Note 115 — VII. WOMAN IN MEDICINE. (continued 2)
Reading edition
In 1876, the Boylston Prize, conferred every two years by Harvard University for a medical essay, was won by Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. The prizes were awarded in ignorance of the names of the writers, and consequently of their sex; but this was the first occasion on which a woman had competed. The subject was, “The Question of Rest for Women during Menstruation.”
Dr. Boylston, the founder of the prize, had been the first colonial physician to practice inoculation, after this had been suggested by Cotton Mather.