Certain Samaritans

Esther Pohl Lovejoy

Jan 1927 · Macmillan

About this ebook

This book documents the work of the American Women's Hospital Service, of which the author became president in 1919.

About the author

Esther Clayson was born in Seabeck, Washington on in 1869. In 1894, she graduated from the University of Oregon Medical School. She married fellow school mate, Dr. Emil Pohl, who died of encephalitis in 1909. Her brother Fred was murdered on the Dawson trail and she lost her only child Frederick at the age of eight. Despite these set-backs, she practiced medicine in Portland, Oregon where she became chairman of the Health Department (1907-1909). She was the first female to hold the post of chairman in a city of that size. She installed the city's first school nurse, wrote it's first milk ordinance and demanded sweeping reforms in food handling. She was an outspoken advocate for women and suffrage and ran as representative to Congress. When she left the Health Department, she became head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Portland medical group of Coffey, Sears, Jones and Joyce. During this period, she married Portland businessman George Lovejoy. Dr. Lovejoy served during the 1st World War with the American Red Cross and in 1919 became the president of the American Women's Hospital Service. In this capacity she traveled widely. In 1919 she helped to found the Medical Women's International Association and became its first president. In 1938 she authored Women Physicians and Surgeons. Twenty years later she published Women Doctors of the World. Her next book, Certain Samaritans, documented the work of the AWHS. She established the Pohl Memorial Fund in memory of her first husband and son at the University of Oregon Medical School. In 1967, Esther Pohl Lovejoy died at 97 years of age. The collection consists of photographs, manuscripts, news clippings, pamphlets, booklets, correspondence, publications, press releases, biographical data and reports and are dated 1870-1967. -- taken from the Oregon Health & Science University Historical Collections & Archives.