""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" November 16, 1995 - Episode 475 - Women of Achievement and Herstory compiled by Irene Stuber """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Continued from yesterday, the biographical highlights of Jo Baker, the medical savior of hundreds of thousands of babies who would otherwise have died in filth and poverty because of medical and social neglect: After her father died when she was 16, Sara Josephine Baker had to find a profession to earn a living. She chose medical school over the objections of family and friends. "Only the chorus of I-told-you-so's that would have greeted me kept me from dropping it all and going home," she said. Her medical practice in 1899 netted her $185 the first year so she went to work for the city. Because of the anti-female prejudices, she was assigned the terrible job of going from hovel to hovel in the tenemants in New York City to inspect for contagious diseases such as dysentery, small-pox, typhoid fever, etc. "This time I had let myself in for a really grueling ordeal. In my district, the heart of old Hell's Kitchen on the West Side, the heat, the smells, the squalor made it something not to be believed. I climbed stair after stair, knocked on door after door, met drunk after drunk, filthy mother after filthy mother and dying baby after dying baby." Dr. Baker recalled in her autobiography _Fighting for Life_. Her success in the slums, as well as apprehending Typhoid Mary twice, gained her the appointment as assistant health commissioner. Her all-male staff promptly resigned. She cajoled them back. Going door-to-door with a team of 30 nurses, Dr. Baker taught basic hygiene, nutrition, ventilation. She established free milk stations, devised a simple baby formula, created training for older children who had to care for younger when the mother went to work to earn food for the family, invented the "obvious but previously unthought- of, system of making baby clothes all open down the front." (Since babies had been strangling in the old-fashioned clothes, Metropolitan Life Insurance sent out 200,000 patterns of Dr. Baker's new baby clothes styles to their customers.) She also invented a method of safely packaging and administering silver nitrate solution used to prevent blindness at birth from gonorrheal infection. Under her guidance the infant mortality rate of 1,500 per week dropped to 300 and soon New York could claim the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. She retired in 1923 after all 48 states had copied her methods. A reluctant feminist at first, she found herself drawn into "the great struggle to get political recognition of the fact that women are as much human beings as men are." She was a member of the delegation that visited Woodrow Wilson in the White House to receive his official endorsement of the Nineteenth Amendment. Even with her huge accomplishments, she was not allowed to earn a doctorate in public health because she was a woman - although she was invited to be guest lecturer at the New York University Medical School. 11-16 Anniversaries ........................................... B. Nov. 16, 1853, Mildred Aldrich* wrote under H. Quinn as well as her own name. At 61 retired as a drama critic and moved to a hilltop residence in France that would overlook the plain where the Battle of the Marne would occur. Wrote several books about the battles, soldiers' experiences, and the war in general. Was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1922 for her war efforts. B. Nov. 16, 1869, Esther Pohl Lovejoy, physician, administrator, feminist. B. Nov. 16, 1899, Mary Margaret McBride from 1934 to 1954 conducted a radio show of astonishing and human interest facts and in 1940 was voted the most popular woman in radio. B. Nov. 16, 1945, Martine Van Hamel, dancer of the American Ballet, described as "a dancer with the wind of genius blowing through her." Event Nov. 16, 1994, Bernette Johnson was sworn in as the first black woman ever elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Quotes du jour ................................................ "Sexual liberation doesn't help a woman if she hasn't got economic liberation ...(and) psychological liberation...In some ways the old traditions protect women; it takes maturity and courage to be a woman today." -- Simone Veil, 1978. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>(C) 1995, All Rights Reserved, Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902, voice mail or fax, 501-624-5262 ID #300, or email irenestuber@delphi.com with comments and suggestions. Distribute verbatim copies freely with copyright notice for non-profit use. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting WOA.<<