Alice Bennett, M.D., Ph.D.: A Woman of Firsts.

Abstract

The 19th century witnessed the proliferation of asylums and awareness that femalepatientsmight best be treated by female doctors. TheWoman’s (originally Female)Medical College of Pennsylvania had been graduating female physicians since before theCivilWar.Dr.HiramCorson, a leadingMontgomery County physician, was eager to see them employed in mental asylums.AliceBennett, a schoolteacher fromWrentham,Mass., obtained her degree from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1876. She enrolled in the auxiliary school at the University of Pennsylvania to study anatomy. Meanwhile, she offeredcare topoorwomen inPhiladelphia and taught anatomy at the Woman’s Medical College. In 1880, she became the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Bennett was surprised when Dr. Corson offered her a position as resident physician (essentially medical superintendent) at the women’s department of the new asylum in Norristown in 1880. She accepted andbecame thefirstwoman in America to assume psychiatric leadership; others soon followed.While learning on the job during her 16-year tenure, Dr. Bennett developed a reputation for the humane care of patients, for the nonuse of restraints, and for explainingwomen’s abnormal behavior in legal cases. Her testimony in the 1888 trial of triplemurderer SarahWhitelingwas an early, if not the first, appearance of a female physician applying psychiatry to the law. Already prominent in Pennsylvania medicine, in 1889 Dr. Bennett set out to attend the meeting of the state medical society inPittsburghwhen sheheard the announcement of the Johnstown Flood. The probability of widespread psychological effectspropelledher intoaction,as shemadeherway to the disaster scene, seeking women in distress. In effect, she was a psychiatric first responder to a disaster, and she was cited accordingly by Cambria County. EndorsedagainbyDr.Corson,Dr.Bennett became thefirst female president of a medical society (Montgomery County) in 1890. Dr. Corson was so devoted to Dr. Bennett and to the promotion of women in medicine that he arranged for Thomas Hovenden to paint her portrait (shown here). Disenchanted with scrutiny of her participation in ovariectomy for some psychiatric conditions, she resigned from the asylum in 1896. The coda to her psychiatric career was her position as personal physician to the mentally ill daughter of industrialist CyrusMcCormick for 4 years. After disappearing from medical practice until 1910, Dr. Bennett reemerged in New York City, where she delivered over 2,000 babies at the Blackwells’NewYork Infirmary forWomenandChildrenuntil her death in 1925.