A bit more about Mabel

Mabel, a small vivacious woman, was the youngest of seven siblings, raised on the family estate, North Hall in Hampshire, England. In 1896, at the age of twenty-two, a family tragedy led to the loss of her home and the life she expected to lead.

 

To the surprise of family and friends, Mabel enrolled in science classes at Oxford University, then quietly gained entry into the medical school, the first woman to do so. She did this amidst riots protesting women being allowed to earn higher degrees and “evidence” from the medical world that because women had smaller brains and lost their “lifeblood” every month, the pursuit of education would render them insane and sickly. At great risk to her mental and physical well-being Mabel doggedly persisted with her medical education, despite unimaginable soul-searing setbacks. 

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In pursuit of her dream, Mabel was trained by and worked with some of the most highly revered scientists in history including Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine, John Scott Haldane, eminent respiratory physiologist, Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, Nobel Prize laureate and James Ritchie, founder of the Pathological Society. She became a meticulous and rigorous scientist. Her discoveries contributed to understanding how we breathe and how we eat. Over the intervening 100 years, research built on these early discoveries has significantly advanced our understanding and treatment of cancer, heart disease, and lung disease, to name but a few.

 

Her adventures took her from England to Denmark, across the Atlantic to New York City and the untamed American west, Canada and Scotland. Mabel was at the epicenter of a battle to control medical education that decimated the presence of women and minorities in medicine. The impact of those events persists to this day.

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Mabel’s inspiring tale of successes, failures, and adventure not only provides readers with unique insights into the challenges faced by a woman trying to succeed in medicine at the turn of the 20th century but also invites them to make comparisons with their own struggles 100 years later, at the turn of the 21st century.