Sara Murray Jordan, First Woman President of the American Gastroenterological Association (1942–1944)
Article Outline
Sara Murray Jordan, MD, PhD, first woman president of the AGA (1942–1944).
Sara Murray was born on October 20, 1884, in Newton, Massachusetts, to Patrick Andrew and Maria (Stuart) Murray.1 Patrick was from Cork, Ireland, and owned a carriage and autobody repair shop. Her Scot–English mother was born in Maine. Sara was the second of 7 Murray children and attended the public school in Newton. She attended Radcliffe College from 1901 to 1904, earning her AB degree in the classics in a short 3 years. Her childhood dream was to become a physician, but her parents disapproved. Hence, she enrolled in a PhD program in 1904 at the University of Munich, one of only a few women, where she studied classical philology and archaeology. She graduated magna cum laude in 1908. Her dissertation, “A Study of the Life of Andres, The Fool for the Sake of Christ” was published in 1910 and compared two 16th-century translations of a Greek text written in the 10th century. She accepted a teaching job at the Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, but after a short time, returned to Munich and married fellow student Sebastian Jordan, a German lawyer, on January 14, 1913. The following year, Sara gave birth to Mary Stuart; shortly after, at the outbreak of World War I, her parents urged her to return home to the United States. She never moved back to Germany and the marriage ended in divorce in 1921.
Despite her parents' objection and now the complication of raising a child on her own, her dream of becoming a doctor never waned. In 1917, at the age of 33 she was accepted to Tufts Medical School on probationary status with the agreement that she would complete chemistry and zoology in addition to the required medical school courses. She met the conditions yet was not released from probationary status, leading her to call for an investigation by the American Medical Association. Interestingly, her status was immediately changed. Her years at Tufts Medical School set the stage for her subsequent successful career. As a second-year student, she was invited by the well-known surgeon Frank Lahey to take part in his clinical studies at the New England Deaconess Hospital. Their research focused on evaluating thyroid function and testing metabolic rate. The result was her first scientific paper, “Basal Metabolism as an Index of Treatment in Diseases of the Thyroid,” co-authored with Lahey. In 1921, her lifelong dream of earning her MD was fulfilled and she graduated at the top of her class. With Lahey's assistance, she was offered an internship at Worchester Memorial Hospital and then pursued training in gastroenterology with Dr Bertram Sippy at Rush Medical College in Chicago. Dr Sippy, an internist, had received worldwide fame based on his medical (as opposed to surgical) treatment of ulcer disease with Sippy Powders.2 After completing her GI training, she returned to Boston to open her own small, home-based practice in Brookline where she also raised her daughter, then 8 years old. Four years later, she joined Lahey as a full founding member of the Lahey Clinic; she was in charge of gastroenterology in his unique practice that also included another surgeon and an anesthesiologist. She remained an active member of this practice for the duration of her career.
Likely based on her training with Sippy, the focus of Dr Jordan's career was ulcer disease and gastric cancer. Her early education in the classics made her an exceptional writer, which certainly contributed to her widespread reputation. She was a specialist focused on diseases that resulted from the stresses of life. She was quoted widely and had tremendous media exposure. She was a celebrity for gastroenterology and a physician to many well-known people including Harold W. Ross, then editor of The New Yorker. Collaboration with the culinary editor of this periodical resulted in the publication of a cookbook entitled Good Food for Bad Stomachs. She also penned a daily syndicated column “Health and Happiness: The Counsel of a Wise Doctor.” Much of her strategy for a healthy life was based on promoting balance. She advised, “Every businessman over 50 should have a daily nap and nip—a short nap after lunch and a relaxing highball before dinner”; “Every day give yourself a good mental shampoo”; and “A much more effective and lasting method of facelifting than surgical technique is happy thinking, new interests and outdoor exercise.” She even offered advice to her fellow physicians: “Nobody should smoke cigarettes—smoking with an ulcer is like pouring gasoline on a burning house” and “In medicine, as in statecraft and propaganda, words are sometimes the most powerful drugs we can use.” She herself seemed to have led a regulated life with an early morning round of golf, although she did not give up smoking until age 51. Although there is no stated connection, this was also the year (1935) that she married Penfield Mower, a stockbroker from Boston.
In March 1934, the first subspecialty journal focused on digestive diseases, Journal of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition, was published.3 Dr Jordan was named to the editorial council. It didn't take long for the officers of the American Gastroenterological Association to take note of this journal. By the publication of the third issue, they were so impressed by its high caliber that they adopted it as the association's official journal. The success of the journal was attributed to the fact that it was comprised of both clinical and research articles and contained editorials, book reviews, and important abstracts. In a prescient statement, then AGA President Dr B.B. Vincent Lyon wrote, “we predict that this journal will have a brilliant future so long as it continues to maintain its high standard of editorial supervision of accepted manuscripts and other subject matter and thus will serve to fill a much needed void. If this is accomplished, it will certainly enhance the value of American medical literature.” Interestingly, there was a somewhat bitter end to the relationship between the Journal of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition and the AGA in 1942 over editorial misconduct,3 leading the AGA to publish their own journal. I find it interesting that over 65 years later, the composition and editorial management of Gastroenterology and its success are little changed, as predicted by Dr Lyon.
The year that AGA created its own journal, 1942, was the year that Dr Sara Murray Jordan became its first woman president. There were 230 members (AGA Archives). By that time, Dr Jordan was well known in academic GI circles, even serving as secretary, vice chairman, and chairman of the AMA Section on Gastroenterology (1941–1948). It was a difficult time for the country and the world. Everyone was focused on the war and the poor economic conditions. Dr Jordan's response to the situation was that, “this economic rehabilitation will be neither stable or permanent unless supplemented by basic good health throughout the nation.” The AGA was interested in organizing the subspecialty in the context of wartime and the military responded because they understood the importance of gastroenterology-focused research given that many of the soldiers suffered from GI diseases. In fact, the US War Department authorized a section of gastroenterology and mandated that a gastroenterologist should be on the staff of every Army hospital. Dr Jordan's presidential address at the 46th session of the AGA was entitled “Post-War Rehabilitation of the Digestive Tract.”4 She focused on the connection between stress—both on the battlefront and home front—and digestive disease. She discussed plans for the management of 2 important conditions at the time, functional digestive disorders and the “peptic” ulcer. The former was characterized by “symptoms of distress, distention, and severe colicky pain” and she went on to say that these conditions “require not only the relative rest which follows the use of a bland and easily digestible diet, but also intensive bed rest for the individual for a short period of time, together with an antispasm regimen of heat and relaxing drugs.” Regarding peptic ulcer disease, she opined “that every ulcer, if detected early enough and treated intensively enough, is amenable to medical treatment,” likely stemming from her training with Sippy, and again recommended a balanced life that included good food habits, no smoking, rest, exercise, and limited use of alcohol. She also realized that uncontrollable factors contribute to ulcer recurrence including “fatigue, nervous tension, and emotional traumata.” At the end of the presidential address, she apologized to the AGA members for the “sermonesque quality of this address of mine, and to offer as my excuse by observation that many of my predecessors in office have used this opportunity to preach—so why not I?” Her position as first woman president was “frozen” for an additional year owing to the circumstances of war; to this she states, “but Chicago in June is an appropriate ‘melting’ zone, and as your frozen president in the process of melting, I wish to send our affectionate greetings to the 32 members who have been called to active service in the Armed Forces.”
After completing her terms as the first woman president of the AGA, Dr Jordan's illustrious career continued.1 She received the Elizabeth Blackwell citation for the teaching and practice of medicine (1 of 5 American women to receive this award); was awarded the Julius Friedenwald Medal by the AGA in 1952 for her outstanding achievements in the specialty; served on the Boston Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors in 1948; was a member of the Board of Trustees of Tufts University in 1951; and received numerous honorific awards. She addressed women's issues in both personal and public roles stating that, “femininity need not conflict with professional achievement.” Interestingly, in “The Woman Doctor of Today,” published in 1954 in the Radcliffe Quarterly, she conceded that the “sex prejudice” of male physicians did exist in the past, but felt that this sentiment “no longer exists in medicine today.”
Dr Sara Jordan, an astute physician, diagnosed herself with the disease that would cause her death, colon cancer. She died in 1959 at the age of 75 at the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston where she herself had practiced for many years. Her obituary was published in the Boston Globe and The New York Times. Her daughter and grandchildren left a legacy in her name to support the future of medicine at the Lahey Clinic.
References
- . Notable American women. In: Cambridge: Belknap Press; 1983;p. 387–388
- . A century of ulcer medicines. Mol Intervent. 2005;5:201–206
- . The American Journal of Digestive Diseases, 1934–1977. Dig Dis Sci. 1979;24:1–3
- . Presidential address: Post-war rehabilitation of the digestive tract. Gastroenterology. 1944;3:73–78
PII: S0016-5085(09)01834-4
doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2009.10.012
© 2009 AGA Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
