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Show 171 1915 issue of the Relief Society Magazine.) Five years later (1873) Bathsheba Smith mentioned in a Retrenchment Association meeting that President Young had made a suggestion that a class for studying obstetrics be organized and that it should be comprised of three women from each ward in the city. Having already experience difficulty in getting the women to evince an interest in the subject, Relief Society officers made the suggestion a requirement, with Eliza R. Snow going a step further by telling the ladies that unless they wanted the men "flocking in to do something so perfectly within women's province, they had better go to the same schools and receive the same training." Arrington contended that even this did not bring the desired reaction and that only a "handful of courageous women responded to the call..." Ellis and Maggie Shipp and Romania Pratt were among those few. "The Mormon Church itself publicly endorsed the medical women in August 1878 when Ellis Shipp, Margaret Curtis Shipp, Romania Pratt, and Martha Paul were set apart by the Mormon elders to 5 practice medicine among the Saints." These women literally spearheaded the movement for professional training. Their grit and tenacity so inspired others that "The last quarter of the nineteenth century found Utah with a greater percentage of its women studying medicine than any other state or territory." Certainly, in the case of the Shipp family, Ellis' pioneering had a snowball effect. It produced three doctors in her generation |
