Bethenia Owens-Adair... The First Woman to Dissect a Man's Body!

Bethenia's fame spread through the world in 1922, the day she succeeded in passing a law requiring every applicant for marriage to obtain a medical certificate — this after she had spent fifteen years negotiating and debating with the legislative bodies of the state of Oregon. This was the first visible step toward making eugenics a subject the public would discuss openly. And this law was the first of its kind in America. One magazine wrote at the time, commenting on the Oregon governor's signing of this law: "It is a historic victory to be credited to Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair."

It was a hot day in the summer of 1872, in the village of Roseburg, when Bethenia was invited to watch the village doctors dissect the body of Jomasi the tramp. Bethenia had recently finished her studies for a medical degree at the Philadelphia college (that college being one of the few institutes that accepted women for such study). That was in the early era of the settlement of America, and the spectacle of dissecting corpses was a hideous business, confined to a class of men to the exclusion of women.

It occurred to no one that Bethenia would answer this invitation — but she did! She set out toward the hut where the body was to be dissected, heedless of the looks of defiance and disgust that the village women cast at her.

Bethenia was a beautiful, slender young woman in the third decade of her life. She passed through the village lanes with her head held high... "What boldness!" whispered one of the women. "Just wait until her eyes fall on Jomasi — he has been dead two days now. It will not be long before she turns tail in terror!"

That terrifying hour she spent dissecting the countryman's body was the first spur to her struggle for the liberation of the daughters of her sex — she smashed the walls of ignorance and fanaticism, and enacted a law requiring every applicant for marriage to obtain a medical certificate....
How stirring is the story of Bethenia Adair!!

Bethenia bore their mockery patiently. As she drew near the hut her heart began to pound violently, for what she feared most was the men's derision... She heard their guffaws and wished she could go back the way she had come; but she kept advancing toward the door, and lifted its latch. The moment they saw her, their laughter died and turned to astonishment.

The senior physician of Rosenberg, Dr. Barnes, stood near the door — it was he who had issued the invitation. She realized that by it he had meant to challenge and humiliate her; that was the secret of his inviting her. But she held out her hand to him, saying: "I thank you for your invitation, and I appreciate the honor you have done me." At that he looked at her flushed face and her unblinking eyes with the look of a scorner, then cried: It is not seemly for a woman to watch the dissection of a man's body. Bethenia asked him: "What difference is there between that and a man watching the dissection of a woman's body?" You invited me, Chief Barnes, and here I have answered your invitation.

One of the doctors whispered bashfully in her ear: "The disease that carried off Jomasi afflicted, among the organs it afflicted, his private parts."

Bethenia felt as though the blood had drained from her face. But she mastered herself and answered in a steady voice: "All the organs of the body ought to be alike in a physician's eyes." Dr. Barnes said hotly, flinging the dissecting instruments down before Bethenia: "Take them, then, and perform the dissection yourself!"

A moment of horror passed over her; she thought she would faint, and she wondered: Can I undertake this? Her education had been theoretical, and all she knew of the world of anatomy she had learned from the pictures in books, not from practice, for in those days women were forbidden to practice surgery. But she resolved to act, and calmly rolled up the sleeves of her light white dress. Gloves were not yet known in those days. So her bare hands would have to touch that cold, filthy corpse!

The witnesses drew near her to watch her dissection at close range, while she worked in silence and with skill. In those days the complicated microscopic, bacteriological, and chemical methods were unknown and were not used

in dissection. All that could be deduced from such an examination went no further than what the naked eye could plainly see. She gave her opinion of what she found with modest boldness, then sewed up the skin and made the body ready for burial. Afterward she washed her hands and let down her sleeves, without a single one of the doctors present being able to criticize her work or overturn any of the conclusions she had stated — indeed, they were probably angry... Then she left the hut in perfect calm, after returning the lukewarm greeting of some of the witnesses. As for the women, they sat in the lanes by their houses, watching her in silence. One old woman among them shouted at her: "God's curse upon you, Bethenia Owens-Adair! You are a disgrace to your town and your family. Better that you leave us, for not one of us can bear your staying any longer!!"

Bethenia realized after this that she would not be able to practice her work in Rosenberg, so she gathered her belongings and moved to Portland, where she opened a clinic for performing operations — or rather electrical and medical baths for her patients. It was the only branch to which a woman could then aspire. Her practice grew, and she began to climb, slowly and strivingly, the steps of success.

In 1878 she took a new step, entering the University of Michigan after Jefferson University had refused to admit her. In the same year she enrolled her son in the very university where she was studying, to begin the study of medicine alongside his mother. She had married, at thirteen, a man who was good for nothing. After two years of exhausting study she obtained the true medical degree, and began working as a physician in a Chicago hospital with male colleagues, and joined the greatest surgeons as they worked. Then she returned to Oregon to practice her profession with men on an equal footing.

Bethenia died at eighty, after spending more than fifty years of struggle in the cause of woman's emancipation. She fought the gripping corset, denounced riding sidesaddle, demanded woman's unveiling and urged her to practice sport; and the debate grew heated between her and President Charles Eliot, the head of Harvard University, on the other side of the American continent. He feared that higher education and sport in the open air were things that would spoil for woman her natural mission of pregnancy and childbirth. He was convinced of the soundness of her view when she married her second husband at forty-four, and conceived at forty-seven.

Bethenia Owens-Adair was able to smash the walls of ignorance and fanaticism and break the shackles of deprivation that had encircled women's necks. That terrifying hour she spent dissecting the countryman's body was the first spur to her struggle for the liberation of the daughters of her sex.