With high hopes: women contract surgeons in World War I

Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Summer, 2002 by Mercedes Graf

She continued her army work for the next four and one-half months at the U. S. Army General Hospital No. 28, Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Again she was in charge of anesthetics in as many as six operating rooms in the morning and usually two or three in the afternoons. In addition, she supervised a staff that took their "gas-oxygen apparatus" to the wards so they could change anywhere from 10 to 15 painful dressings a day. When her contract ended in October of 1919, she returned to Rush where she became a clinical instructor in surgery (anesthetics) until 1925.

While Haines, like many women physicians, knew how to garner male support in order to reach her goal, Dr. Kate B. Karpeles did not have to look far for such encouragement and help. (22) She was fortunate to have a physician for a father. More than anyone else, he was aware of the demands of a medical career, yet he encouraged her to study medicine when she announced her intentions. She chose to study at Johns Hopkins University which was not only known for maintaining the highest possible entrance requirements, but it became the first medical school in America to require a bachelor's degree for admission. Although she earned her medical degree in 1914, Karpeles had great difficulty in obtaining an internship because she was a woman. (23) Ultimately she became the first female to intern at Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington D.C. For a graduate of Johns Hopkins, however, this was considered a step down in the quality of her training. (24) Undeterred as always, she also earned the distinction of being the first woman to be appointed as a contract surgeon with the army. In postwar years she became president of the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) where one of her goals was to increase its membership. (25)

In 1900, Dean Rachel Bodley of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania observed that few graduates had abandoned practice because of marriage. (26) Women physicians also had a comparatively high marriage rate when compared to other professionals who were employed in social work, law, nursing, and college teaching. This situation remained relatively unchanged until World War II when other professional women began to catch up with them. (27) Thus, in the accounts regarding women physicians who served in the army, Red Cross, or with the American Women's Hospitals or elsewhere during WWI, quite a few of them were married. This also suggests that women physicians were successful in combining the role of wife and mother with a medical career since they continued their employment after marriage.

Because a war was going on when these women physicians signed their army contracts, it is not surprising to learn that some of their husbands were in the Armed Forces. Dr. Esther Cumberland Kratz was married to a chief machinist's mate in the Navy during WWI. Since he was stationed in Washington D.C. and she was working in Syracuse, New York, at the time, she resigned from her job in order to be with him. When she learned that doctors were needed at the attending surgeon's office, she applied and was sworn in almost immediately. Kratz recalled that after the major swore her in he stated wryly: "You now have all of the rights and privileges of a First Lieutenant in the U. S. Army, including buying your own clothes and finding your own quarters and food in this crowded city on $150 per month." (28)