sabin retired for a second time in 1951, at the age of eighty. (None of my sources say how she spent her time but I doubt if she sat on the porch doing nothing.) In October 1953, she died of a heart attack just before her 82nd birthday.

[1] A medical school had been part of the original plan for Johns Hopkins, but a major loss in the university’s endowment meant the medical school was put on hold. A group of prominent Baltimore women who believed in higher education for women, led by philanthropist Mary Elizabeth Garrett, raised money to help finance the school, with two radical conditions. The first was that women were accepted as students. The second was that the school be a full-fledged graduate program, with the requirement that all applicants had to have bachelor’s degrees with a core of science classes and a reading knowledge of French German, the major scientific languages of the day. The academic requirement was an even more extreme change than the admission of women.   (There may be a rabbit hole with Garret’s name on it in my future.)

[2] Opening the doors is only the first step. Something many of us found out in the 1970s and 1980s.

[3] I assume I’m not the only person in the Margins who doesn’t know what histology is. I looked it up, so you don’t have to: Histology is the study of the microanatomy of cells, tissues and organs. In other words, the stuff you can only see with a microscope. You’re welcome

[4] For those of you who don’t know, The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, commonly known as The Grange, was founded in 1867 to help rural America recover from the devastation of the Civil War. “Grangers” fought against discriminatory railroad pricing, established local buying cooperative, and advocated for rural mail delivery. Local grange halls were often the social heart of rural communities, and the perfect place for Sabin to make her pitch.

[5] A useful reminder that political change is often driven by activism at the local level.

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Come back on Monday for three questions and a couple of answers with historian Lorissa Rinehart.