Mary Riggs Noble Explained

Mary Riggs Noble
Birth Date:1872
Birth Place:New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality:American
Occupation:physician, medical missionary, hospital administrator, public health official
Awards:Elizabeth Blackwell Medal (1949)

Mary Riggs Noble (1872 – 1965) was an American physician, hospital administrator, public health educator, and state official. She also served as a Christian medical missionary in Ludhiana, India. She was the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal in 1949.

Early life

Noble was born in New Jersey and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She graduated from Colorado College in 1896,[1] and from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1901.[2]

Career

Mission work and tuberculosis clinic

Noble practiced medicine in Colorado after completing her medical degree. She taught and practiced at the Woman's Medical College in Ludhiana as a Presbyterian medical missionary from 1906 to 1909.[3] She served women who would not, for religious reasons, be seen by male doctors. She published pamphlets based on this work, The Mission Station as a Social Settlement, Hospital Work in India, and Baby And Mother Welfare Work In India.[4] [5]

She settled again in Colorado Springs, where she was medical director at a free tuberculosis clinic in the 1910s.[6] In 1911 she toured with other women missionaries nicknamed the "Jubilee Troupe"[7] engaged to speak at the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society jubilee celebrations in various cities[8] [9] including Denver, Boston, New York[10] and Washington.[11] She addressed the annual conference of the Colorado State Union of Student Volunteers in Denver in 1914.[12]

World War I

In 1917 and 1918, during World War I, she served on the YWCA's war council, and gave a series of talks on "sex hygiene" and "social morality" in southern and western cities, including Nashville,[13] Salt Lake City,[14] Tulsa, Austin,[15] Topeka,[16] and Wichita.[17] "Her message will be most timely on account of the present emotional strain to which men and women are subjected," commented a Nashville newspaper. "Her lectures will urge morality as the greatest of all patriotic war work," explained a Utah newspaper.

Pennsylvania Department of Health

In the 1920s and 1930s, Noble was chief of the Preschool Division and head of the Division of Child Hygiene in the Pennsylvania Department of Health. In that role she wrote A Manual for Expectant Mothers, a brief publication on childbirth.[18] She reported on the effort to regulate midwifery in Pennsylvania,[19] and made reducing newborn and maternal mortality priorities of the state's health department.[20] [21] She encouraged churches to include health information in their education programs, and to open clinics for children.[22] She testified at a Senate hearing on implementation of the Sheppard–Towner Act in 1932.[23] She opposed "baby parades" as "deplorable exploitation of childhood" in a 1932 lecture at her alma mater, the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia.[24]

Professional honors

In 1937, Noble was elected treasurer of the American Medical Women's Association.[25] 1949, she became the first recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, for making "pathways for other women in medicine", and as a leader in women's health.[26] [27] She was a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a life member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a fellow of the American Medical Association.[28]

Noble was a longtime volunteer with the Girl Scouts. When she retired from that work in 1958, she was presented with a bronze statuette from the Susquehanna Council of Girl Scouts.[29]

Personal life

Noble died in 1965, in her nineties. Some of her papers are at Drexel University.

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: Colorado College. June 21, 1896. Leadville Herald Democrat. November 17, 2019. 2. NewspaperArchive.com.
  2. Web site: Operating in Memorial Hospital. Women Physicians: 1850s - 1970s; Drexel University Archives.. 2019-11-16.
  3. News: Today's Meetings. October 31, 1910. Lincoln Nebraska State Journal. November 17, 2019. 3. NewspaperArchive.com.
  4. Antonovich, Jacqueline D. "Medical Frontiers: Women Physicians and the Politics and Practice of Medicine in the American West, 1870-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan 2018): 270-272.
  5. November 1919. The Bookstall. Woman's Work. 34. 233.
  6. Witherow, Leah Davis. "City of Sunshine" Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.
  7. Web site: Remembering the Woman's Missionary Jubilee, 1910. Mobley. Kendal. Center for Global Christianity & Mission. 2019-11-16.
  8. https://books.google.com/books?id=0LAPAAAAIAAJ&dq=Dr.+Mary+Riggs+Noble+India&pg=PA222 "The Jubilee Troupe"
  9. Book: The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History. Bays. Daniel H.. Wacker. Grant. 2010-03-14. University of Alabama Press. 9780817356408. 289, note 7.
  10. Augustus, "Woman's Foreign Missionary Jubilee" New-York Observer (April 6, 1911): 424.
  11. Jennie Campbell Douglas, "Foreign Missionary Jubilee: How Washington is Preparing for One" New-York Observer (January 26, 1911): 211.
  12. News: Student Volunteers Meet for Fifth Annual Conference. December 7, 1914. Silver and Gold. November 16, 2019. 1. Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
  13. News: Noted Speaker to Come Here. October 14, 1917. Nashville Banner. November 16, 2019. 2. Newspapers.com.
  14. News: Dr. Mary Riggs Noble Will Speak to Women. September 10, 1917. Salt Lake City Deseret Evening News. November 17, 2019. 2. NewspaperArchive.com.
  15. News: Dr. Mary Riggs Noble to Lecture in Austin on Social Morality. June 17, 1917. The Austin American. November 16, 2019. 4. Newspapers.com.
  16. News: The Social Morality Lectures. April 8, 1917. The Topeka Daily Capital. November 16, 2019. 4. Newspapers.com.
  17. News: Twentieth Century to Meet at Y. W. C. A.. January 20, 1918. The Wichita Daily Eagle. November 16, 2019. 8. Newspapers.com.
  18. Noble, Mary Riggs, A Manual for Expectant Mothers.
  19. Noble. Mary Riggs. December 1923. The Present Midwife Situation in Pennsylvania, 1922-1923. Mother and Child. 4. 553–557.
  20. Book: United States Congress House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Extension of Public Protection of Maternity and Infancy Act: Hearing Before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Sixty-ninth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 7555, a Bill to Authorize ... Appropriations for Carrying Out the Provisions of the Act ..., January 14, 1926. 1926. U.S. Government Printing Office. 16–18.
  21. News: Dr. Mary Riggs Noble, Noted Health Worker, Speaks at Donora. May 15, 1925. The Daily Republican. November 16, 2019. 1. Newspapers.com.
  22. News: Establish Health Clinics is Advice. October 12, 1922. Lancaster New Era. November 16, 2019. 8. Newspapers.com.
  23. Book: United States Congress Senate Committee on Commerce. Federal Cooperation with States in Promotion of General Health of Rural Population of the United States and Welfare and Hygiene of Mothers and Children: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Seventy-Second Congress, First Session, on Feb. 4, 5, 1932. 1932. U.S. Government Printing Office. 270–273. en.
  24. News: Baby Parades Hit as 'Exploitation'. September 22, 1932. The New York Times. 24. ProQuest.
  25. News: Dr. Mabel Akin New Pilot of American Medical Women. June 9, 1937. Courier-Post. November 17, 2019. 14. Newspapers.com.
  26. Book: Latta, Susan. Bold Women of Medicine: 21 Stories of Astounding Discoveries, Daring Surgeries, and Healing Breakthroughs. 2017-09-01. Chicago Review Press. 9781613734407. en.
  27. Web site: AMWA. American Medical Women's Association. en-US. 2019-11-17.
  28. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39157129/mary_riggs_noble_1946/ "Tri-County Child Guidance Center Headed by Veteran Social Worker"
  29. News: Susquehanna Council of Girl Scouts Hold Annual Meeting. October 23, 1958. The News-Sun. November 17, 2019. 6. Newspapers.com.

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