In August 1889, an English woman named Charlotte S. experienced a depressive episode marked by religious delusions. Convinced there “was no hope for her in Eternity,” the once “strong, healthy [and] active” fifty-five year old was certified insane[1] and institutionalized at Holloway Sanatorium.[2] When patients were admitted to Holloway, staff recorded their personal details in… Read more →
Tag: photography
Woman in Focus: Jessie Tarbox Beals
Had she never laid her eyes on a camera, Jessie Tarbox Beals might have made a life as a teacher. In 1887, at the age of seventeen, she had just moved from her home of Ontario, Canada to pursue a teaching job in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.1 The daughter of a successful sewing machine manufacturer who had… Read more →
When Legs and Arms Won: The Culture of Dissection and the Role of the Camera at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania
In Fall 1906, three weeks into their freshman year, Elizabeth Cisney-Smith and her classmates were, as she wrote, “initiated” to the dissecting room of The Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), one of the nation’s first degree-granting medical schools for women.1 Per tradition, a crowd of upperclassmen assembled in the third floor hall, just outside… Read more →