Esther Pohl Lovejoy

A photograph of Esther Pohl Lovejoy and Emil Pohl in Alaska.

Lovejoy's husband, Emil, and her brother, Fredrick Clayson, sailed to Alaska on July 30, 1897 to follow the discovery of gold. They were passengers on the George W. Elder, the first Portland ship that sailed to the Klondike region.[9] The rest of Esther's family, consisting of her mother and three other siblings, followed in the coming year. After concluding her post graduate studies in Chicago in the spring of 1898, Esther also made the move to Alaska.[9] While in Skagway, a cerebrospinal meningitis epidemic ensued; because there was no drug to treat the disease and no caretakers to monitor the patients, many fell victim to the disease.[9] For the duration of the epidemic, both Esther and Emil used their medical school educations to provide care. After the epidemic ended, Esther moved back to Portland in June of 1989 while Emil continued to follow the gold rush around Alaska and advertise his expertise as a physician.[9]

Around the time of the birth of her son, Esther's mother and sisters moved back to Portland for school and work. Eventually Annie, Esther's mother, moved into her Portland home, allowing her to embark on a journey to Europe and Palestine in 1904; while in Vienna, she performed studies in various clinics.[9] Annie gave Esther the opportunity to continue to practice medicine, be an advocate for women's suffrage, and a pioneer in the field of public health while also getting to be a mother.

Lovejoy was very active during the First World War, where she used her efforts to study the effects of war and militarization on women. From 1917-1918, she traveled to France on the behalf of the Medical Women's National Association to study women and children in devastated areas.[9] She found that many women were the victims of wartime violence in the form of rape, poverty, disease and dislocation.[9] The war also sparked Lovejoy to publish a book and go on several speaking tours after traveling back to the United States; in her work, she advocated for equality between men and women through progressive action.[9] While in France, she also worked with the Red Cross.[3]

Lovejoy was appointed to the Portland Board of Health by Harry Lane, the mayor of Portland in 1905.[2] After two years she became the Portland City Health Officer, making her the first woman to lead a board of health in a major US city. During her appointment, she focused on goals such as providing pure food and water, improving garbage collection systems, and developing better disease inspections for school-aged children.[3] She also regulated the milk supply in Oregon and paved way for school nurses to receive funding; all of her efforts helped to establish Portland as a city with high sanitation standards.[3] Before leaving for Europe in 1909, she also established ties with several civic groups such as the Council of Jewish Women, the Consumer's League, and the Portland's Woman's Club. From 1907-1908, Lovejoy also helped prevent an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the Portland area.[2]

While serving on the Board of Health, Lovejoy was also an author of various documents that reside at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in their Public Health in Oregon digital collection. Among these documents is an annual report that addresses the public health situation in Portland in 1908, including death rates and recommendations for further improvements of sanitation standards.[11] She also authored a report that discusses impure milk and its effects on health and infant mortality,[12] in addition to several other documents.

Upon returning to Portland in 1920, Lovejoy decided to run for Congress as a progressive candidate against Clifton McArthur, the republican incumbent.[13] This was also the year that the 19th amendment to the US constitution, also known as the National suffrage amendment, was ratified.[13] At the time, the state of Oregon was primarily run by the GOP, also referred to as the Republican Party. The first Red Scare was also rampant across the nation, causing the public to accuse Lovejoy of believing in Communism and supporting the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution.[13] Despite the anti-progressive sentiment and the dominance of the GOP, Lovejoy was still able to win 44 percent of the vote.[13]

An image of Esther Pohl Lovejoy (far right) and other members of the American Women's Hospitals in 1918.

In 1915, the Medical Women's National Association (MWNA) was established to advocate for women physicians; the organization utilized petitions, rallies and various other efforts to try and grant officer status to the women serving in the US Army Medical Corps.[9] Lovejoy herself argued that women were already performing medical relief work, and that they were prepared and eligible to organize their official service in the war.[9] Because of these efforts, the MWNA decided to establish a War Service Committee led by Dr. Rosalie Morton in June of 1917.[9] Subsequently, Lovejoy was appointed to be the chair of an additional committee on Maternity Service, which was established because maternity cases in areas of war were left to women physicians as a result of male physicians' service in the military.[9]

In 1918, members of the Medical Women's National Association voted to establish Lovejoy as their first Vice President.[9] The following year, Lovejoy was asked to be the new chair of the American Women's Hospitals (AWH), formerly referred to as the War Service Committee. She then became the MWNA's acting president months later after Etta Gray, the president at the time, left to provide care in Serbia.[9] She led the AWH from her first appointment in 1919 until passing away in 1967.[2] Under her guidance, the AWH had many objectives, one of which was to provide services in the public health sector in addition to establishing various orphanages and clinics in war-torn areas.[3] During World War II in 1939, the AWH expanded their services by providing care in Greece, Britain and the Far East.[9] The association ultimately provided service to victims of war in almost 30 different nations.[9]

During the first World War, there were women physicians all over the world that were providing care in hospitals, clinics and volunteer organizations, no matter which side of the conflict their country was on. This prompted Lovejoy, acting president of the MWNA, to host an international conference that would allow women to share their stories and experiences. The conference was held in New York from September 15 to October 24, 1919; over 100 women physicians from 16 different nations were in attendance.[9] Although they discussed a wide variety of topics, they were all centered around a common theme: women's health.[9] At the end of the conference, Lovejoy and the MWNA held a reception dinner for the international medical personnel and the members of the AWH returning from service abroad.[9] The guests continued to share stories of war and service from around the globe, leading to the formation of the Medical Women's International Association (MWIA).[9] The group's goal was to allow medical women of varying nationalities to continue to serve and share their work with each other.[9] Lovejoy was elected as the first president of the association, serving from 1919 to 1924.[2]