Oregon's Doctor to the World

Oregon's Doctor to the World is a biography of Esther Clayson Pohl Lovejoy (1869–1967), an extraordinary woman—physician, public health activist, suffragist, congressional candidate, author of a least three books, and pioneer in early efforts to organize international medical relief work. Her story is one of almost a century of women's public activism. Born in a lumber camp in Washington Territory, the daughter of working-class immigrants, she received almost no formal education. Despite this, she went on to medical school, paying her way by working in department stores. She became the second woman to graduate from the University of Oregon's medical school in 1894. An activist doctor, she went with her first husband to provide medical care during a spinal meningitis epidemic in Alaska in the late 1890s. A decade later as a member of the Portland Board of Health she battled the 1907 bubonic plague epidemic and fought for pure food and milk. Tragedy also shaped her progressive and feminist consciousness—she lost a husband during the Alaska spinal meningitis epidemic, and her only son from drinking tainted milk. She led the Portland Women's Suffrage League and worked for the ballot measure that gave Oregon women the vote in 1912. The outbreak of World War I took Lovejoy out of Oregon politics and into the world of women's international medicine. The last forty years of her life she traveled extensively, building support and speaking at national and international conferences

Ballot · Biography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Suffrage · Voting · World War II · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Law · Medicine · Race, History, and American Society

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