Mae Whitney Cardwell, M.D. (1853-1929)

This week I'm focusing on early women physicians and medical societies in Portland as a foundation for Esther Pohl Lovejoy's work with the Portland Medical Club as president in 1905. Another of the five women physicians who were active in the first Portland Women's Medical Society in 1891-1892 was Mae Whitney Cardwell. She received her first medical degree from the Cooper Medical School in San Francisco in 1883 and completed a second degree from Oregon's Willamette University Medical Department in 1885. She established a practice in Portland and was a "local" woman to join the Portland Women's Medical Society.

Cardwell served as a bridge between male medical societies and women physicians and was often the only woman to serve in administrative roles in these societies. She was an early member of the Oregon State Medical Society, joining after her WUMD degree in 1885 and was treasurer of the organization for ten years from 1893-1903, and later served as vice president. The Portland Medical Society, established in 1884, banned women from membership until, in 1902, she became the first woman member.

But Cardwell also supported separate women's societies. In addition to her work with the first Portland Women's Medical Society she was the she was a founder and first president of the revitalized Portland Medical Club in 1905. And, conscious of the importance of women's activities in the Oregon medical scene, Cardwell's history of Portland medical societies preserves vital chapters in the history of women and medicine in Oregon.

In addition, Cardwell worked for woman suffrage in Oregon and served as one of five vice presidents for the Portland chapter the of the College Equal Suffrage Association in 1912 campaign that won the right for Oregon women to vote. She also participated in a World War I test to claim officer status for women physicians at the Vancouver, Washington army base.

A biography of Cardwell and her image are included with the Oregon Health & Science University's exhibit in association with the Changing the Face of Medicine exhibit at http://www.ohsu.edu/library/hom/exhibits/medbios.shtml

See:

Mae H. Cardwell, “The Medical Club of Portland—Historical,” Medical Sentinel 13 no. 7 (July 1905): 222-226.

Kimberly Jensen, Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008)

Cora Bagley Marrett, "Nineteenth Century Associations of Medical Women: The Beginning of a Movement," Journal of the American Medical Women's Association 32 no. 12 (December 1977): 469-474.