Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald

Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald (3 August 1872 – 24 August 1973)[1] was a British physiologist and clinical pathologist best known for her work on the physiology of respiration. She became the second female member of the American Physiological Society in 1913.[2]

Mabel Purefoy FitzGerald
Born(1872-08-03)3 August 1872
Preston Candover, Hampshire, England
Died24 August 1973(1973-08-24) (aged 101)
Oxford, England
NationalityBritish
Scientific career
FieldsPhysiology, pathology

Early life and education

Mabel FitzGerald was born in 1872 in Preston Candover near Basingstoke. She was educated at home, as was typical for upper and middle class girls in her time. In 1895, both her parents died and Mabel moved to Oxford with her sisters in 1896.[1] She began to teach herself chemistry and biology from books, as well as attending classes at Oxford University between 1896 and 1899, even though women were not yet allowed to receive degrees.[3] She continued her studies at the University of Copenhagen, Cambridge University and New York University.[3]

Work

FitzGerald began to work with Francis Gotch at the physiology department in Oxford. Gotch also helped her get a paper published by the Royal Society in 1906.[3]

From 1904, FitzGerald worked with John Scott Haldane on measuring the carbon dioxide tension in the human lung. After studying the differences between healthy and ill people, the two continued to investigate the effects of altitude on respiration; it is this work that they are most famous for. FitzGerald's observations of the effects of full altitude acclimatization on carbon dioxide tension and haemoglobin remain accepted today.[1]

In 1907, FitzGerald was awarded a Rockefeller travelling scholarship, which allowed her to work in New York and Toronto.[3]

In 1911 she participated, along with C. Gordon Douglas and several other scientists, in a Colorado expedition led by John Scott Haldane to investigate human respiration at high altitudes.[4]

In the summer of 1913 in North Carolina, she made measurements on the breathing and the blood of a total of 43 adult residents chosen from three different locations in the Southern Appalachian chain.[5]

Later life

FitzGerald returned to the UK in 1915 to serve as a clinical pathologist at the Edinburgh infirmary, a position that was empty because of World War I. She did not publish any more papers and remained out of contact with the physiology community even after her return to Oxford in 1930.[3]

In 1961, on the centenary of Haldane's birth, her work was rediscovered. In 1972, at 100 years old, she received an honorary MA from Oxford University, 75 years after she had attended classes there, and an apology from the Vice Chancellor, Sir Alan Bullock.[6] She was also made a member of The Physiological Society.[1]

Papers

Her papers (Nachlass) are held by Bodleian Library.[7]

After her death R. W. Torrance was asked to look at her scientific apparatus and papers in the house at 12 Crick Road. ... The apparatus formed the tools of her trade as a physiologist studying acclimatizations at high altitude, including an altimeter, haemoglobinometer, haemocytometer, and the two hemi-Haldane apparatuses she had used in North Carolina. There was a trunk full of family diaries including her own and many letters including some about scientific work from Haldane, Douglas, Gotch, Mann, Henderson and Sherrington. This material is now in the Bodleian Library. There was also correspondence with Osler for whom she collected medical books.[8]

Selected publications
  • FitzGerald, MP; Haldane, JS (1905). "The normal alveolar carbonic acid pressure in man" (PDF). The Journal of Physiology. 32 (5–6): 486–494. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.1905.sp001095. PMC 1465735. PMID 16992788.
  • FitzGerald, MP (1913). "The changes in the breathing and the blood at various high altitudes". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character. 203 (294–302): 351–371. doi:10.1098/rstb.1913.0008.
  • FitzGerald, MP (1914). "Further observations on the changes in the breathing and the blood at various high altitudes". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character. 88 (602): 248–258. Bibcode:1914RSPSB..88..248P. doi:10.1098/rspb.1914.0072.

References
  1. Torrance, R. W. "FitzGerald, Mabel Purefoy (1872–1973)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  2. Appel, Toby A.; Cassidy, Marie M.; Tidball, M.Elizabeth (1987). "Women in Physiology". History of the American Physiological Society. New York: Springer. pp. 381–390. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-7576-7_14. ISBN 9781461475767.
  3. Marilyn Ogilvie; Joy Harvey, eds. (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge. pp. 450–451. ISBN 978-0415920384.
  4. West, John B. (31 October 2011). "Centenary of the Anglo-American high-altitude expedition to Pikes Peak". Experimental Physiology. 97 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1113/expphysiol.2011.058776. PMID 21948193.
  5. FitzGerald, M. P. (1914). "Further observations on the changes in the breathing and the blood at various high altitudes". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character. 88 (602): 248–258. doi:10.1098/rspb.1914.0072. JSTOR 80707.
  6. "Oxford Degree: 75 Years Later". Lakeland Ledger. December 25, 1972.
  7. "The Mabel FitzGerald Archive, or: An extraordinary woman". Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
  8. O'Connor, W. J. (1991). British Physiologists 1885–1914: A Biographical Dictionary. p. 111. ISBN 9780719032820. Gustav Mann (1864–1921) worked with Gotch from 1894 to 1908 in Oxford and then in 1908 became Professor of Physiology at Tulane University in New Orleans.
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