<Begin Segment 33>

AI: And I was wondering if there were any other memorable incidents during your medical college years, during the training?

RI: During training? In, well, the first two years is mostly studying and book work and lectures. The last two years of medical school is training, going around to different hospitals and being exposed, maybe, many times just as observers, but then we were given actual training. And then we also went to Philadelphia General Hospital to do autopsies and that was sort of a, unpleasant kind of work, but then that way we were exposed to pathology, which is to see why people die. But at that time there was a big issue about tuberculosis and many of the students who were tuberculin negative -- when they, when we were admitted to school, right away they did tuberculin tests and then recorded as negative or positive. And probably most of us were negative, but by the time we graduated, almost everyone, maybe ninety-nine percent of the people turned positive because they were exposed to the germ, probably, we thought when we had to witness autopsies. But I was one of 'em who never turned positive. [Laughs] So I still claim that I was very healthy, or my immunity was very good. But that, those are some of the, the experiences that I recall in women's training.

But then another thing that occurred to me was that we had one lecture course in which a doctor -- and I'm not sure whether it was a male or a female doctor -- warned us that even if we are women doctors, "Don't pretend like you're a man and don't dress mannish and, you know, it's okay to be a female and not act like... just because you're a doctor doesn't have to be a male kind of profession and you could use your female assets for your profession." [Laughs] I remember that lecture course. And probably no other school would give such a lecture like that. I think it's because we were all women. So I remember that particularly.

AI: That is interesting. Well, I also was wondering if you, because that was such a long time ago, and attitudes, and even the laws have changed so much since then, if you could say a little bit about what the situation was then about birth control, and also abortions?

RI: I don't think that we discussed birth, abortions at all. I'm sure that it was legally -- illegal, so I don't think that there was any teaching about doing abortions or how we should feel about abortions. I think birth control was mostly using diaphragms, so there were no pills at that time. This is more than fifty years ago, so that was way before present teachings on birth control or abortions. All that came later.

AI: I was wondering if any of your teachers or professors had a positive attitude toward using a diaphragm or encouraged you to make that available to patients or whether it was rather, perhaps more negative or...

RI: You know, I don't think it was negative. I think that all the obstetricians taught us how to teach patients to use diaphragms. But other than that there was no other method, so there wasn't much choice.

DG: What about the alternatives like the present childbirth education, kind of...?

RI: I don't think there was too much emphasis on that at that time. I think a lot of that is more modern, after, but... most of the, most of my professors, teachers, were female physicians and I don't know if they themselves, lot of 'em probably were unmarried and did not have children themselves, but I'm not sure.

AI: Regarding the abortion, I was wondering whether there was any discussion about needing to possibly help save a woman's health or life perhaps after an illegal abortion. Perhaps it might appear that she had had a miscarriage or something like that... I was wondering if that came up at all?

RI: I don't remember any discussion like that, so probably it wasn't a very common or popular topic. We didn't, we didn't discuss those issues at that time, in those days.

DG: How many women's medical schools were there in the country at that time?

RI: I think that this was the only one.

DG: Only one?

RI: No, no other all-women. But this school subsequently became coeducational, like about, it might be about 1980. It became coeducational, mostly because funding from probably the U.S. government would not be available if it was just for women. It had to be available to both. So we became coeducational. And then...

DG: Was it a fairly old school at that time?

RI: Yes. Because I think that when I was there, the year after, they were celebrating maybe hundred-year anniversary, hundred, could be. So now it would be like hundred fifty years. But at the present it's not Woman's Medical College any more. The school has been merged into Drexel University. So it's the Department of Medicine at Drexel University, but it's called Hahnemann and Woman's Medical College of Drexel University, something like that. So I don't feel very close to that school anymore.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.