by Enss, Chris
MARY CANAGA ROWLAND
LEARNED PRACTITIONER
My father always said his girls were just as smart as his boy, and
my husband said I was as capable as any man . . . All these ideas
made me believe in myself and made me think I could do
something worthwhile in the world.
—Mary Canaga Rowland, 1932
Two well-dressed men with pistols holstered to their sides crossed the dusty thoroughfare of Herndon, Kansas. Through the wavering heat and stabbing glare of sunlight, Doctor Mary Canaga Rowland watched the pair check to make sure their six-shooters were loaded. “This office is about to get busy,” she said to herself as she watched the men square off against a couple of ranch hands standing in front of the telegraph office.
Mary couldn’t hear what the men were saying, but she could tell they were arguing. The quarrel quickly turned violent. One of the ranch hands reared back to throw a punch, but was stopped dead in his tracks by a bullet. The second ranch hand was just as quickly gunned down. The gunmen fled, firing their pistols in the air as they rode off. One of the injured men was carted off to the hotel and the other was delivered to Doctor Rowland.
The doctor’s patient was covered in blood and writhing in pain. Mary tore the faded blue shirt away from the wound so she could begin the examination. Once the saturated material was removed, she began soaking up the blood with strips of material. The bullet had gone through the man’s forearm and struck his suspender buckle, leaving an egg-sized lump just below his heart.
As Mary started dressing the piercing, the ranch hand pulled his arm away from her. “You’re a lady doctor,” he said incredulously. Mary stared down at him and offered a partial smile. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Every man to his trade, but every woman to the washtub, right?” The ranch hand merely groaned. “I could just let you bleed to death,” Mary added. He could tell she was serious and didn’t resist as she gently lifted his injured arm onto a fresh sheet.
After Mary finished dressing the man’s wounds and treating him for shock, he drifted off to sleep. In time he made a full recovery, but he would forever be reluctant to admit that a “lady doctor” had patched him up. In spite of the challenges she knew lay ahead, Mary was determined to change society’s prevailing sentiment that medicine was “indecent for women to know.”
Mariam Ellen Canaga was the oldest of four children born to Elias and Ellen Canaga. She was born on June 29, 1873, at the Canaga farm in Red Willow, Nebraska. Mariam—or Mary, as her family called her—was a precocious child who acquired an early interest in medicine from her mother, who helped support the family by caring for expectant mothers. She would help deliver their babies and stay with them for a week afterward to do the cooking and cleaning. When Mary wasn’t with Ellen on the job, she was busy with the many chores she had to do around the homestead. Unable to keep her mind on farm work, Mary would occasionally sneak away to look at the books on midwifery her mother had hidden from the children. The subject matter fascinated Mary and fanned the flames of knowledge.
According to biographical information acquired from the Nebraska Historical Society, Mary was an exceptional student and an avid reader. At times her constant reading irritated her mother. Ellen felt Mary needed to be working instead, but Mary could not be torn away from her books. As she noted in her memoir:I made up my mind that I was going to get more learning than our country school offered. At 13 . . . it was my sole objective in life to read everything I could lay my hands on.
By the age of sixteen, Mary had graduated from high school and had been given permission from her parents to further her education at a school in the nearby town of Indianola. She found a place to live where she could work for her room and board. During the three-month break in between terms, Mary taught school and prepared herself as much as she could for the day she could attend medical college.
During her time at the school in Indianola, Mary met a lawyer and teacher by the name of J. Walter Rowland. Walter was a widower with four children, and although he was a fine teacher, it was not his life’s ambition. Like Mary, he too had an interest in medicine. Their common goal to become doctors sparked a friendship that quickly blossomed into romance.
Mary and Walter courted for five years. During that time both had decided to go forward with their pursuit to be doctors. Walter left for Missouri to attend the Kansas City Medical College. Mary took a job as a schoolteacher in nearby Goodland, Kansas, and provided Walter with funds to get him through school. He promised to do the same for her when the time came.
Shortly after Walter graduated, he and Mary decided to get married. The two exchanged vows on March 26, 1897, and then moved to Herndon, Kansas, where Walter established a medical practice.
A doctor’s services in the growing midwestern territory were greatly needed. The nearest hospital was 300 miles away, and other physicians were far and few between. A myriad of patients visited Doctor Walter Rowland at the couple’s home office at all hours of the day and night. Mary had not had any formal medical training at that time and could only act as Walter’s nurse. She assisted him on house calls as well, helping with bandaging and dressing wounds and providing the moral support necessary to deal with difficult cases. Before settling down in the evenings, she studied his medical journals:It was a fortunate thing for me that I could bury myself in Doctor Rowland’s medical books. I wanted to understand everything so that I might be of help to him. How wonderful to study the human body, its physical makeup, the why and where of each part and its function; to study how to tell one ailment from another, the best forms of treatment and how the baby develops in the mother.
After the Rowlands had been in Herndon for a year, Walter suggested Mary enroll at a school in Topeka, Kansas. In the fall of 1898, Mary happily entered the institution to begin her first year of study. She described herself in her journal as “full of ambition to be taught” and “absorbed in learning about the human body.”
Mary enjoyed the required medical courses of chemistry, anatomy, and pharmaceutical instruction, and because she’d had practical experience in each subject, she made excellent marks. She transferred in 1899 to the Women’s Medical College of Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated school in 1901. She then returned to Herndon and joined her husband in his thriving practice.
One of the first cases she treated involved broken bones. The way some of the injuries occurred was shocking to the new doctor. A family sent a nine-year-old Bohemian boy out at four in the morning on a June morning to herd cattle. About ten in the morning he grew sleepy and the cattle were doing all right so he lay down to sleep in the deep rut of the road. It was shaded by grass. It was time to cut the wheat and some men drove along with a team hitched to a header box, but because the rut was deep and the grass long, they didn’t see him lying there. The little fellow woke up as the horses were passing over him. He tried to get out, but a wheel caught him across the thigh and broke the bone; it also cut his head.
Her method for treating the hurt boy was just as unconventional as the accident that had brought him to her care. Although Mary followed the instructions given in her college book on minor surgery, Walter worried the patient’s leg would not mend. Mary, however, was confident the procedure she used would work:The men called for me and I put the lad on a flat bed on his back. Then I ran adhesive tape down both sides of the broken leg and under the foot. I ran a bandage through the tape beneath his foot and to this I attached a flat iron for traction. This method is called Buck’s Extension. When the femur breaks, the muscles pull the broken ends apart and they do not heal. With continuous pull, however, the muscles give way after a while and the leg straightens out.
Mary let the boy rest in that position for a few days. After eight weeks, the boy’s leg had healed so completely that no one could detect it had been broken.
Once Mary felt her career as a doctor was on firm footing, she and Walter made plans to start a family. Both longed to have children
of their own, and on April 25, 1902, the couple had a daughter. Mary named the baby Nellie:As soon as I heard her cry she was mine against the world, and as long as life should last. I love my husband and now I loved my baby. It seemed that life had given me everything that one could desire. My heart was full of joy. My cup was running over. Surely God had laid his hand on me to bless me.
Mary and Walter barely had a chance to enjoy their little girl when tragedy struck the family. In what authorities described as a senseless act of violence, Walter was struck down by a town merchant named George W. Dull. The two men had exchanged words in a heated argument that to this day remains a mystery. Dull hit Rowland over the head with a blunt object, killing him almost instantly.
Doctor Mary Rowland laid her husband to rest beside his first wife at the cemetery in Indianola. Her grief was overwhelming at times, but she knew she needed to see beyond it to concentrate on providing for her child. Less than a month after Walter’s murder, Mary resumed her work as town physician.
Her schedule was hectic. She would see to patients and then hurry off to nurse her baby. A young girl helped her with housework duties, meals, and laundry.
The loss of Doctor Walter Rowland was keenly felt in Mary’s life as well as in the community. Male patients could not bring themselves to be seen by a woman physician and decided to live with their ailments rather than seek Mary’s expertise. Until she could prove herself capable of saving lives, most men stayed away.
A true test of her medical skills came in June of 1902, when she was called on to help a woman in labor who was dying. Mary’s fragile patient was a seventeen-year-old girl, eight months along and suffering from convulsions. The convulsions momentarily stopped after Mary gave the teenager a small dose of morphine that put her to sleep. When the young woman awoke the next morning and her convulsions started again, Doctor Rowland decided to dilate the uterus and take the baby.
It sounds easy but the uterus has the strongest muscle in the body and it contracted on my hand like a vise. It was some time before I was able to bring down the baby’s foot. When I had succeeded in bringing down both feet and legs, my hand and arm were paralyzed and I let an assistant finish delivering the baby. . . . After a while he said, “I can’t get the head out.” Then I instructed him to let the baby’s legs straddle his arm and to slip his fingers in the baby’s mouth. After doing this the baby flexed its chin on its chest and slipped right out.
The young woman’s condition was questionable for a few hours, but Mary was able to nurse the weak new mother back to health. Mary’s ability in such a crucial circumstance earned her the respect and confidence of the men who had stopped seeking medical attention.
Doctor Rowland’s reputation as a “fine woman physician” soon spread throughout the territory. Although her practice was consistently busy, she did not make a large salary. Many people offered her food and handmade items, as opposed to hard currency, in exchange for her care. She worried a great deal about how she would be able to continue providing for her daughter.
Concern for her child’s well-being and the desire for a companion’s support prompted her to accept a marriage proposal from a local businessman. Mary first met August Kleint when he was working as the town butcher. He had since abandoned that job in favor of a profession in real estate. The couple had problems from the moment they exchanged vows in 1904. August was resentful of the time Mary spent away from home with her patients. They battled over the changes he wanted her to make. Mary called their union “the greatest mistake of her life.” Within a year of their marriage, the couple separated. They were not officially divorced, however, until 1909.
Some time before the dissolution of Mary’s second marriage, she decided to turn her attention almost solely to the study of medicine. She wanted to go back to school and learn more about the subject that had become her life. With Nellie in tow she traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, and enrolled at the Creighton University School of Medicine. On April 19, 1905, Doctor Mary Rowland received her second medical degree.
Once Doctor Rowland graduated from Creighton University, she and her daughter moved to Topeka. She opened another practice, but quickly grew tired of the blowing dust and wind that was so prevalent in Kansas. From there she relocated to Lebanon, Oregon, and for the third time in her career, she opened a medical office.
In the beginning, both communities were reluctant to accept her skills. After hanging her shingle out in Lebanon, she overheard people talking as they passed by the sign. “Doctor Mary Canaga Rowland, a woman doctor, well, well, well . . .” The first patient she saw in Oregon was not opposed to women doctors. In fact he sought her out for just that reason:He was a little boy of ten or eleven. He came to me about half past eleven one night and woke me up to take care of his hurt finger. He had been in a bowling alley and a ball had hit his finger. He was crying and I asked him how he happened to come to me and he said, “Cause I know’d you’re a woman and you’d be careful . . .”
The cornerstone of Mary’s practice was always family medicine. She did, however, seek out job opportunities in other areas of the field. Hoping to aid United States soldiers fighting in the Mexican-American War, she traveled to Portland to join the U.S. Army. It was 1916, and military officials scoffed at her efforts before informing her that the Army did not take women. “I didn’t know the first thing about the organization of any army,” she later wrote in her autobiography. “I was unaware that women were not part of any army.” Mary’s brazen attempt to enlist made the front pages of several Oregon newspapers.
At the age of forty, Doctor Rowland uprooted her life again to continue her study of medicine. She left eleven-year-old Nellie behind while she attended a post-graduate school in New York. She appreciated the chance to add to her education, but found being away from her daughter quite difficult. Many of her letters to Nellie expressed her sorrow over the time they were apart. On August 4, 1913, she wrote: My darling Baby, I am so homesick for you, dear, but you be a good girl and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I am learning a lot of new things here at the school and the hospital. I will send you some stamps in this letter so you can write to me often. Don’t forget Mamma and be a good girl. Write. A world of love for you, baby. Mamma.
The absence from her child proved too great to bear. In four months’ time, Mary was back home again with Nellie.
Doctor Rowland’s career as a female physician in the West spanned more than sixty years. In addition to maintaining a number of medical practices, she also held a position as the chief physician for the Chemawa Federal Indian School in Salem, Oregon, from 1913 to 1927.
In 1935, Mary remarried and had a second child. She kept up with her new family while attending to her patients, who suffered from illnesses ranging from measles to tuberculosis. Doctor Rowland’s life ended on August 1, 1966. She died from natural causes at her Salem home. She was ninety-three years of age.
ELLIS REYNOLDS SHIPP
CHILDREN’S DOCTOR
The more I learn, the more understandingly I can say we are
beautifully and wonderfully made.
—Ellis Shipp, February 3, 1876
The sick baby cradled in Ellis Shipp’s arms was too weak to cry. She stared sadly up at her mother with eyes pleading for help. Ellis had none to give her suffering daughter. She had employed all of the remedies she knew to give to typhoid patients, but nothing had worked. The eight-month-old little girl languished with a fever and softly whimpered. Ellis could only hold her beloved Anna close and rock her tiny frame back and forth until at last she passed.
Ellis tearfully mourned the death of her “precious one,” but believed the Lord had great purpose in taking the child. Anna was the second baby she had lost in five years. The tragedy sparked a desire in Ellis to pursue an education in medicine. She felt her calling was inspired by God, and dedicated her life to helping preserve the lives of other mothers’ ailing children.
Doctor Ellis Reynolds Shipp was born in David County, Iowa, on January 20, 18
47. She was the oldest of the five children her parents, William Fletcher Reynolds and Anna Hawley, brought into this world.
In 1852, William moved his family across the Great Plains to Utah so he could continue his work with the Mormon Church. The headquarters of the church was located in the Salt Lake Basin. The Reynolds clan settled in Pleasant Grove, 20 miles north of Salt Lake.
THE DEATHS OF TWO CHILDREN IN FIVE YEARS DROVE ELLIS REYNOLDS SHIPP TO THE FIELD OF MEDICINE.
According to Ellis’s journal, the first ten years of her childhood was idyllic. Her religious parents showered Ellis and her siblings with affection and attention. The death of her mother in 1861 brought an abrupt halt to what Ellis referred to as “one endless day of sunshine,” and she was thrust into the position of family caretaker—a role she would hold for more than a year.
In the fall of 1863, William Reynolds remarried. Ellis resented her new stepmother’s intrusion, and her actions reflected her feelings. She was ashamed of her behavior at times and cited her youth and inexperience as reason for her unwise outbursts of anger. In spite of a difficult period of adjustment, Ellis boasted that her father was patient with her. He continually reassured her of his love for his children, and he was a constant source of encouragement for the Reynolds clan.
At the age of twelve, Ellis gazed upon a photograph of a handsome twenty-year-old man and bragged to her friends that she would one day marry the subject of the picture. Not long after making that bold claim, Ellis met the man in the photograph at a party. “He was of noble form and feature,” she wrote in her journal. “But the principal attraction was the eyes.” Milford Shipp was just as taken with Ellis, and shortly after being introduced, the two began courting. Just as their romance began to blossom, Milford was sent on a mission trip for the Mormon Church. The two did not see each other again for five years.
