The Distaff Side of Hamilton County Medical History

I’ve been wanting to write something about Hamilton County’s medical history for a long time, but I discovered that’s easier said than done.

Most of what’s in the old newspapers are accounts of the Hamilton County Medical Society’s meetings and they don’t make very interesting reading.

While trying to come up with a topic for Women’s History Month, however, I remembered that Nancy Massey and Carol Ann Schweikert’s 2013 pictorial history of Noblesville contains photos of two early female doctors.

Bingo! I could kill two birds with one stone!

The women in the book are Mrs. Dr. Joyce F. Hobson and Mrs. Dr. Mivinda M. Wheeler. (During the late 1800s and early 1900s, married female doctors were often addressed as “Mrs. Dr.”)

Although I can’t prove it, it’s likely Dr. Hobson was the first female physician in Noblesville, if not in the entire county. She opened a practice here during the summer of 1879, posting an ad in the local newspapers which noted, “Special attention given treatment of diseases of women and children.”

Her training was in Eclectic medicine, a branch of American medicine that embraced the use of botanical remedies and noninvasive therapies. It arose as a reaction to the harshness of the conventional medicine of that day which leaned on blood-letting and the use of toxic chemicals.

It’s not surprising that Dr. Hobson followed that philosophy. Some of the first medical schools to admit women and African Americans were Eclectic medical schools. 

Although popular with her patients, Dr. Hobson ruffled the feathers of the more traditional physicians in the county, either because of her medical practices, or her gender. Maybe both.

This is evidenced in a letter published in the June 22, 1883 Republican-Ledger in which Mrs. Mary Myers defended Dr. Hobson against a rumor the doctor’s carelessness had allowed Mrs. Myers to become infected with smallpox. Mrs. Myers protested that the tale had been spread merely to harm Dr. Hobson and had “not a particle of truth to it.”

An even bigger kerfuffle developed about that same time when members of the Hamilton County Medical Society filed charges against Dr. William H. Cyrus for “persistently and intentionally” violating the AMA code of medical ethics by consulting with Dr. Hobson “of the so-called Eclectic School of Medicine.”

The open-minded Dr. Cyrus refused to “go back on the woman,” so the Society expelled him. He appealed to the State Medical Society, they tossed it back for a rehearing and the county society’s committee on ethics ruled that the charges and specifications against the doctor couldn’t be sustained.

Dr. Cyrus resigned from the county medical society a month later, anyway.

A native of Hancock County, Dr. Mivinda Wheeler arrived in Noblesville sometime in the early 1880s.

That’s such an unusual name, I initially wondered if it was a typo. (She does appear as “Miranda” in some places.) However, I discovered other women with that name in census records, so it seems “Mivinda” IS correct.

Dr. Wheeler also practiced Eclectic medicine, having graduated from the Indiana Eclectic Medical College in Indianapolis.

She initially worked under Dr. Hobson’s supervision and the two women became such good friends that they continued to stay in touch after Dr. Hobson moved to Arkansas in 1891.

Like Dr. Hobson, Dr. Wheeler was popular with her patients and was an active participant in the Indiana Eclectic Medical Association.

Unlike Dr. Hobson, she doesn’t seem to have created any major waves in the local medical community. I found more references in the old newspapers to her gardening skills than to her medical practice. (She won prizes for her flowers!)

Dr. Hobson, who remarried and was later Dr. Osborn/Osborne, died in California in 1939. Dr. Wheeler passed away in Noblesville in 1922.

Thanks to Nancy Massey for research help.

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at [email protected]