Baldwin, Jane North -— 1876-1975
Attachment #1;
At a Meeting of the Faculty of Vassar College held
December seventeenth, nineteen hundred
and seventy-five, the following
Memorial
was unanimously adopted:
Dr. Jane North Baldwin lived for ninety-nine full and intense
years before she died in Poughkeepsie, New York on May l5th, l975.
She was born in Keeseville, New York on February l0, 1876, the
daughter of George W. Baldwin, who was a professional photographer,
and Margaret Hargraves Baldwin. She was one of the early women
enrollees and graduates of Cornell University Medical School,
taking her M.D. degree in 1900. She interned at the New York
Infirmary for Women and Children in 19O1-O2 and came to Vassar
College as Assistant in Physiology and Assistant Physician in
1905-O6. From 1905 to 1930 she served the college as physician
in the department of Health and Hygiene, and in 193O she was
promoted to Professor of Hygiene and College Physician, a position
she held until her retirement in 1946 after 41 years of service to
the college. She is permanently honored by the college infirmary,
Baldwin House, which was completed in 194O and named for her.
Dr. Baldwin auspiciously started life in two counties. One
day when she was a little girl--so the story goes--her mother took
her to New York City from Albany on the dayliner to visit a sick
friend in a hospital. Jane Baldwin determined there and then to
become a doctor. Although not very much is on record about her
preparation for her career in medicine, one presumes that the
struggle to get ahead and establish herself in a man's world was
no easier for her than for the other women struggling shoulder to
shoulder at the beginning of the twentieth century. In accordance
with the custom of the time, she entered medical school without
attending college but was, however, retroactively adopted as an
honorary member of the class of 1921 at Vassar.
At various times Dr. Baldwin did graduate work--in physiology
at the Harvard Medical School in the summer of 1905, in internal
medicine at Johns Hopkins in 1916, and at the New York Post
Graduate Medical School in 1922. She was associated with MIT as
a research intern in Public Health in the summer of 1935.
During her career Dr. Baldwin was on the staff of the
Vanderbilt Clinic of Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City,
where she was an assistant attending physician in endocrinology;
and she was also on the courtesy staffs of Vassar Hospital and
St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, many times presiding over
the emergencies of Vassar students. She played an active role
beyond the college in the medical affairs of Dutchess County.
A member of the Dutchess County Medical Association and the
American Medical Association, she was at various times a vice-
president of the then American Student Health Association and
president of the then New York State Student Health Association.
She was an honorary member of the Women's Medical Association of
New York City and of the Visiting Nurses Association of Poughkeepsie
In 1950 she was honored by the Medical Society of the State of New
York, and in 1951 by the Dutchess County Medical Society, in
recognition of her fifty years of the practice of medicine in
Wew York State.
Dr. Baldwin did not limit her activities to Vassar College in
any narrow sense although she served Vassar long and well. She -
was a pioneer in local social service work. She was president of
the board of directors of Lincoln Center for a time and was active
in her retirement in senior citizens groups. She was a director
of the Dutchess County Association for Senior Citizens and a
member of the Gay 90's Club, -- one of the few members whose age
marked the distinction of the name.
Throughout her career, Dr. Baldwin had a very strong feeling
for her vocation. Her efforts to improve the health education and
the health service at Vassar resulted in the modern facilities and
in the enlightened attitudes characteristic of her administration.
The Vassar Alumnae Maqazine of July 1, 1936 quoted Dr. Baldwin,
when asked for the story of her life, as replying that Vassar
needed a new infirmary. A new infirmary was finally built at the
time of Vassar's 75th Anniversary and named in her honor. In 1933
the doctors‘ offices, previously crowded into the front Southwest
wing of Main Building, had moved to the old gym space in Ely which
was made vacant by the opening of Kenyon Hall. In the new quarters
in Ely there were fourteen consulting and waiting rooms--including
a separate one for colds in the head. There were four physicians
(including one psychiatrist and one pediatrician) and nine nurses.
But Dr. Baldwin was not content with the total situation since she
persisted in thinking that the infirmary, a beautiful New England
reproduction built in 1901 with funds donated by the family of
Charles Swift, was badly adapted for desired improvements in
infirmary care. As the saying was “Swift Infirmary, quick recovery.“
She pushed, therefore, for the modern facility which was designed
by Faulkner and Kingsbury and built and dedicated in 194O.
Dr. Baldwin was friendly, outgoing, concerned, intense, serious
and humorous. She was a woman of high moral standards and of great
humaneness. She put herselt out for others. in 1945, (for example)
she spent her summer vacation on the staff of Vassar Brothers
Hospital in order that a regular staff doctor might be released
for rest. A typical Baldwinian act!
The Class of 192l, her adopted Alma Mater, officially celebrated
her 90th birthday with a banquet. At that dinner the story was told
that Henry Noble MacCracken cited Dr. Baldwin for bravery. Dr.
Baldwin, he recalled, was the younger assistant in her first years
of Dr. Elizabeth Thelberg, her rather more formidable female
predecessor, known as Dr. T. One fall year the two of them - Dr. T.
and Dr. B. - were,as usual, examining freshmen in the annual initial
medical examination lineup. Recording a student's family history,
-Dr. Thelberg asked the frightened freshman - "And what was the cause
of your grandfather's death? '
- Freshman: He was assassinated.
Dr. T.: Good Heavens, child, what did he do?
Freshman; He was president--President Garfield.
Dr. T.: (turning to Dr. B.) Did you know this?
Dr. B.: Of course.
Dr. T.: Then why didn't you tell me?
Dr (quietly): You didn't give me a chance."
Dr. Baldwin's driving became part of the folklore of College
Avenue in her later years. All the affectionate residents knew
enough to drive to the side of the road and stop when Dr. Baldwin
honking her horn as she came, pulled out of her driveway. She
was still driving her car with gusto, pleasure, and indiscretion
in her nineties.
For all generations, Dr. Baldwin has been immortalized in
certain Vassar class songs, among them three sung by two members
of this Memorial Committee. The first: "Where Oh Where are
the Verdant Freshmen?“
Where oh where are the verdant freshmen?
Where oh where are the verdant freshmen?
Where oh where are the verdant freshmen?
Safe now in their trundle beds.
They've gone out from Baldwin's hygiene,
They've gone out from Lockwood's English,
They've gone out from Dicky's music
Safe now in their trundle beds.
The second: “The Hygiene Song“, arranged by Martha Alter '25
from words and tune originally composed by the Class of 1919.
Oh we never used to bathe - Till we heard the Doctor rave
In the lectures that she gave - How to behave
Now we take our daily bath - Even tho we miss our Math.
How in the world do you know that? She told us so!
In this case, as in many others, the song was reworked by the
ingenious ad-lib inventions of subsequent generations of students,
but it did not take too much ingenuity occasionally to substitute
Dr. B. for Dr. T. as the song sank deeply into the college's
musical folklore. In 1927, then, the song could include:
When we heard from Dr. B.
Of our ancient pedigree
Traced back to the Cambrian Sea
Much impressed were we,
Though they say man and baboon
are but a minute in a long afternoon
How in the world do you know that?
She told us so.
The post-Darwinian Doctor of hygiene has now become Dr. B.rather
than Dr. T.
And finally in the song “Matthew Vassar's Generous Heart“
composed by the Class of 1935 to the tune of “It Ain't Gonna
Rain No More," we have Dr. B. coming into her own as the
original dedicatee of the lines in the second verse:
Matthew Vassar's generous heart
Found a brain in every lass,
So he made his beer and college here
For the good of the Freshman class.
“Hygiene, hygiene, hy," said the Freshmen,
“Thank you, Dr. B.
I know all about the scurvy and the sanitary
survey
and the inside parts of me.“
Ida Treat Bergeret
Velma Gooding
Jean K. Stevenson
Elizabeth Daniels