WOMEN MEDICAL PIONEERS: ANNE WALTER FEARN

For a woman to become a physician during the 19th century was a rare proposition.

For her to practice medicine several thousand miles from home was nothing short of astounding.

But what Holly Springs native Anne Walter Fearn accomplished during her 40 years in China can only be considered remarkable.

In 1878, her father – plantation owner and lawyer Col. Harvey Washington Walter – and three of her brothers died during an epidemic of Yellow Fever. The impact of that tragedy on the 13-year-old Anne Walter was immeasurable, but most certainly played a large role in her later career choice.

She attended the Charlotte Female Institute in North Carolina (now Women’s College of South Carolina) and went to California to visit her brother, who was recovering from malaria. According to Fearn’s correspondence with her mother, it was then that she decided to cross conventional mores and become a physician.

Fearn enrolled in San Francisco’s Cooper Medical School and graduated from Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1893. Almost immediately after graduation, she agreed to embark on a voyage to China and serve as a “substitute” medical missionary for one of her Women’s Medical College classmates. The “temporary” trip turned into a 40-year career.

The Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions paid Fearn’s salary as she practiced at the Women’s Hospital of Soocho, China. Within 10 years, Fearn had helped build a children’s wing at the hospital, developed a vocational school and established the first coeducational medical school in the country.

During her 40 years of practice, Fearn delivered more than 6,000 babies – including as many as nine in one day. Her enormous zeal gained her the nickname “the Small Typhoon” among the Chinese.

Around the turn of the century, she married fellow physician and Yazoo City native Dr. John Burrus Fearn and moved to Shanghai, where the couple opened their own hospital, the Fearn Sanitarium. She helped establish the Shanghai American School in 1912 and worked with H. H. Kung, the Chinese financial minister, in the National Child Welfare Association of China.

She retired in 1938 and moved back to the United States, where she wrote a book about her many eventful and dramatic medical experiences during the Chinese Revolution of 1911, the Chinese Rebellion of 1913, the White Russian Invasion after World War I, and the constant Japanese “encroachment” in China. Fearn died in Berkeley, Calif., just two weeks before the book, “My Days of Strength,” was published in 1939.

“Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians” was developed by the Exhibition Program of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine in collaboration with the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The traveling exhibition has been made possible by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women’s Health. The American Medical Women’s Association provided additional support. For more information, visit the Web site (http://www.library.umc.edu/face).

 — Bruce Coleman (12-17-2007)

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