Mary Riggs Noble

Mary Riggs Noble (1872 – 1965) was an American physician, hospital administrator, public health educator, and state official. She also served as a Christian medical missionary in Ludhiana, India. She was the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal in 1949.

Mary Riggs Noble
Born1872
New Jersey
Died1965
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)physician, medical missionary, hospital administrator, public health official
AwardsElizabeth Blackwell Medal (1949)

Early life

Noble was born in New Jersey and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She graduated from Colorado College in 1896,[1] and from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1901.[2]

Seven white women (three seated, four standing) posed for a group photograph. They are all wearing long skirts and large hats. Several are wearing suit jackets.
American women missionaries nicknamed the "Jubilee Troupe", speaking at missionary society celebrations in 1911. Front row: Florence Miller, Helen Barrett Montgomery, Jennie V. Hughes; Back row: Mary Riggs Noble, Etta Doane Marden, Mrs. W. T. Elmore, and Mary E. Carleton.

Career

Mission work and tuberculosis clinic

Noble practiced medicine in Colorado after completing her medical degree. She taught and practiced at the Woman's Medical College in Ludhiana as a Presbyterian medical missionary from 1906 to 1909.[3] She served women who would not, for religious reasons, be seen by male doctors. She published pamphlets based on this work, The Mission Station as a Social Settlement, Hospital Work in India, and Baby And Mother Welfare Work In India.[4][5]

She settled again in Colorado Springs, where she was medical director at a free tuberculosis clinic in the 1910s.[4][6] In 1911 she toured with other women missionaries nicknamed the "Jubilee Troupe"[7] engaged to speak at the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society jubilee celebrations in various cities[8][9] including Denver, Boston, New York[10] and Washington.[11] She addressed the annual conference of the Colorado State Union of Student Volunteers in Denver in 1914.[12]

World War I

In 1917 and 1918, during World War I, she served on the YWCA's war council, and gave a series of talks on "sex hygiene" and "social morality" in southern and western cities, including Nashville,[13] Salt Lake City,[14] Tulsa, Austin,[15] Topeka,[16] and Wichita.[17] "Her message will be most timely on account of the present emotional strain to which men and women are subjected," commented a Nashville newspaper.[13] "Her lectures will urge morality as the greatest of all patriotic war work," explained a Utah newspaper.[14]

Pennsylvania Department of Health

In the 1920s and 1930s, Noble was chief of the Preschool Division and head of the Division of Child Hygiene in the Pennsylvania Department of Health.[4] In that role she wrote A Manual for Expectant Mothers, a brief publication on childbirth.[18] She reported on the effort to regulate midwifery in Pennsylvania,[19] and made reducing newborn and maternal mortality priorities of the state's health department.[20][21] She encouraged churches to include health information in their education programs, and to open clinics for children.[22] She testified at a Senate hearing on implementation of the Sheppard–Towner Act in 1932.[23] She opposed "baby parades" as "deplorable exploitation of childhood" in a 1932 lecture at her alma mater, the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia.[24]

Professional honors

In 1937, Noble was elected treasurer of the American Medical Women's Association.[25] 1949, she became the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, for making "pathways for other women in medicine", and as a leader in women's health.[26][27] She was a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a life member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a fellow of the American Medical Association.[28]

Noble was a longtime volunteer with the Girl Scouts. When she retired from that work in 1958, she was presented with a bronze statuette from the Susquehanna Council of Girl Scouts.[29]

Personal life

Noble died in 1965, in her nineties. Some of her papers are at Drexel University.

References
  1. "Colorado College". Leadville Herald Democrat. June 21, 1896. p. 2. Retrieved November 17, 2019 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  2. "Operating in Memorial Hospital". Women Physicians: 1850s - 1970s; Drexel University Archives. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  3. "Today's Meetings". Lincoln Nebraska State Journal. October 31, 1910. p. 3. Retrieved November 17, 2019 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  4. Antonovich, Jacqueline D. "Medical Frontiers: Women Physicians and the Politics and Practice of Medicine in the American West, 1870-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan 2018): 270-272.
  5. "The Bookstall". Woman's Work. 34: 233. November 1919.
  6. Witherow, Leah Davis. "City of Sunshine" Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.
  7. Mobley, Kendal. "Remembering the Woman's Missionary Jubilee, 1910". Center for Global Christianity & Mission. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
  8. "The Jubilee Troupe" Life and Light for Woman 41(May 1911): 222.
  9. Bays, Daniel H.; Wacker, Grant (2010-03-14). The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History. University of Alabama Press. pp. 289, note 7. ISBN 9780817356408.
  10. Augustus, "Woman's Foreign Missionary Jubilee" New-York Observer (April 6, 1911): 424.
  11. Jennie Campbell Douglas, "Foreign Missionary Jubilee: How Washington is Preparing for One" New-York Observer (January 26, 1911): 211.
  12. "Student Volunteers Meet for Fifth Annual Conference". Silver and Gold. December 7, 1914. p. 1. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
  13. "Noted Speaker to Come Here". Nashville Banner. October 14, 1917. p. 2. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. "Dr. Mary Riggs Noble Will Speak to Women". Salt Lake City Deseret Evening News. September 10, 1917. p. 2. Retrieved November 17, 2019 – via NewspaperArchive.com.
  15. "Dr. Mary Riggs Noble to Lecture in Austin on Social Morality". The Austin American. June 17, 1917. p. 4. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. "The Social Morality Lectures". The Topeka Daily Capital. April 8, 1917. p. 4. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "Twentieth Century to Meet at Y. W. C. A." The Wichita Daily Eagle. January 20, 1918. p. 8. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. Noble, Mary Riggs, A Manual for Expectant Mothers.
  19. Noble, Mary Riggs (December 1923). "The Present Midwife Situation in Pennsylvania, 1922-1923". Mother and Child. 4: 553–557.
  20. United States Congress House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce (1926). Extension of Public Protection of Maternity and Infancy Act: Hearing Before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Sixty-ninth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 7555, a Bill to Authorize ... Appropriations for Carrying Out the Provisions of the Act ..., January 14, 1926. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 16–18.
  21. "Dr. Mary Riggs Noble, Noted Health Worker, Speaks at Donora". The Daily Republican. May 15, 1925. p. 1. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. "Establish Health Clinics is Advice". Lancaster New Era. October 12, 1922. p. 8. Retrieved November 16, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. United States Congress Senate Committee on Commerce (1932). Federal Cooperation with States in Promotion of General Health of Rural Population of the United States and Welfare and Hygiene of Mothers and Children: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Seventy-Second Congress, First Session, on Feb. 4, 5, 1932. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 270–273.
  24. "Baby Parades Hit as 'Exploitation'". The New York Times. September 22, 1932. p. 24 – via ProQuest.
  25. "Dr. Mabel Akin New Pilot of American Medical Women". Courier-Post. June 9, 1937. p. 14. Retrieved November 17, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. Latta, Susan (2017-09-01). Bold Women of Medicine: 21 Stories of Astounding Discoveries, Daring Surgeries, and Healing Breakthroughs. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 9781613734407.
  27. "AMWA". American Medical Women's Association. Retrieved 2019-11-17.
  28. "Tri-County Child Guidance Center Headed by Veteran Social Worker" The Harrisburg Telegraph (October 4, 1946): 17. via Newspapers.com
  29. "Susquehanna Council of Girl Scouts Hold Annual Meeting". The News-Sun. October 23, 1958. p. 6. Retrieved November 17, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
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