Eliza Marie Mosher

Professor of Hygiene

Dean of Women

Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, whom the Board of Regents have just elected full professor of hygiene and women’s dean of the literary department, her duties to commence Oct. 1, 1896, is a graduate of the medical department, class of 1875. She has had a notable career. After graduation, she began the practice of her profession at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. In 1877 she was appointed by the governor of Massachusetts, a resident physician of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women. There she fitted up and conducted a hospital of 90 beds, with an additional nursery department of 60 beds.

In 1879 she visited London and Paris, in the study special medical subjects. On her return in 1880, Governor Long persuaded her to accept the position of superintendent of the reformatory prison. Her professional and administrative skills won her marked success in this difficult post. In 1884 she accepted the position of professor of physiology and resident physician at Vassar College, where she served three years to the eminent satisfaction of the students and the college authorities. But she preferred to resume the practice of her profession, and in 1887 settled in Brooklyn, N. Y., where she resided till now. She is an honored member of various medical associations and is held in high regard by the medical profession. She was one of the incorporators of the Chautauqua School of Physical Education and is now the first vice president of the school and lecturer on anatomy. She is an attending physician of the Wayside Home for Homeless Women in Brooklyn, a physician to the Young Women’s Christian Association, a lecturer on home nursing and personal hygiene at Brooklyn Red Cross Instruction and District Nursing Society, and a lecturer on physiology and Hygiene of the Missionary Training Institute, Brooklyn.

Dr. Mosher has been a frequent contributor to medical journals and is the author of numerous professional papers of value, presented to medical societies. She is a person of dignified bearing and an attractive personality. Through her lectures on hygiene and her personal counsel to the young women of the University, her services will be of the greatest value to them.

The Michigan Alumnus, February 1, 1896, Page 74

Eliza Marie Mosher – Commemorate Fifty Years of Service

Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, ’75m, Honored at Banquet Hundreds Gather to Commemorate Fifty Years of Service

DR. ELIZA M. MOSHER, ’75m First Dean of Women at the University and the Oldest Active Woman Doctor in America, was given a moving Tribute in New York City on March 25

More than 500 men and women prominent in different branches of the medical profession attended a dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City on the evening of March 25, in honor of Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, ’75m, in celebration of the completion of her fiftieth year in the active practice of medicine.

Dr. Mosher’s record is almost unique in the history of American medicine and certainly entitles her to rank as one of the most distinguished graduates of the University. She is at the present time the oldest active woman doctor in the United States and, although she is seventy-eight years of age, she declared at the dinner that she was growing younger rather than older and that the days of her active work in the medical field were by no means at an end.

Dr. Lewis Stephen Pilcher, ’62, ’66m, was the presiding officer at the dinner and, after prefacing his remarks by reading a telegram of congratulation from Dean Alfred H. Lloyd, Acting President of the University, said:

“The closing quarter of the 19th century and the opening quarter of the 20th century, a period of years that exhibit greater changes, accomplishments, advances, than have attended any similar period in the world’s history. To have borne a fitting and notable part throughout these years and at their close to having one’s own world to throng around one and to be the object of such a demonstration of regard and honor, what a satisfaction! What a great pleasure it gives each one of us to bring our particular tribute to this moment, each adding a special leaf to the chaplet with which our friend is crowned; individual flowers to the bouquet by which she is empowered.”

Dr. Pilcher introduced as toastmaster Dr. William Seaman Bainbridge, who conferred upon Dr. Mosher on behalf of the President and Trustees of the Seymour University of Denver the degree of Doctor of Science. Dr. Frederick Schroeder, Chairman of the committee, which arranged the dinner, presented her with a wristwatch on behalf of the guests, and Mrs. Edward H. Gross, Secretary-Treasurer of the dinner committee presented her with a bound volume of messages of congratulation sent to her from friends and associates throughout the world.

Dr. Bainbridge was followed by a list of speakers who gave feelingly the chapters in Dr. Mosher’s long story of accomplishment and service. Honorable Royal S. Copeland, ’89h, United States Senator from New York, told of her work at the University of Michigan where she was the first Dean of Women and Professor of Hygiene and Home Economics. Dr. Henry Noble MacCracken, President of Vassar College, spoke of her work as a resident physician and Professor of Physiology at Vassar College. Honorable Arthur S. Somers, President of the Chamber of Commerce of Brooklyn, N. Y., paid tribute to her services to the street-cleaning department of Brooklyn, declaring that so effective was the work accomplished by herself and her assistants that no citizen of Brooklyn dared to throw a newspaper or a cigarette butt in the streets lest he is detected in the act.

Among the other speakers were: Miss Jessie Hubbell Bancroft, Founder and Ex-President of the American Posture League; Dr. William Francis Campbell; Dr. John E. Jennings, President of the Kings County Medical Society; Dr. Esther Lovejoy, of the American Women’s Hospitals; Dr. Elizabeth Burr Thelberg, Resident Physician at Vassar College; Dr. Joseph E. Raycroft, Professor of Hygiene, Princeton University; and Elizabeth H. Perry, President of the Brooklyn Woman’s Club.

In her response, Dr. Mosher said in part:

“I have always been taught that in the next world, I shall have to give an account of the deeds done in the body. But I never imagined that I should come before such a tribunal in this life I see before me tonight those whose birth cry I was the first to hear. I also see before me many who first confided to me the new love that made their hearts beat fast and with whom I rejoiced at the marriage altar. There are those here with whom I have gone down to the brink of the valley of the shadow of death from which they came back again. College girls of mine are here too, from Vassar, the University of Michigan, and Adelphi. I see I before me many with whom I have had happy associations in church, club, and medical societies.

“I wish there were time even to mention even a few of the names of those who helped to build my memory mountains… President Angell began his great work at the University of Michigan in 1871, my first year there. More even than to that wonderful man am I indebted to Corydon L. Ford, my Professor in Anatomy. It was he who inspired me with such an interest in and love for the structure of the human body that I gave to the study it most of the first two of my four years in college… A mistaken notion has been widely promulgated in reference to the treatment we women students received from the University men at that time. Many of them became our best friends and half a dozen of us from the medical class accepted an invitation at the beginning of our last year to join an eating club consisting of a dozen men from all departments.”

After describing different phases of her work at Vassar and elsewhere, Dr. Mosher said:

“My next mountain of memory was reared at my dear Alma Mater. In 1896 President Angell called me back to inaugurate the work of a Dean of Women and to equip and organize work in the nearly completed Barbour Gymnasium for women. I was given a full Professorship in Hygiene and Sanitation in the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts, in addition to which I gave an hour course on Home Economics.”

The high esteem in which Dr. Mosher is held is proved by the fact that among the 500 guests who honored her at the banquet in New York were many who had traveled hundreds of miles to attend and representatives of the most prominent medical societies and associations in Greater New York.

The Michigan Alumnus, May 16, 1925,  Page 638