Free The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West by Chris Enss Page A

in search of a better life in the California Gold Fields. Arriving in the Gold Country in 1855, fourteen-year-old Nellie met and fell in love with forty-four-year-old dentist Allen Chapman. The pair married on March 24, 1861.
    Doctor Allen Chapman established his practice in Nevada City, California, in 1856. Shortly after their wedding, Nellie began training as his assistant. Her duties included sterilizing the dental equipment, applying iodine and pain relievers to patients, and handing her husband the tools he needed to work.
    Allen proved to be a wonderful teacher, sharing his knowledge of dentistry with his wife and encouraging her to acquire a license of her own. After eighteen years of marriage, the bulk of which was spent learning about dental health, Nellie decided to make it official. In 1879, she became the first licensed woman dentist in the West.
    The Comstock strike in Nevada attracted many fortune-seekers to the hills around Virginia City. In 1865, Allen Chapman was one of the thousands who hurried to the new state to strike it rich. Not only was Allen a miner in Virginia City, but he ran a dental practice there as well. Confident that Nellie could handle the practice alone with the training that he had given here, Allen turned his attention to mining.
    Allen divided his time between working his claim, running his office, and traveling to visit his wife and two children. Once Nellie received her license, she assumed full control of the growing California practice. She outfitted the office with her own equipment, which featured the best, most up-to-date products available.
    Her patients made themselves comfortable in a grand red velvet chair, fitted with a porcelain bowl on a stand, an aspirator, and a holder for a crystal water glass. The drills she used were the most sophisticated on the market. It was powered by a treadle, which worked like a flywheel as it was pumped. A large wooden cabinet in the corner of the room held medieval-looking dental tools and leather-bound copies of The Principles and Practice of Dental Surgery and Gray’s Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical.
    As the only dentist in a wide range of northern California, Nellie’s dental practice was in high demand. She was recognized by most in the community as a qualified doctor who always made her patients feel at ease. Nellie continued to practice dentistry until her death in 1906. She was fifty-nine when she passed away.
     

    DR. NELLIE POOLER CHAPMAN’S WEDDING PORTRAIT

     
     

    DR. NELLIE POOLER CHAPMAN ATTENDS TO A PATIENT IN THE DEN OF HER HOME.

     
    While Nellie Pooler Chapman was carving out a place for herself in history as the first licensed dentist in the West, Lucy Hobbs Taylor was making a name for herself as the first woman in the world to earn a Doctorate of Dental Science degree.
    Born on March 14, 1833, in Franklin County, New York, Lucy Beaman Hobbs’s interest in medical studies began at an early age. Her mother and father were killed when she was twelve years old. The ten children they left behind were forced to fend for themselves to stay alive. Although times were difficult, Lucy rarely missed a day of school, and helped support her family by working as a seamstress.
    After graduating in 1849, she relocated to Michigan and took a job as a schoolteacher. Her desire was to become a doctor, but at the time, there was a very narrow range of occupations deemed socially acceptable for women. She decided to remain in the more traditional role of teacher until she could afford to challenge the world’s conventional view of working women, and until she had enough money to apply to medical college.
    In 1859, she sought admission to the Eclectic College of Medicine in Cincinnati, but was denied entrance because of her gender. Struck by her tenacity and drive, one of the professors at the college offered to give her private lessons in general medicine. At his suggestion she entered the field of dentistry.
    Dental schools required