Anna Blount Explained

Anna Ellsworth Blount
Known For:Doctor, Suffragist, Activist in public health
Birth Date:18 January 1872
Birth Place:Oregon, Wisconsin, U.S.
Death Place:Mukwonago, Wisconsin, U.S.
Occupation:Doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology
Spouse:Ralph Earl Blount
Children:Walter Putnam Blount, MD
Earl Ellsworth Blount
Ruth Amelia Blount (Bennett), MD

Anna Blount (January 18, 1872 – February 12, 1953) was an American physician from Chicago,[1] and Oak Park.[2] She was awarded Doctor of Medicine June 17, 1897 by Northwestern University. She volunteered her medical services at Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago that was founded in 1889. She encouraged other women to become physicians and was the president of the National Medical Women's Association.[3]

Sex education and birth control

Blount was a proponent of birth control and a leader in the birth control movement in the United States.[4] She was a frequent contributor to the Birth Control Review.[5] She served on the committee of the First American Birth Control Conference.[6] Blount gave lectures on "sex hygiene" to Chicago high schools,[7] clubs and to universities. She created pamphlets, such as A Talk With Mothers, which discussed condom use.[8] She believed that "shielding women" from information about sexually transmitted disease was wrong. When it was still illegal to do so, Blount gave out information about birth control in direct violation of laws against discussing birth control in order to test those laws.[9]

Blount also supported the idea of eugenics.[10] Blount called eugenics "the most important movement of modern times."[11] She chaired the Eugenics Education Society of Chicago.[12] Blount believed that people should choose to have children with only the most mentally and physically healthy individuals.[13] She believed that "cruelty is a hereditary characteristic." She connected alcoholism with heredity as well. Blount even believed that lowering the population size would prevent war and world hunger.[14]

Blount did not believe that people who were unhappy with one another should stay married, and proposed that obtaining a divorce should be made easier in the courts.[15] She advocated that juries on divorce trials should be made up of women.[16]

Woman's suffrage

Blount was a leader in the women's suffrage movement.[17] [18] [19] [20] [21] She was a member of the Chicago Woman's Club and the Nineteenth Century Woman's Club of Oak Park.[22] Blount spoke out against club organizations attempting to prevent African American women from joining.Concerning Dr. Blount's involvement in the woman's suffrage movement, The Gentle Force says,

Note that Grace Hall Hemingway was the mother of author Ernest Hemingway and Anna Lloyd Wright was the mother of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

In The Young Hemingway Michael Reynolds says, "In 1907, to the amusement of male Oak Parkers, the Illinois Equal Suffrage convention was held at Scoville Institute, where Dr. Anna Blount, a local woman, was the wittiest and most persuasive voice." [23]

Concerning Blount's high reputation, at pages 106-107 Reynolds states,

Personal life

Anna Blount and her husband, Ralph Earl Blount, both worked at Hull House.[24] They lived in Oak Park, IL, and had three children: Walter Putnam,[25] Earl Ellsworth, and Ruth Amelia.[26] Both Walter and Ruth became doctors, with Ruth, who received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Northwestern University on June 16, 1934, being one of the women "encouraged ... to become physicians" by her mother, as has been referred to above.[27] [28]

Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska refers to Blount as "a physician, suffragist, and social activist. She graduated in medicine from the Women’s Medical School of Northwestern University and in gynecology and pediatrics from a university in Munich.”[29] Blount had an active medical practice. For example, she delivered Iovanna, the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress, later wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright:

Blount's prominence in the Chicago area was illustrated by a 1934 photograph of her, her daughter-in-law, and recently born granddaughter appearing on the front page of the Chicago Herald and Examiner. The caption to the photo reads, "ALL SMILES ... Dr. Anna Blount ..., a veteran of the Women's and Children's Hospital, is shown holding her granddaughter, Elizabeth, 5 days old, as her daughter-in-law, Esther Stamm Blount, smiles happily."[30] An article also on the front page is titled, "Hospital Run Efficiently By Women Alone," and states that the Women's and Children's Hospital had existed since Civil War days and had just celebrated its seventieth anniversary.

References

Sources

Notes and References

  1. News: Suffragists Find Teas Help Cause. 7 January 1913. The Leavenworth Times. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  2. Book: Knupfer, Anne Meis. Toward a Tenderer Humanity and a Nobler Womanhood: African American Women's Clubs in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago. New York University Press. 1996. 0814746713. New York. 54.
  3. July 1926. U.W. Clubs. The Wisconsin Alumni Magazine. 27. 9. 288.
  4. News: Protests Move to Curb Birth. 3 January 1917. Chicago Daily Tribune. 18 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  5. Book: Weingarten, Karen. Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940. Rutgers University Press. 2014. 9780813565309. New Brunswick, New Jersey. 52.
  6. 1918. First American Birth Control Conference. Birth Control Review. 2. 16. Sanger. Margaret.
  7. Pearson. Maurice W.. 1913. Popular Medical Education. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. 168. 26. 943. 10.1056/NEJM191306261682601. 22 January 2017.
  8. Book: Brodie, Janet Farrell. Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. Cornell University Press. 1997. 9780801484339. Ithaca. 209.
  9. News: Club Women To Defy Law and Preach Birth Control. 29 September 1916. The Denver Post. 18 January 2017.
  10. News: Catholic Priest Argues Against Birth Control. 25 March 1917. Chicago Daily Tribune. 22 January 2017.
  11. News: Look Before Leaping is Eugenics Advice. 8 March 1914. The Inter Ocean. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  12. Book: Rembis, Michael A.. Defining Deviance: Sex, Science and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960. University of Illinois Press. 2011. 9780252036064. Chicago. 19.
  13. Book: Roche, Claire M.. https://books.google.com/books?id=gZpP9cWRbN4C&q=%22anna+blount%22&pg=PA264. Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940: Essays on Ideological Conflict and Complicity. Bucknell University Press. 2003. 0838755550. Cuddy. Lois A.. London. 264. Reproducing the Working Class: Tillie Olsen, Margaret Sanger and American Eugenics. Roche. Claire M..
  14. News: Reduce Births, Thus Prevent Future Wars, Says Woman. 25 October 1915. Los Angeles Herald. 22 January 2017. California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  15. News: Free Love Doctrine Agitates Chicago. 29 March 1913. The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  16. News: Make Divorces Easier. 27 August 1907. The Richmond Item. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  17. News: Women Plan Tactics for Victory. May 18, 1912. Woman's Journal. 20. 153. 22 January 2017. HeinOnline.
  18. News: On Boat Trip for Suffrage. 19 August 1912. Lawrence Daily Journal-World. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  19. News: Trout Wing Holds Sway Over Women. 8 November 1913. The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  20. News: Fur Flies When the Sanitary Seekers Take a Fall Out of the Fussy Suff'ers. 5 April 1913. The Gazette Times. Pittsburgh. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  21. News: Dr. Anna Blount Deplores Insufficiency of Suffrage. 9 July 1913. Chicago Daily Tribune. 22 January 2017. Newspapers.com.
  22. Poplett and Porucznik, The Woman Who Never Fails, page 14.
  23. Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway, Basil Blackwell, 1986, p 12. .
  24. Web site: Hull-House Residents . janeaddams.ramapo.edu . 19 October 2015. 2019-10-10.
  25. For example, see Blount's disease; and https://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/1249.html, retrieved 10/21/19.
  26. For example, see Ruth Blount Bennett, MD, and W.P. Blount, MD, Destruction of Epiphyses By Freezing, The Journal of the American Medical Association, August 31, 1935, Vol 105, pp 661-662.
  27. “Prominent Woman’s Suffrage Workers Have Big Families: Duty of Motherhood Argument for Granting of the Ballot,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 3, 1912, page 75.
  28. Kuźma-Markowska, Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci, pages 193-194.
  29. Kuźma-Markowska, Zdrowe Matki, Chichiane Dzieci, page 285
  30. Chicago Herald and Examiner, January 15, 1934, page 1

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