Dates: February 2, 1841 - August 14, 1909
A graduate of Mount Carroll Seminary and Illinois' State Normal University (1863), Sarah Stevenson initially taught school in Illinois towns and, in her last teaching post in Sterling, Illinois, also served as principal.
Sarah Stevenson moved to Chicago where she began to study medicine at the Woman's Hospital Medical College which had recently been founded by Mary Harris Thompson and others. After a year, she went to London for a year where she studied with Thomas Huxley at the South Kensington Science School. In London she also became friends with the feminist Emily Faithfull.
Returning to Chicago and the Woman's Hospital Medical College, Sarah Stevenson graduated with an M.D. in 1874. She began a private practice in Chicago and published Boys and Girls in Biology for high school students, based in part on Huxley's lectures she'd attended in London. In 1875 she was appointed professor of physiology and histology at the Woman's Medical College.
As late as 1871, the American Medical Association had refused to even take up the question of opening membership to women. But in 1876, when Sarah Stevenson attended the AMA convention as a delegate of the Illinois State Medical Society, her presence was accepted without significant challenge and she became the AMA's first female member.
In 1890, her position at the Medical College (now called the Woman's Medical College and after 1891, the Northwestern University Woman's Medical School) changed and Sarah Stevenson became professor of obstetrics. She served as well on staff at Provident Hospital, and was the first woman physician on staff at Cook County Hospital.
In 1880, Sarah Stevenson and Lucy Flowers founded the Illinois Training School for Nurses. She published The Physiology of Women, also in 1880. She worked for many years with Frances Willard, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the National Temperance Hospital, which used no medications containing alcohol.
When Governor John P. Altgeld appointed Stevenson to the Illinois State Board of Health in 1893, she was the first woman in that position.
A member of the Chicago Woman's Club, she spoke for admission of a "Negro woman" as a member. She served as President of the Woman's Club during the eventful year of the Columbian Exposition, 1893.
She retired in 1903 after a cerebral hemorrhage and died in 1909 after a long illness, including a year in a coma.
Sarah Ann Hackett Stevenson on the Web
Educated to Death
Stevenson, in an 1875 article for The Ladies' Repository, attacks the poor science and medicine of an author who would allege that co-education led to the death of a woman. Page images.
Friction is Always Rhythmic
A philosophical piece, recognizing that human imperfection is also the engine of human advancement. The Ladies' Repository, 1871. Page images.
Tyndall's Lecture on Fog Signals
Another article for The Ladies' Repository, 1875, on the "fashionable" science lectures of Tyndall. Page images.
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Text © 1999-2006 Jone Johnson Lewis.
