biography
| name: |
Lovejoy, Esther Pohl
|
| |
née Clayson
|
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1869–1967)
|
| biography:
| Physician and health administrator, born near Seabeck, Washington Territory, USA. Raised on the frontier and with little formal education, she was determined to be a doctor, and gained admittance to the medical school of the University of Oregon, becoming only its second woman graduate (1894). After practising obstetrics in Portland, she and her husband Emil Pohl, also a doctor, went to Alaska to practise. She returned to Portland (1899), and while continuing her practice she also became interested in the women's suffrage movement. In 1905–9 (director 1907–9), she was on the Portland Board of Health and set sanitation standards that gained her and Portland a national reputation. She continued her private practice, and as a member of the American Women's Medical Association (1917–18) she worked for the American Red Cross in France. She helped set up the American Women's Hospital, and returned to France (1919) to set up the first of their clinics. Back in Portland she continued her crusade for women's right to vote, ran unsuccessfully for Congress (1920), worked for the medical relief of people throughout the world, and promoted the role of women in medicine. In 1936 she endowed the Pohl scholarships at the University of Oregon, and wrote several books. |
|
|
