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With the start of World War I (WWI), the government sent out a call for doctors. Yet once again women found that the government refused to commission them as medical officers, a practice that had existed since the Civil War. Even with the start of World War II, there was no change in the government's stand regarding the enlistment of women physicians. A few accepted positions as contract surgeons hoping this might lead to a regular commission, but nine women doctors were unwilling to serve in a second-class capacity, and in 1942 they joined the British Medical Corps.(1) It was not until April 16, 1943, when President Roosevelt signed the Sparkman-Johnson Bill that women physicians were granted the right to commissions in the Medical Corps of the United States Army and Navy.
While the government would not award status to females as military surgeons in WWI, women were still encouraged to volunteer in other capacities that seemed more suited to their feminine role than tending wounded in the trenches. At a meeting of the New England Hospital Society in 1916, for example, Dr. N.J. Blackwood, medical inspector of the United States Navy, maintained that women should be prepared to take the places of men and learn "from the great manufacturing houses how drugs are made."(2) He urged the female doctors present to organize first aid classes and become familiar with dietetics, or even join the Red Cross. While the reaction of the audience was not recorded, one cannot help but think that his address was denigrating to women physicians as it implied that their training and level of competence was not on the same plane at that of the male military surgeon.
It is no wonder that quite a few women were outspoken about their profession that was dominated by males in nearly every public arena, and with the outbreak of war, here was but more one more situation that proved their point. Of course, the issue was far more complex given the personal motives of the women themselves. Women doctors were plagued by conflicts between separatism and assimilation, and nowhere were this more evident than in their division over the issue of the kind of service they should be able to provide during wartime....