Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism by Kimberly Jensen (review)

Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism, by historian Kimberly Jensen, is the story of a truly remarkable medical leader and health activist. Jensen has unearthed an extraordinary level of detail about the life and work of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy (1869–1967). Esther was a woman physician with absolutely boundless energy, a tireless commitment to activism, and a supportive network of medical women friends.

Esther devoted most of her life to public service, and this is where the book is at its best. Esther graduated from medical school in 1894 in Portland, Oregon, and married a fellow classmate, Emil Pohl. She specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and spent her early years in private practice. However, she soon became a member of Portland’s health board and the first woman to be appointed the city’s health officer (1907–9), a position from which she campaigned against the bubonic plague and impure milk. She was also involved in politics, women’s clubs, and the women’s suffrage movement. During World War I she worked for the Red Cross and provided assistance in France. She was the first woman candidate for Congress from Oregon, running (unsuccessfully) as the Democratic Party candidate in 1920. Furthermore, she was active in the Medical Women’s National Association, was the first president of the Medical Women’s International Association, and from 1919 to 1967 served as the director of the American Women’s Hospitals, an international medical relief organization. Finally, Esther promoted the history of women in medicine, even publishing several books on the topic.

There is much to admire in Jensen’s thoroughly researched study of a truly fascinating woman doctor, but there are some areas that could have been improved. For example, Jensen’s study draws on an impressive range and quantity of primary sources, including various versions of Esther’s unpublished autobiography. Jensen is rightly full of admiration for her subject, but a more critical assessment of Esther’s flaws and limitations would have enhanced the biography. Esther had adversaries and controversies constantly surrounded her personal and professional life. As Jensen admits in one of the last chapters, Esther was not “always easy to work with or approachable to everyone” (p. 181). This brief but revealing section, in which Jensen quotes from Esther’s long-serving executive secretary for the American Women’s Hospitals organization, is one of the few moments when Jensen informs the reader that not everyone appreciated Esther’s ambitions and domineering personality.

The book also would have benefitted from the guidance of a good editor. For instance, the narrative does not really pick up pace until several chapters into the book. The first few chapters cover Esther’s working-class origins, family conflicts, and employment in a department store to fund her medical education. They also document her first husband’s long absences in his quest for riches in Alaska and Canada, and the death of her young son. This material on Esther’s early life could have been condensed so that the reader would more quickly get to the better analyzed material on Esther’s health work and political activism beginning in chapter 4. Indeed, the book as a whole should have been streamlined. Although a tremendous amount of work went into locating this information, there are simply too many details in these eleven chapters, sometimes making the book too dense.

Overall, Oregon’s Doctor to the World is a very good study of a major medical figure. It addresses a number of themes, including women in medicine, social justice, women’s rights, politics, peace activism, public health, international health, and health activism. It draws on the concept of “constructive resistance” to explain the doctor’s approach to the challenges that she encountered in her various endeavors. Whether facing down her father...