Literature and Medicine I

Works Cited

Archives

A. Special Collections Department, J. Murrey Atkins Library, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina:

Mss. Coll. 1. Charlotte City Board of Education Records

Mss. Coll. 56. Charlotte Woman’s Club Archives

Mss. Coll. 66. Lyda Caldwell Wilson Papers

Mss. Coll. 218. John Brevard Alexander Papers

Mss. Coll. 224. Mecklenburg County Health Department Records

Miss. Coll. 247. Annie Lowrie Alexander Papers (hereafter “Alexander Papers”).

B.    Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania Archives

C.   North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina State Board of Health Records

 

Books and Articles

Anon. Charlotte, North Carolina, City Directory, 1923-24. Ashville: Miller Press, 1923.

---. Charlotte, North Carolina, City Directory, 1928. Ashville: Miller Press, 1928.

---. “Annie Lowrie Alexander (1864-1929).” Charlotte Observer March 26, 1997.

Alexander, Annie L. “Women Physicians.” College Message (Greenboro, N.C.) 4.4 (1889): 1-2.

---. “Chronic Corporeal Endometritis.” Report of the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Alumnae Association of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, March 15, 1889. Philadelphia: Rodgers, 1889. 53-57.

---. “Summer Complaint.” Charlotte Medical Journal 2.5 (1893): 17-21.

---. “Uterus, Hyperplasia of.” Charlotte Medical Journal 4.2 (1894): 17-21.

---. “Menstrual Disorders.” North Carolina Medical Journal 40 (1897): 51-57.

Alexander, John B. The History of Mecklenburg County, from 1740 to 1900. Charlotte: Observer Printing House, 1902.

---. Reminiscences of the Past Sixty Years. Charlotte: Ray Printing Company, 1908.

Blythe, LeGette. “Old-Timers Recall Dr. Annie Alexander.” Charlotte Observer Jan. 21, 1940.

Blythe, LeGette, and Charles R. Brockmann. Hornet’s Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Charlotte: McNally, 1961.

Censer, Jane T. “A Changing World of Work: North Carolina Elite Women, 1865-1895.” North Carolina Historical Review 73 (1996): 28-55.

Charlotte Observer. “Dr, Annie Alexander.” Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina. Raleigh: Medical Society, 1931. 163-64.

Dudley, Harold J. “Alexander, Annie Lowrie.” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Ed. William S. Powell. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1979. 13.

Griscom, Mary W. “History of Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia: On Adventure Bound, 1861-1934.” Medical Woman’s Journal 41.12 (1934): 318-25.

Hanchett, Thomas W. Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1998.

Henderson-Smathers, Irna. “Medical Women of North Carolina.” Medical Woman’s Journal 56.11 (1949): 38-42.

Hill Directory Company. Hill’s Charlotte (North Carolina) City Directory, 1932. Richmond: Hill Directory Company, 1932.

Kent, Scotti. More than Petticoats: Remarkable North Carolina Women. Guilford: TwoDot Books, 2000.

Kratt, Mary. New South Women: Twentieth-Century Women of Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte: Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, 2001.

Marshall, Clara. The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania: An Historical Outline. Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1897.

McCandless, Amy T. “Progressivism and the Higher Education of Southern Women.” North Carolina Historical Review 70 (1993): 302-25.

Morantz-Sanchez, Regina M. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

More, Ellen S. Restoring the Balance, Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

Murphy, Eva. “Alexander, John Brevard.” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Ed. William S. Powell. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1979. 15-16.

North Carolina State Board of Health. Eighteenth Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, 1919-1920. Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton Printing Company, 1921.

---. Twenty-First Biennial Report of the North Carolina State Board of Health, July 1, 1924 – June 30, 1926. Raleigh: n.p., 1926.

Peitzman, Stephen J. A New and Untried Course: The Woman’s Medical College and Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1850-1998. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000.

Pendleton, James D. “Dr. Annie, Mecklenburg’s First Lady Doctor.” Charlotte Magazine 6.6 (1974): 42, 62-65.

Stowe, W. R. “Dr. Annie Lowrie Alexander.” Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of North Carolina. Raleigh: Medical Society, 1931. 164-65.

Strong, Charles M. History of Mecklenburg County Medicine. Charlotte: News Printing House, 1929.

Thompson, Ginny. “The Remarlable Dr. Annie.” The State [Raleigh, N.C] 58.6 (1990): 14-16.

Turner, Elizabeth H. Women and Gender in the New South, 1865-1945. Wheeling: Harlan Davidson Inc., 2009.

Walsh, Mary R. “Doctors Wanted: No Woman Need Apply”: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977.

Walsh Directory Company. Walsh’s Directory of the City of Charlotte, for 1903. Charleston: Walsh Directory Company, 1903.

Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Thirty-Second Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Session of 1881-82. Philadelphia: Grant, Faires and Rodgers, 1881.

---. Thirty-Third Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Session of 1882-83. Philadelphia: Grant, Faires and Rodgers, 1882.

---. Thirty-Fifth Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Session of 1884-85. Philadelphia: J. Rogers, 1884.

---. Thirty-Sixth Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Session of 1885-86. Philadelphia: J. Rodgers, 1885.

Notes

• 1) The author is pleased to acknowledge the assistance provided for this study by the Special Collections Department, Atkins Library, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, in particular for a Harry Golden Visiting Scholar Award for 2008/09 to study the Dr. Annie Lowrie Alexander and Dr. John Brevard Alexander collections. A travel grant from the Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina, 2006, was instrumental for situating Dr. Annie Alexander within her medical world of the Carolinas.
• 2) John Alexander, “Insane Negros,” “The High Order of the Human Race not Maintained,” and “Sin Has so Corrupted Our Natures” (undated essays), and “The Mixing of Races Should Be Condemned” (1886): John Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folders 13 and 15.
• 3) Annie Alexander (hereafter “Alexander”) to John Alexander, 2 Jan. 1884: Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1. College entrance exams were not introduced until 1887 (Marshall 69).
• 4) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.
• 5) Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (hereafter WMC) Archives, Minutes of Faculty Meetings, 1881-86 (unpaginated), entries for 7 Feb. and 8 Mar. 1884; WMC 1882, 20; WMC 1884, 4; WMC 1885.
• 6) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.
• 7) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1: Alexander to John Alexander, 8 June 1886; WMC, Alumnae “Firsts” file card; Dudley 13.
• 8) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1.
• 9) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1, Alexander to John Alexander, 11 Jan. 1885.
• 10) Alexander’s own role is suggested by the family narratives recorded by Pendleton and Thompson, and supported by the surviving fragments of an undated autobiographical description of herself (in the third person): Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5. All accounts of Alexander, from her death to the present, emphasize that she was “the first,” but the geographic scope ranges from the state of North Carolina to the entire South, and many accounts neglect to add the important qualities of “graduate physician,” “licensed,” and “southern born.” In the standard biography (by Dudley) it is, for example, demonstrably not true that Alexander upon her return to North Carolina in 1887 “became the first woman to practice medicine in the South.” She had been preceded by numerous non-graduate and/or unlicensed practitioners, as well as by several graduate, licensed women physicians who had not been born in the South.
• 11) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 13, patient casebook, 1888-89. This volume references, and has patient illnesses carried over from, an earlier volume for 1887 (not now extant).
• 12) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folders 14 (1914-22) and 15 (1924-29).
• 13) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11 (newspaper clippings), “Pay Tribute to Dr. Alexander,” 15 Oct. 1929, “Funeral to Be Held Today for Dr. Alexander,” Charlotte Observer, 16 Oct. 1929.
• 14) Alexander casebooks, 1914-22, 1924-29.
• 15) The relationships between the public health challenges and the economic transformation of Charlotte and its hinterland have not been the object of extensive scholarship, but can be traced in the surviving records of the Mecklenburg Country Health Department, the North Carolina State Board of Health, and the biannual published reports of the latter body.
• 16) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1, letters to John Alexander dated Jan.2, June 30, Nov. 9, 23, 1884, Jan. 11, 18, Feb. 25, 1885.
• 17) The paper was read and discussed in her absence.
• 18) WMC, Alumnae card file.
• 19) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3.
• 20) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3. A slightly altered version, in her handwriting, was copied into blank pages of her father’s last casebook, with the title “Calcareous Deposits in the Lungs”: John Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 7 (unpaginated). All the manuscript essays by Alexander cited below are in her handwriting. Many lack exact titles. Unless stated, the essays are undated, but internal evidence, or case descriptions in her casebooks, often permit approximate dating.
• 21) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3.
• 22) For Van Landingham’s role in Charlotte cf. Kratt 20-22.
• 23) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11, “Death of Dr. Alexander Subject of Resolutions” (undated newspaper clipping of Oct. 1929).
• 24) This, and the following, information has been extracted or calculated from Alexander’s personal financial records, 1920-29: Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folders 7, 8. Apart from some financial information included within her patient casebooks, these are her only financial records to survive. They reveal a very careful attention to detail, especially for expenditure.
• 25) Alexander, “Woman [sic] in the Medical Profession” (circa 1920), Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5.
• 26) Mecklenburg County Health Department Archives, Box 1, Folder 7, Minute Book, 1915-55, 3, 22-24, 47.
• 27) Charlotte Woman’s Club Archives, Box 1, Folder 1 (notices of Alexander’s activites, 1900-1926); Henderson-Smathers 41.
• 28) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11 (newspaper clippings, 1917-18); Mecklenburg County Health Department Archives, Box 1, Folder 7, Minute Book, 1915-55, 3; Charlotte City Board of Education Records, Box 1, Folder 7; North Carolina State Board of Health 1921, 17, 22, 26, 40-45, 47, 49-52; Alexander, “Medical Inspection of Schools,” and a briefer, untitled, essay by her on the same topic (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 2).
• 29) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11, “Last Rites for Dr. Alexander Held Today,” Oct. 16, 1929.
• 30) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 6.
• 31) WMC, Alumnae card file, and Minutes of Faculty Meetings, entries for May 1894, Feb. 1895, May 1895.
• 32) WMC, Alumnae card file.
• 33) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1 (the signature is unreadable).
• 34) The family story for Alexander is identical (cf. Pendleton 42, 62; Thompson 14).
• 35) Alexander was the second (of three) daughters, with five siblings in total.
• 36) For Alexander’s curly golden hair and blue eyes cf. Pendleton 42, 62.
• 37) The names “Will” and “Will Herndon” appear throughout the manuscript on top of an erased name.
• 38) The first lecture of the autumn 1881 term at the Woman’s Medical College was on 6 October, on gynecology: WMC, Minutes of Faculty Meetings, 1881-86. This was the first year that the College required student attendance at both a winter and a spring term of lectures. The chair in gynecology has been established in 1880. The Clinic Hall (referenced by Alexander below) was constructed in 1883. Cf. Marshall 69, 82-83. Alexander’s papers contain her notebook on academic and clinical lectures attended at the College, 1881-83 (Box 1, Folder 12). Most date from her second year and suggest a competent, informed student. The first clinical lecture attended by Alexander in 1881 was of a baby with skin eruptions; the second was for a blister on a woman’s ring finger.
• 39) Alexander was subsequently to write on the infamous challenge by these males to women students of the Woman’s Medical College in the autumn term of 1869 with such passion, that some biographies have mistakenly believed she experienced the identical events. Alexander, “Woman in the Medical Profession”: Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5. For 1869 (cf. Peitzman 34-38).
• 40) Compare Alexander’s identical fear expressed to her father in 1885 (quoted above).
• 41) Identical stories were later told of “Dr. Annie” by her former child patients (cf. Blythe; Thompson 14).
• 42) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 1, Tyng to John Alexander, Mar. 19, 1885.
• 43) “Death of Dr. Alexander Subject of Resolutions” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11).
• 44) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11, “Dr. Anne [sic] Alexander” (Oct. 1929).
• 45) The theme runs through many of her public addresses and essays. Note, “Fifty Years Ago” and “Dress” (Box 1, Folder 2), “Indigestion Is the Pandoras’ Box of Human Ills” (Box 1, Folder 3).
• 46) Alexander, Untitled 19-page address to the Charlotte Woman’s Club, beginning “Our Woman’s Club.” Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5.
• 47) For example, casebook 1924-29, 171, 180 (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 15).
• 48) Expenditures in her financial records, 1920-24: Alexander Papers, Box1, Folder 7 (unpaginited); “Funeral to Be Held Today For Dr. Alexander”: Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11.
• 49) Alexander, “Our Woman’s Club” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5).
• 50) Alexander, “Our Woman’s Club” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5).
• 51) Alexander, “Womans [sic] Aid in Civics” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5).
• 52) One detached page of an address by Alexander on women in medicine, delivered to a South Carolina audience, circa 1890s. Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5.
• 53) Alexander, “Woman in the Medical Profession” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5).
• 54) Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 11.
• 55) Alexander, “Fifty Years Ago” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 2).
• 56) Alexander, “What Can We Do to Prevent Tuberculosis?” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3).
• 57) Alexander, “Eugenics Comparably a New Word” (Alexander Papers, Folder 3).
• 58) For example, Alexander, “Womans Aid in Civics” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5).
• 59) Alexander, “Womans Aid in Civics” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5); Alexander, “A New Born Infant” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3); Alexander, “Menstrual Disorders” (John Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 7).
• 60) Alexander, two lectures on nervous prostration (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 3), “Our Womans Club” 12-16 (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 5), and “Fifty Years Ago” (Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 2).
• 61) The vocational and educational context also worked against the development of directly applicable role models (cf. McCandless; Turner).
• 62) John Alexander Papers, Box 1, Folder 7 (unpaginated).
• 63) Alexander died at home on 15 October 1929, after a very brief illness, of pneumonia, allegedly contracted from a patient (Dudley; Pendleton 65).
• 64) By the early 1920s she occupied the last private residence, surrounded by car dealerships, a barber shop, dry cleaners, service station, and light manufacturing.
• 65) It is ironic that Alexander has been cast (after her death) as exceptional, particularly because she strove diligently to fit expectations, and because during her lifetime Charlotte’s male elite generally found it advantageous to view its sole woman physician as a model of the modest, reserved citizen, and southern woman.