Samuel Gregory

Background

Samuel Gregory was born on April 19, 1813 in Guilford, Vermont.

Education

In 1840 he was graduated at Yale, receiving the degree of A. B. He received his master’s degree from Yale in 1845 and after 1853 added an honorary M. D. to his name.

Career

After graduation Gregory taught evening classes in English in manufacturing towns and in 1847 did at least one piece of hack writing, Gregory’s History of Mexico, which was issued that year, in paper covers, by F. Gleason of Boston.

During Gregory’s last year in college he had become interested in anatomy and physiology as a result of lectures delivered to the senior class by members of the medical faculty. He read further for himself along these lines, became interested in mesmerism as applied to the cure of disease, and in addition to his teaching lectured gratuitously in different parts of New England on educational and sanitary subjects.

During the summer and fall of 1847 he gave some public lectures in behalf of “the medical education of females” and urged the establishment of an institution for that purpose. For the remaining twenty-five years of his life he was active in the promotion of this cause. His primary objects were to educate women in the care of children for whom as mothers they were responsible; to train women in the care of the sick for whom intelligent nursing was necessary; and to give women missionaries some of the fundamentals of medicine that would be of special use to them in the mission field.

Later, he included in his scheme the full medical education of women so that they might “become thoroughly qualified Female Physicians, and thus be able to administer to their sex, and to enlighten them in relation to the principles of health, and the means of preventing and relieving sickness and suffering. ”

On November 1, 1848, after due announcement, the Boston Female Medical School, later the New-England Female Medical College, was opened with a class of twelve pupils.

At first there was but one lecturer, Enoch C. Rolfe, M. D. , “with occasional assistance by others, ” but the number was added to year by year, until in 1853 the faculty had seven members. From the beginning Gregory was secretary and chief executive officer, and for a period, professor of chemistry also. He wrote reports, contributed to periodicals, and published a number of pamphlets, one of which - Letter to Ladies, in Favor of Female Physicians for their own Sex - went through several editions and was especially influential in gaining subscriptions. He was also secretary of the Female Medical Education Society, organized November 23, 1848, with a membership of six to sustain the school and secure a hospital. Incorporated April 30, 1850, the Society claimed some fifteen hundred members in 1851. It was reorganized by act of the legislature in 1856, under the name New-England Female Medical College, and a board of trustees was created and empowered to grant the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In 1859 Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska was appointed to organize the clinical department. The school was a somewhat migratory institution, and it was not until 1870 that it was able to occupy a new college building of ample size on land acquired from the city. In 1872 Gregory died in Boston, of consumption.

Gregory attacked the medical profession in his early pamphlets, Man-Midwifery Exposed and Corrected (1848) and Female Mid-Wifery Advocated (1848), and thus aroused their antagonism.

Achievements

• Two years after Samuels death the school which he founded was merged with the Boston University School of Medicine, which became one of the first co-educational medical schools in the world.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Letter to Ladies in Favor of Female Physicians for Their Own Sex

    ( About the Book Women's studies examines women’s lives a...)

  • Gregory's history of Mexico. A history of Mexico from the earliest times to the present ... geographical view of the country ... state of society ... anecdotes and incidents of Mexican life, &c

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Man-Midwifery Exposed and Corrected

    (Throughout history, midwives have attended women during c...)

Views

He considered the microscope “one of those new-fangled European notions, ” and “pronounced against such innovations as thermometer, test-tubes, etc. , as proof of incapacity to recognize the ailments of patients”. Nevertheless, he built more firmly and wisely than he knew.

Connections

He was unmarried.