The Ryti Case: language, gender and the rules of the game in Finnish academic medicine in the 1920s

Abstract

This article focuses on a controversy that took place in the academic medical circles of Helsinki in c. 1925–1927. Among the main actors in this controversy was Elsa Ryti, MD, one of the first women to make herself a name in medical science in Finland. The controversy became public in early 1926 and was then discussed by the Board and the Council of the Finnish Medical Association. The dispute is historically interesting because of its capacity to disclose tensions, power structures and lines of power within the field of academic medicine. In order to understand the course and outcome of the controversy, it is necessary to take into account several intersecting lines of power: the asymmetrical distribution of power and knowledge at the university clinics, the acute language strife at the time between speakers of Finnish and Swedish, the tension between the clinic and the laboratory and, last but not least, the matter of gender.