Lydia Folger Fowler (May 5, 1823[1] – January 26, 1879) was a pioneering American physician, professor of medicine, and activist. She was the second American woman to earn a medical degree (after Elizabeth Blackwell) and one of the first American women in medicine and a prominent woman in science. She married a phrenologist and her daughter, Jessie Allen Fowler, continued their ideas.
Lydia Folger was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1823,[1] to Gideon and Eunice Macy Folger, a historic Massachusetts family descended from Peter Foulger (1618–1690). Lydia was the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Peter Foulger and Mary Morrill Foulger.[2] Through them she was the first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin.[3] Other notable family members included her extended cousins Lucretia Coffin Mott and Maria Mitchell[2] and her paternal aunt Phebe Folger Coleman. Lydia was also a member of the Starbuck whaling family of Nantucket through her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Starbuck Folger (April 13, 1738 - 1821). Her mother was notably a member of the Macy family of Nantucket whose descendants would later found Macy's department stores.
Folger married Lorenzo Niles Fowler, a phrenologist, on September 19, 1844. Lydia Folger Fowler also gave herself the nickname of "Mrs. L. N. Fowler" to incorporate the initials of her husband into her name.[4] She met Lorenzo at the house of her paternal uncle, Walter Folger, Jr., an "eccentric and famous astronomer-navigator in Nantucket".[5] Lorenzo and his brother, Orson Squire Fowler, were well-known phrenologists; the New York Times noted in his obituary that "Prof. Fowler examined the heads of many distinguished men, among them Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Cullen Bryant, Baron Rothschild, Li Hung Chang, and Sir Henry Irving."[6]
Lydia and Lorenzo Fowler had three daughters.[2] Two daughters, Amelia (b. 1846) and Lydia (b. 1850), died young. The third daughter, Jessie Allen Fowler was also a phrenologist.[2] Lydia Fowler was the honorary secretary of the British Women's Temperance Association, and Jessie succeeded her mother in that position.[7] In 1896, Jessie accompanied her father when he returned to America and she became the editor of the Fowler's Phrenological Journal. Jessie inherited the company of Fowler and Wells after her father and aunt died in 1896 and 1901. She continued to write and died in 1932.[7]
EducationEdit
Folger attended the Wheaton Female Seminary in Massachusetts when she was 16 years old, and began teaching there in 1842 at the age of 20.[2] Lydia Folger and Lorenzo Fowler would attend conferences and lecture tours together. Lydia Folger would generally address female audiences. This time also marked the beginning of her writing career, as she published her first two books in 1847: Familiar Lessons on Physiology and Familiar Lessons on Phrenology. Lydia Folger Fowler's wrote her two-volume work as a way to teach other women how to teach phrenology to children.[8] Lydia gave many presentations where she would direct teachers and parents on how to teach their children to know themselves, as she believed children could work towards self-improvement with guidance.[8] After establishing a lecturing and writing career, she began medical school and earned an M.D. from Central Medical College in Syracuse, New York in 1850, one of eight women entering the first coed medical school in the country. Fellow students included Myra King Merrick and Sarah Adamson Dolley.[2] At the time, the eclectic medical school was the only school to offer admission to women. Eclectic medicine became popular with those seeking to avoid the harsher methods of then-current professional medicine, such as bloodletting.[9]
She became an appointed professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children at Central Medical College.[10] Central Medical College then dissolved in 1852.[11] Lydia Folger Fowler graduated as only the second woman in America to earn a medical degree, following Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849.[2] Fowler was, in fact, the first American-born woman to earn a medical degree,[3] and also the first woman to appear before a male medical society.[12]
She then went on to practice medicine in New York from 1852 to 1860,[2] and later joined the faculty of Rochester Eclectic Medical College, becoming the first woman professor in a professional American medical school.[12] During her time practicing, she conducted many gynecological exams and held her own surgery practice geared towards homeopathic practices.[7] In 1862, Fowler taught midwifery at the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College.[13] Lydia practiced medicine with the outlook that science could improve female roles as children's caretakers.[8] She used the knowledge gained through her medical education to help others overcome the obstacles women faced when working in the medical field.
Folger was active in women's rights organizations, and participated in the Seneca Falls Convention and presided over the Women's Grand Temperance Demonstration in Metropolitan Hall.[3]Elizabeth Cady Stanton later dedicated The History of Woman Suffrage (1881) to Folger.[3] Fowler also frequently lectured to audiences, primarily women, on matters of hygiene and health.[3] The New York Tribune in 1855 described one of Fowler's lectures, to a P.T. Barnum-sponsored program on motherhood:
She was dressed in a very broadly striped silk, which was anything but a bloomer. Her hair was done up in a French twist with curls in front. Her face is pleasant, she has sunny blue eyes and a sweet mouth. She waved an elegantly embroidered handkerchief as she read her lecture. Quite a number of the little exhibited [babies] were present and contributed their full share to the festivities, at times almost drowning her voice, which is scarcely strong enough for a lecturer.[14]
The Fowlers moved to London in 1863, and Fowler became active in the British Women's Temperance Association, as well as continuing her work practicing medicine and teaching women about health, education, and parenting.[2] Fowler became ill in late 1878 and died on January 26, 1879.[3] Fowler is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery in London (Plot 23071).[3]
PublicationsEdit
Young adult audienceEdit
Familiar Lessons on Physiology (1847, Fowler and Wells)
Familiar Lessons on Phrenology (1847, Fowler and Wells)
Familiar Lessons on Astronomy (1848)
Treatises and lectures on healthEdit
The Pet of the Household and How to Save It: Comprised of Twelve Lectures on Physiology (1865) (a childrearing manual comprising a dozen of Fowler's lectures on childcare)
Woman, Her Destiny and Maternal Relations; Or, Hints to the Single and Married (1864) (a feminist treatise)
How to talk – the Tongue and the Language of Nature (1864)
How to Preserve the Skin and Increase Personal Beauty (1864)
How, When, and Where to Sleep (186?)
The Brain and Nervous System: How to Secure their Healthy Action (186?)
The Eye and Ear, and How to Preserve Them (186?)
How to Secure a Healthy Spine and Vigorous Muscles (1864).
Fiction and poetryEdit
Nora: The Lost and Redeemed (1863 temperance novel)
^ abcdefghiAlice Dixon, "A Lesser-Known Daughter of Nantucket: Lydia", Historic Nantucket, Winter 1993/1994 (Vol. 41, No. 4; incorrectly labeled Vol. 43, No. 4), p. 60-62.
^ abcdefg"Wheaton graduate becomes doctor", Wheaton College (last visited August 23, 2012).
^Skinner, Carolyn (2014). Women Physicians and Professional Ethos in Nineteenth-Century America. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 80.
^Marion Sauerbier, "Lydia Folger Fowler", Crooked Lake Review, October 7, 1988.
^"Noted Phrenologist Dead: Lorenzo N. Fowler Succumbs to a Paralyzing Stroke" (obituary), New York Times, September 4, 1896.
^ abcClement, Mark (May 24, 2007). "Fowler, Lydia Folger". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55221. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ abcBittel, Caria (May 2013). "Women, Know Thyself: Producing and Using Phrenological Knowledge in 19th-Century America". Centaurus. 55 (2): 104–130. doi:10.1111/1600-0498.12015.
^Ruth Clifford Engs, Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform, p.71, "The Fowlers" in "Inherited Realities, Phrenology, and Eugenic Undercurrents". Greenwood (2001).
^Harris, Sharon M. (2009). Dr. Mary Walker: An American Radical, 1832-1919. Rutgers University Press. p. 10. ISBN9780813546117.
^Russett, Cynthia Eagle (1989). Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 21. ISBN0-674-80291-8.
^ abElizabeth Silverthorne and Geneva Fulgham, Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine, "Introduction", p.xxii.
^Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey. (1993). Women in Science: Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century : a Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p. 88. ISBN0-262-15031-X
^"Wheaton graduate becomes doctor", quoting the New York Tribune, June 8, 1955.
Further readingEdit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lydia F. Fowler.
Atwater, Edward C (2016). Women Medical Doctors in the United States before the Civil War: A Biographical Dictionary. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN9781580465717. OCLC 945359277.
"Lydia Folger Fowler", Encyclopædia Britannica
John B. Blake, "Lydia Folger Fowler", Notable American Women 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, Cambridge: Radcliffe College, 1971, Volume 2, pp. 654–655
Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Women Doctors of the World (1957), pp. 8–21.
Robert McHenry, ed., "Lydia Folger Fowler", Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present, Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1980, Volume 2, p. 139
"Fowlers", Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century, Chicago: American Publishers' Association, 1901, p. 277
The Daisy: A Journal of Pure Literature (1879 obituary)
"Lydia Folger Fowler" (obituary), Englishwoman's Review, February 15, 1879, pp. 82–83.
"Noted Phrenologist Dead: Lorenzo N. Fowler Succumbs to a Paralyzing Stroke" (obituary), New York Times, September 4, 1896.
"Wheaton graduate becomes doctor", Wheaton College
Peggy Baker, "The ‘First Family’ of Phrenology", August 2004
John Davies, Phrenology: Fad and Science (1955)
Alice Dixon, "A Lesser-Known Daughter of Nantucket: Lydia", Historic Nantucket, Winter 1993/1994 (Vol. 41, No. 4; incorrectly labeled Vol. 43, No. 4), p. 60–62.
Ruth Clifford Engs, "The Fowlers", Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform, Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, pp. 71–72
Stern, MB (June 1977). "Lydia Folger Fowler, M.D.: first American woman professor of medicine". N Y State J Med. 77 (7): 1137–40. PMID 327359.
Madeleine B. Stern, The Phrenological Fowlers (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971)
Frederick Clayton Waite, Dr. Lydia Folger Fowler : The Second Woman to Receive the Degree of Doctor of Medicine in the United States, Annals of Medical History, v.4, n.3, pp. 290–297 (May 1932) (New York, N.Y. : Hoeber, 1932)
Sue Young Homeopathy, "Lydia Folger Fowler"
October 16, 2023
lydia, folger, fowler, 1823, january, 1879, pioneering, american, physician, professor, medicine, activist, second, american, woman, earn, medical, degree, after, elizabeth, blackwell, first, american, women, medicine, prominent, woman, science, married, phren. Lydia Folger Fowler May 5 1823 1 January 26 1879 was a pioneering American physician professor of medicine and activist She was the second American woman to earn a medical degree after Elizabeth Blackwell and one of the first American women in medicine and a prominent woman in science She married a phrenologist and her daughter Jessie Allen Fowler continued their ideas Lydia Folger FowlerBornLydia Folger 1823 05 05 May 5 1823Nantucket Massachusetts United StatesDiedJanuary 26 1879 1879 01 26 aged 55 London EnglandAlma materCentral Medical College New YorkKnown forSecond female physician in the United StatesScientific careerFieldsEclectic Medicine Contents 1 Family life 2 Education 3 Career and professional involvement 4 Publications 4 1 Young adult audience 4 2 Treatises and lectures on health 4 3 Fiction and poetry 5 References 6 Further readingFamily life EditLydia Folger was born in Nantucket Massachusetts in 1823 1 to Gideon and Eunice Macy Folger a historic Massachusetts family descended from Peter Foulger 1618 1690 Lydia was the great great great great granddaughter of Peter Foulger and Mary Morrill Foulger 2 Through them she was the first cousin four times removed of Benjamin Franklin 3 Other notable family members included her extended cousins Lucretia Coffin Mott and Maria Mitchell 2 and her paternal aunt Phebe Folger Coleman Lydia was also a member of the Starbuck whaling family of Nantucket through her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Starbuck Folger April 13 1738 1821 Her mother was notably a member of the Macy family of Nantucket whose descendants would later found Macy s department stores Folger married Lorenzo Niles Fowler a phrenologist on September 19 1844 Lydia Folger Fowler also gave herself the nickname of Mrs L N Fowler to incorporate the initials of her husband into her name 4 She met Lorenzo at the house of her paternal uncle Walter Folger Jr an eccentric and famous astronomer navigator in Nantucket 5 Lorenzo and his brother Orson Squire Fowler were well known phrenologists the New York Times noted in his obituary that Prof Fowler examined the heads of many distinguished men among them Charles Dickens Edgar Allan Poe William Cullen Bryant Baron Rothschild Li Hung Chang and Sir Henry Irving 6 Lydia and Lorenzo Fowler had three daughters 2 Two daughters Amelia b 1846 and Lydia b 1850 died young The third daughter Jessie Allen Fowler was also a phrenologist 2 Lydia Fowler was the honorary secretary of the British Women s Temperance Association and Jessie succeeded her mother in that position 7 In 1896 Jessie accompanied her father when he returned to America and she became the editor of the Fowler s Phrenological Journal Jessie inherited the company of Fowler and Wells after her father and aunt died in 1896 and 1901 She continued to write and died in 1932 7 Education EditFolger attended the Wheaton Female Seminary in Massachusetts when she was 16 years old and began teaching there in 1842 at the age of 20 2 Lydia Folger and Lorenzo Fowler would attend conferences and lecture tours together Lydia Folger would generally address female audiences This time also marked the beginning of her writing career as she published her first two books in 1847 Familiar Lessons on Physiology and Familiar Lessons on Phrenology Lydia Folger Fowler s wrote her two volume work as a way to teach other women how to teach phrenology to children 8 Lydia gave many presentations where she would direct teachers and parents on how to teach their children to know themselves as she believed children could work towards self improvement with guidance 8 After establishing a lecturing and writing career she began medical school and earned an M D from Central Medical College in Syracuse New York in 1850 one of eight women entering the first coed medical school in the country Fellow students included Myra King Merrick and Sarah Adamson Dolley 2 At the time the eclectic medical school was the only school to offer admission to women Eclectic medicine became popular with those seeking to avoid the harsher methods of then current professional medicine such as bloodletting 9 She became an appointed professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children at Central Medical College 10 Central Medical College then dissolved in 1852 11 Lydia Folger Fowler graduated as only the second woman in America to earn a medical degree following Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849 2 Fowler was in fact the first American born woman to earn a medical degree 3 and also the first woman to appear before a male medical society 12 Career and professional involvement Edit nbsp Grave of Lydia Fowler in Highgate CemeteryShe then went on to practice medicine in New York from 1852 to 1860 2 and later joined the faculty of Rochester Eclectic Medical College becoming the first woman professor in a professional American medical school 12 During her time practicing she conducted many gynecological exams and held her own surgery practice geared towards homeopathic practices 7 In 1862 Fowler taught midwifery at the New York Hygeio Therapeutic College 13 Lydia practiced medicine with the outlook that science could improve female roles as children s caretakers 8 She used the knowledge gained through her medical education to help others overcome the obstacles women faced when working in the medical field Folger was active in women s rights organizations and participated in the Seneca Falls Convention and presided over the Women s Grand Temperance Demonstration in Metropolitan Hall 3 Elizabeth Cady Stanton later dedicated The History of Woman Suffrage 1881 to Folger 3 Fowler also frequently lectured to audiences primarily women on matters of hygiene and health 3 The New York Tribune in 1855 described one of Fowler s lectures to a P T Barnum sponsored program on motherhood She was dressed in a very broadly striped silk which was anything but a bloomer Her hair was done up in a French twist with curls in front Her face is pleasant she has sunny blue eyes and a sweet mouth She waved an elegantly embroidered handkerchief as she read her lecture Quite a number of the little exhibited babies were present and contributed their full share to the festivities at times almost drowning her voice which is scarcely strong enough for a lecturer 14 The Fowlers moved to London in 1863 and Fowler became active in the British Women s Temperance Association as well as continuing her work practicing medicine and teaching women about health education and parenting 2 Fowler became ill in late 1878 and died on January 26 1879 3 Fowler is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery in London Plot 23071 3 Publications EditYoung adult audience Edit Familiar Lessons on Physiology 1847 Fowler and Wells Familiar Lessons on Phrenology 1847 Fowler and Wells Familiar Lessons on Astronomy 1848 Treatises and lectures on health Edit The Pet of the Household and How to Save It Comprised of Twelve Lectures on Physiology 1865 a childrearing manual comprising a dozen of Fowler s lectures on childcare Woman Her Destiny and Maternal Relations Or Hints to the Single and Married 1864 a feminist treatise How to talk the Tongue and the Language of Nature 1864 How to Preserve the Skin and Increase Personal Beauty 1864 How When and Where to Sleep 186 The Brain and Nervous System How to Secure their Healthy Action 186 The Eye and Ear and How to Preserve Them 186 How to Secure a Healthy Spine and Vigorous Muscles 1864 Fiction and poetry Edit Nora The Lost and Redeemed 1863 temperance novel Heart Melodies 1870 book of poetry References Edit a b Fowler Lydia F Lydia Folger 1823 1879 a b c d e f g h i Alice Dixon A Lesser Known Daughter of Nantucket Lydia Historic Nantucket Winter 1993 1994 Vol 41 No 4 incorrectly labeled Vol 43 No 4 p 60 62 a b c d e f g Wheaton graduate becomes doctor Wheaton College last visited August 23 2012 Skinner Carolyn 2014 Women Physicians and Professional Ethos in Nineteenth Century America Southern Illinois University Press p 80 Marion Sauerbier Lydia Folger Fowler Crooked Lake Review October 7 1988 Noted Phrenologist Dead Lorenzo N Fowler Succumbs to a Paralyzing Stroke obituary New York Times September 4 1896 a b c Clement Mark May 24 2007 Fowler Lydia Folger Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed Oxford University Press doi 10 1093 ref odnb 55221 Subscription or UK public library membership required a b c Bittel Caria May 2013 Women Know Thyself Producing and Using Phrenological Knowledge in 19th Century America Centaurus 55 2 104 130 doi 10 1111 1600 0498 12015 Ruth Clifford Engs Clean Living Movements American Cycles of Health Reform p 71 The Fowlers in Inherited Realities Phrenology and Eugenic Undercurrents Greenwood 2001 Harris Sharon M 2009 Dr Mary Walker An American Radical 1832 1919 Rutgers University Press p 10 ISBN 9780813546117 Russett Cynthia Eagle 1989 Sexual Science The Victorian Construction of Womanhood Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press p 21 ISBN 0 674 80291 8 a b Elizabeth Silverthorne and Geneva Fulgham Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine Introduction p xxii Ogilvie Marilyn Bailey 1993 Women in Science Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century a Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography Massachusetts Institute of Technology p 88 ISBN 0 262 15031 X Wheaton graduate becomes doctor quoting the New York Tribune June 8 1955 Further reading Edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lydia F Fowler Atwater Edward C 2016 Women Medical Doctors in the United States before the Civil War A Biographical Dictionary Rochester NY University of Rochester Press ISBN 9781580465717 OCLC 945359277 Lydia Folger Fowler Encyclopaedia Britannica John B Blake Lydia Folger Fowler Notable American Women 1607 1950 A Biographical Dictionary Cambridge Radcliffe College 1971 Volume 2 pp 654 655 Esther Pohl Lovejoy Women Doctors of the World 1957 pp 8 21 Robert McHenry ed Lydia Folger Fowler Famous American Women A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present Springfield MA G amp C Merriam Co 1980 Volume 2 p 139 Fowlers Herringshaw s Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century Chicago American Publishers Association 1901 p 277 The Daisy A Journal of Pure Literature 1879 obituary Lydia Folger Fowler obituary Englishwoman s Review February 15 1879 pp 82 83 Noted Phrenologist Dead Lorenzo N Fowler Succumbs to a Paralyzing Stroke obituary New York Times September 4 1896 Wheaton graduate becomes doctor Wheaton College Peggy Baker The First Family of Phrenology August 2004 John Davies Phrenology Fad and Science 1955 Alice Dixon A Lesser Known Daughter of Nantucket Lydia Historic Nantucket Winter 1993 1994 Vol 41 No 4 incorrectly labeled Vol 43 No 4 p 60 62 Ruth Clifford Engs The Fowlers Clean Living Movements American Cycles of Health Reform Westport CT Greenwood Publishing Group 2001 pp 71 72 William Coleman Folger Folger Family Gideon Folger MS New England Hist Genealogical Society Marion Sauerbier Lydia Folger Fowler The Crooked Lake Review October 7 1988 Elizabeth Silverthorne et al Lydia Folger Fowler Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine 1997 p XXII Elizabeth Cady Stanton History of Woman Suffrage 1881 pp 178 181 476 478 489 492 519n 548n Stern MB June 1977 Lydia Folger Fowler M D first American woman professor of medicine N Y State J Med 77 7 1137 40 PMID 327359 Madeleine B Stern The Phrenological Fowlers Norman Oklahoma University of Oklahoma Press 1971 Frederick Clayton Waite Dr Lydia Folger Fowler The Second Woman to Receive the Degree of Doctor of Medicine in the United States Annals of Medical History v 4 n 3 pp 290 297 May 1932 New York N Y Hoeber 1932 Sue Young Homeopathy Lydia Folger Fowler Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Lydia Folger Fowler amp oldid 1167838434, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
