Mary Putnam Jacobi

Although George Putnam believed a career in medicine was a "repulsive pursuit," he reluctantly agreed to financially support his daughter's decision to pursue medicine, an ambition she had held since childhood.[3] In 1863, Jacobi graduated from the New York College of Pharmacy, which made her the first woman to graduate from an American school of pharmacy.[8][2] In 1864, she earned her Doctor of Medicine from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania. For several months, she practiced clinical medicine with Marie Zakrewska and Lucy Sewall at the New England Hospital for Women and Children.[9] She also served in the American Civil War as a medical aide.[10]

During a short internship in which she studied clinical medicine at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Jacobi decided to further her study of medicine and apply to École de Médecine of the University of Paris.[7] After much negotiation and thanks to the help of the psychiatrist Benjamin Ball, in 1868 she was admitted as the first woman student at École de Médecine, although as a woman she was required to enter lectures through a separate door and sit at the front near the professor.[3] In July 1871, Jacobi graduated with honors and was the second woman to receive a degree from École de Médecine of the University of Paris. Jacobi also received a bronze medal for her thesis. Her studies in Paris coincided with the Franco-Prussian War. In Scribner's Monthly of August 1871, she published an account of the new French political leadership that came to power following the war.

After five years of studying in Paris, Jacobi returned to the United States in the fall of 1871. Moving back to New York City, Jacobi established her own private medical practice. Jacobi also participated in research and became a professor in the new Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary and Mount Sinai Hospital.[7] Jacobi became the second woman member of the Medical Society of the County of New York, and was admitted to the American Medical Association. In 1872, she helped to found the Women's Medical Association of New York City,[3] and served as its president from 1874 to 1903. She campaigned consistently for the admission of women to leading medical schools, including Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.[10] Her teaching at the Medical College tended to exceed what her students were prepared for and led her to resign in 1888.

In 1873, she married Abraham Jacobi, a New York physician and researcher, nowadays often referred to as the "father of American pediatrics." They had three children, two daughters, and one son. The couple's first daughter died at birth and their only son died at the age of seven. Abraham and Mary had only one child who survived to adulthood, their daughter Marjorie Jacobi McAneny. Jacobi educated her daughter herself according to her own educational theories.

Jacobi received Harvard University's Boylston Prize in 1876 for an original essay, later published as a book, The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation.[3] She was the first woman to win the Boylston Prize.[11] Jacobi's essay was a response to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's earlier publication, Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls (1875), a book claiming that any physical or mental exertion during menstruation could lead to women becoming infertile.[7] Jacobi did not believe this was the case, and to test the idea she collected extensive physiological data on women throughout their menstrual cycle, including muscle strength tests before and after menstruation. She concluded that "there is nothing in the nature of menstruation to imply the necessity, or even desirability, of rest."[3]

Jacobi wrote over 120 medical articles and nine books,[7] although she stopped writing fiction in 1871. In 1891 she contributed a paper on the history of women physicians in the United States, titled "Woman in Medicine," to the volume Women's Work in America (1891, edited by Annie Nathan Meyer), that included a bibliography of writings by American female physicians, mentioning over forty of her own works.[12] In 1894, she wrote Common Sense Applied to Women's Suffrage, which was later reprinted and used to support the women's suffrage movement in the United States.[10] It expanded on an address she made in 1894 before a constitutional convention in Albany, and was reprinted in 1915 and contributed to the final successful push for women's suffrage. Also in 1894, after the defeat of the women's suffrage amendment to the New York State Constitution, Jacobi was one of six prominent suffragists who founded the League for Political Education.

While Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) viewed medicine as a means for social and moral reform, the younger Jacobi focused on curing disease. Blackwell believed that women would succeed in medicine because of their humane feminine values, but Jacobi thought women's contribution to all medical specialties should be considered equivalent to men's.[9]