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Show Chapter 8 UTAH'S NINETEENTH CENTURY WOMEN IN MEDICINE Nursing, as a precursor to a career in medicine for women in Utah, had a very early beginning. An editorial in the August, 1915 Relief Society Magazine places its aegis in Nauvoo with the Prophet Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma. Almost as soon as people arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, efforts were made toward health care on an organized basis. Dr. Willard Richards, in 1849, established a "Council of Health" in his home. There he taught a class of young women including Zina D. Young, Prescinda H. Kimball, Susannah Liptrot Richards (wife of the doctor), and Emmeline B. Wells. Is it any wonder then that, as these women matured and held administrative posts in the Relief Society, they supported Brigham Young's recommendations to secure specialized training in medicine for women, and then spearheaded that movement? The Relief Society Nurse School, organized in 1900, gave women "a season's class work in the fundamentals of nursing." This school, sponsored by the Relief Society, was taught successively [perhaps without remuneration as a Relief Society calling] by Maggie, by Romania, and by Ellis. Ellis, in 1907, the one year she is said to have taught the school, graduated 33-all of whom passed their state board examinations. |
