Apparatus XY

21Despite the challenges for women, which were well-known to Sabin, she did not support separate medical or professional organization. She did not enter into a public polemic on these matters; rather she expressed her sentiments in private letters but did not lend her prestige to separate women's organizations. She put her philosophy in writing when addressing the issues concerning medical education in China, although the same thinking applied in the States. According to Sabin "medical education is now too expensive to make the separate schools feasible." She believed that under the circumstances the best training would happen in the well-endowed coeducational schools and even though women could not expect an equal chance for a few generations, the emphasis had to be on proper training for those who did become physicians (17 May 1922 to Robert L. Dickinson, Box Cu-Doan #5, APS). Interestingly, according to Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, M. Carey Thomas had used similar arguments in advocating for a coeducational Johns Hopkins. She had noted that given the costliness of graduate work, graduate training could not be duplicated on a gender separate basis and that furthermore, students benefited from mingling with the best intellectual talents (235).

22 Sabin instinctively understood that in order to succeed women required the best education and access to the best mentors. This not only accorded with her ideas of meritocracy, but in fact, according to social scientist Jonathan Cole, is a necessary strategy for success, especially for women. According to Cole, those going to the top programs gain access to the most influential mentors, and the best research facilities. He notes that the rank of a "doctoral department is the second strongest predictor of visibility and perceived quality among women…" (139). Certainly, getting the best education available had worked for Sabin and for her illustrious predecessors. Working at the Hopkins Anatomy laboratory, she was mentored by one of the leading men in the field. This gave her access to the American Association of Anatomists, which she eventually presided over, and to the leading Journal of Experimental Medicine, which began at Hopkins and then moved to the Rockefeller Institute (Corner, 62-63). It was also at Hopkins that she met Simon Flexner who would become the Director of the Rockefeller Institute and invite her to move there. Margaret Rossiter makes clear the Hopkins influence in getting Sabin elected to the National Academy of Sciences ("Florence Sabin," 486). Sabin's attitude toward co-educational medical school did not apply to women's colleges, which she continued to support, giving special attention to her alma mater Smith and to Bryn Mawr.

23 Sabin remained consistent in this belief. When Catherine Macfarlane of the Medical Women's National Association sought Sabin's help in raising an endowment for the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1936, Sabin wrote back that she could not lend her name to the committee because "I find myself skeptical as to the necessity and wisdom of maintaining a medical school by and for women at this time" (22 Sep. 1936, Box Li-Mall, F.P. 1, APS). Similarly, she believed that women's only medical associations were limiting. As indicated earlier, her experience was that papers submitted to their journals were ignored by the larger medical community, and she found the papers presented at their meetings inferior to those presented at the established medical associations open to men and women (9 Sep. 1935 Sabin to Kate Campbell Mead, Box Mall. F.P. 2-Me, APS). When asked by the president of the Medical and Dental & Allied Science Women's Association to supply materials on maternal hygiene for a Hall of Science Booth in 1933, Sabin complied but expressed her concern about a special women's exhibit. She noted that "Since being in New York and working a little with the clinical group here, I have found that the younger and the abler women in clinical medicine do not want separate societies and separate organizations and I believe that the day is happily gone by when there is any advantage to women in such separation" (1 Apr. to Bertha Van Hoosen Box U-We, APS).

Fundraising

24 Given the difficulties in finding places to train and hire qualified physicians, Sabin did support the formation of a women's hospital and actively worked on its behalf. Named the Gotham, Sabin believed that it would not only help women find positions and further professional training, but that it would also provide good health care for the middle classes. While in the end, the plan failed due to the Depression, it was not for lack of effort and commitment on Sabin's part. Indeed, this cause was of such importance to her that she spoke of it in her 1931 interview with Good Housekeeping, when named one of America's most distinguished women. Suggesting that hospitals like colleges be endowed, she went on explicitly to explain the Gotham Hospital Plan, "in which a fund will make up the difference between what the patient can afford to pay and what the hospital actually costs" (Jun. "Dr. Florence Rena Sabin," 202 in 450 SA13, Box 1, RAC).

25The Gotham Plan arose out of concern for the closing of the New York Infirmary, one of the hospitals noted above which accepted women for internships and staff positions. In 1927 M. Carey Thomas expressed her dismay in a letter to Sabin, deploring that the Trustees would turn over the Infirmary to a medical center "without provision that women surgeons should be given the first chance to operate there. When I think of the great difficulty involving tremendous sacrifice with which the money for this Hospital was raised, it seems to me nothing short of a betrayal of the dead women who agonized for it that special privileges should not have been preserved for women" (1 Apr. 1927, Box Naples Table 2-National Travel, Naples Table Correspondence 1927 #1, APS). Sabin wrote a long letter in response, in which she reviewed the history of the New York Infirmary and the funds attached to it. The outcome, with the women physicians of the New York Infirmary joining with the New York Women's Medical Association, was that the Infirmary would remain open for one extra year while plans for a new hospital were drawn up, with the hospital to receive the funds of the Infirmary. While Sabin noted that the plan did not have unanimous support, the majority seemed enthusiastic. Interestingly, given the issues noted above on internships and further specialized training, Sabin explained that the young women graduates of the top medical schools believed that the coeducational schools now provided sufficient training in medicine and surgery and that internship opportunities were sufficient. On the other hand, they did not see residencies and surgical training opportunities as being sufficient for a long time; hence the need for a separate women's hospital (6 Apr. 1927, Naples Table Correspondence 1927 #1, APS).