Florence Rena Sabin, 1871-1953

FLORENCE RENA SABIN, 1871-1953 LAWRENCE S. KUBIE, M.D.* The life ofFlorence Sabin is several tales in one: ofhardy Vermonters turning west to seek fortune in the mines ofColorado; ofthe varied destinies that awaited them there; ofthe swift transition from a frontier culture to sophistication; ofthe parallel upsurge in American medical education , medical research, and medical care which marked the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Furthermore, the story ofwoman 's role in these changes is implicit in the life ofthis one woman. It is also a Horatio Alger fable. Florence Sabin was born in 1871 in Silver City, Colorado, in a shaky frame house which was perched on an abrupt mountainside, leaning over and almost sliding into a mine pit. In 1900 she became one ofthe first two women interns at theJohns Hopkins Hospital. She was the first woman appointed professor at theJohns Hopkins Medical School, in 1917. She was the first woman to become a full member ofthe staffofthe Rockefeller Institute, in 1925, and subsequently the first woman life member of the National Academy of Science, and the recipient offifteen honorary degrees and countless other honors. Then on "retiring" in 1938, she found herselfquite unexpectedly devoting her last fifteen years to reforming the public health services ofher native state. This was the final affirmation ofher convictions about the civic and political responsibilities ofevery citizen, every scientist, and every woman. Throughout her life, women's struggle for a place in education, science, politics, and the arts occupied her thoughts and her heart. The young of today take for granted the victory; indeed, they barely remember the struggle. But for Florence Sabin it was real and immediate. There was * Director ofTraining, The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson 4, Maryland; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine (on leave of absence); Faculty, New York Psychoanalytic Institute (on leave of absence); Lecturer in Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. 306 Lawrence S. Kubie · Florence Rena Sabin Perspectives itiBiology and Medicine · Spring 1961 dedication as well as humor in the name she chose for her first car, as she christened her air-cooled Franklin "Susan B. Anthony." No one who knewher in those years canforgether delight inwhat the "SusanB" represented . Butjust as her scientific thinking was always evolving, so did her conception ofthe role ofwomen. Slowly she saw that for women as for men the most difficult part ofthe struggle for freedom is that struggle for inner freedom which can begin only after external freedoms have been won. She came to realize that the earlier essential victory had merely set the stagefor a struggle that would continue for many generations to come. This was why in her later years she read eagerly in the field ofpsychiatry and psychoanalysis. To the last, hers was a pioneering spirit which never ceased its efforts to push back the barriers to freedom. Thus, on many levels, Doctor Sabin's life has significance for women: for the women ofher own era who won a freedom that few knew how to use; for the American women oftoday who inherited this freedom, only to take on the shackles of an inner enslavement which Can be worse than any external tyranny. With the years Doctor Sabin became aware ofthis tragic outcome ofthe feminine revolt—and recognized in it an unhappy parallel to the fate ofso many revolutions. In a more personal way, hers is the story of a homely, fuzzy-haired, snub-nosed little girl, blinking out at the world through thick, shining glasses, nursing her many heartachessilently, turning to the world ofbooks and ideas and music for consolation and strength. When Florence was five a little brother was born, only to die one year later. Barely ayear later another baby brother brought even deeper sorrow —because on Florence's seventh birthday, a few days after his birth, her mother died. Then this baby died one year later, leaving Florence and Mary, aged seven and nine, respectively, to be shuttled about: boarding schools in Denver and in Vermont, Uncle Albert Sabin in Chicago, or across the continent to the Vermont farm of their Sabin grandparents. Through these changing scenes Mary provided about the...