Eliza Maria Mosher (October 2, 1846 – October 16, 1928) was a United States physician, inventor, medical writer, and educator whose wide-ranging medical career included an educational focus on physical fitness and health maintenance. She was the first Dean of Women at the University of Michigan, and the first woman professor to be recognized by the university.
Early years and education
Eliza Maria Mosher was born near Cayuga Lake, New York in 1846. Her parents were members of the Society of Friends, and she was brought up under the influences of that religious denomination. Her paternal grandfather settled in Cayuga County, New York, and her maternal in Madison County, New York, when that portion of the state was yet a wilderness, and both became large land owners, and throughout their lives were men of influence in the localities in which they lived. Her mother was a woman notable for Christian character, for self-possession, and for ability to act in emergencies, and the daughter remembers more than once in her childhood having seen her mother sew up gaping wounds and apply bandages to injured parts without waiting for the doctor (who lived several miles away) to be brought. It is not strange that the daughter of such a woman should at an early age have manifested qualities which indicated her fitness to be a physician. Between the ages of twelve and twenty-two, eight deaths occurred in her immediate family, some of them preceded by long illnesses. It was these events, without doubt, that awakened the interest in the subject of pathology which eventually led her into her life-work. Her ancestors were from England and Wales, and of Mayflower stock.
Her preliminary education was received at the Friends' Academy in Union Springs, New York from which she graduated in 1862; and under private tutors.
Over the objections of friends and family, the study of medicine was begun by her in Boston, in 1869, as an intern apprentice under the direction of Dr. Lucy Ellen Sewall, at that time resident physician at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. After a year, she was forced to suspend her education to nurse her mother, who had breast cancer.
She entered the Medical Department of University of Michigan in 1871, arranging for herself a graded course which should require three years instead of the two usually taken. At the beginning of her second year, she was asked to serve as Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy and Quiz Master for freshmen, which she did, giving up the year mainly to that work, and allowing herself a fourth year of study before graduation. The third year of her course was spent in New York City in clinical study and attendance upon lectures at Elizabeth Blackwell's Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. She also worked two summers in the wards of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, serving as an undergraduate intern. She graduated at the University of Michigan in 1875, with an M.D.
Career
After completing her education, she opened a practice in Poughkeepsie, New York where she became a member of the city and county medical societies.
Upon the opening of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women in 1877, she was called to the position of resident physician, receiving her appointment from the governor of the state. There she fitted up and successfully conducted a hospital of ninety beds, with an additional nursery department of sixty beds. In 1879, she went to London, and studied at the University of Paris School of Medicine in Paris from 1879 to 1880, to pursue the study of special subjects. Upon her return to this country a year later, the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison was without a superintendent, and Governor Long induced her to take the position, “at least until another woman should be found who was fitted for the difficult place.” Reluctantly turning aside from the work of her choice, she devoted herself to the reorganization of the prison, which at that time had about 375 inmates, with a corps of about 40 employés. Her success as an organizer here was very marked, and her work left a lasting impress upon the discipline of the prison. She became so much interested in the development of its possibilities that she remained at its head nearly three years.