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Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
Walker, Dr. Mary Edwards (1832-1932) Press Photograph, 1912. Black-and-white photograph of the doctor dressed in her "rational dress," wearing clothes that at the time were deemed appropriate only for men: suit with trousers, topcoat, walking stick, top hat, and wearing her Congressional Medal of Honor; with Harris and Ewing copyright on recto, retouched for publication; Central Press Association stamp dated 1912 on verso, with typed caption; folding, faded, chips, holes, 5 x 7 in.
Dr. Walker earned her medical degree at the Syracuse Medical College in 1855, the second woman to graduate M.D. in the U.S. after Elizabeth Blackwell. She volunteered to serve as a surgeon during the Civil War as she was barred from joining the Army, which would only allow her to serve as a nurse. She was captured by the Confederates and held for four months in the summer of 1864. As she is pictured here, we see Dr. Walker practicing dress reform for women. "The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day are those physical, moral, and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing!" In New Orleans in 1870, she was arrested because of her clothing. Dr. Walker is the only woman, to this day, to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
