Healing Women: Medical History from a Female Perspective
Mobile, Alabama — On June 30, 2016, the Mobile Medical Museum will present a new exhibit,
Healing Women: Medical History from a Female Perspective, which will be on display
at the Mary Elizabeth and Charles Bernard Rodning Gallery of Art, Marx Library, University
of South Alabama. Consisting of a generous selection of over 50 artifacts, photographs
and documents from the Museum’s collection, the exhibit will offer a timely and captivating
glimpse at how women have helped to shape the last 300 years of medical history as
patients, care providers, administrators and innovators. It will be free to visit
during regular library hours through September 30th.
“The full story of women’s contribution to medical history is still not widely known, despite the fact that there is more gender diversity in the medical workforce than ever before,” says Executive Director Daryn Glassbrook. “This exhibit will provide a broadly inclusive perspective on the major developments in women’s healthcare, representing the experiences of midwives, nuns and volunteer nurses as well as those of professional nurses, physicians and surgeons.”
In conjunction with the exhibit, the Mobile Medical Museum and the USA Archeology
Museum will co-present a Healing Women lecture series at the Archeology Museum beginning
this fall. The first talk will be on September 29th by Dr. Laurie Wilkie, Professor
of Archeology at the University of California-Berkeley, who will speak about 19th
century African-American midwifery in Mobile. The series will also feature a January
26th presentation by Dr. Esther Katz, Director of The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
at New York University, to mark the centennial of the opening of Margaret Sanger’s
first birth control clinic in Brownsville, New York. More lectures are planned; each
will be free of charge and aimed for general audiences.
The Healing Women exhibit is sponsored by Dr. Charles and Mary Rodning. Support for
the lecture series is provided by the Gender Studies Program and the Departments of
History and English at the University of South Alabama.
About the Mobile Medical Museum
The Mobile Medical Museum is proud to serve as the Gulf Coast region’s preeminent institution dedicated to preserving the history of the healthcare professions. Our mission is Preservation and Education. To achieve that mission, medical artifacts and archival sources are preserved for the benefit of current and future generations, providing educational and research opportunities for the community-at-large. Since the Museum’s founding in 1962, we have served as a critical resource to medical students and emerging professionals, since there are no local schools with courses or faculty in the history of medicine. Furthermore, the Museum’s exhibits and tours provide visitors of all ages and backgrounds with a broad understanding of human anatomy, infectious disease, past and current medical procedures and technologies, and Mobile’s prominent place in the history of medical education and public health in the state of Alabama and the Gulf Coast region.