Margaret Cleaves

Margaret Cleaves

Shortly after graduating, Cleaves was appointed second assistant physician in the State Hospital for the Insane in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. There, she was a veritable pioneer, for up to that time, only one other woman in the world had occupied the position of physician in a public insane asylum. She remained in the asylum for three years and then resigned her position to commence private practice in Davenport, She was subsequently appointed one of the trustees of the asylum.[4]

While practicing medicine in Davenport, she became a member of the Scott County Medical Society, being the second woman to gain admission to that body. For several years, she was the secretary of the society. She also joined the State Medical Society, where she was again the second woman to gain admission. She was the first woman to become a member of the Iowa and Illinois Central District Medical Association. During her residence in Davenport she was an active member of the Davenport Academy of Sciences.[5]

In 1879, the board of trustees of the State Asylum for the Insane chose her their delegate to the National Conference of Charities, which that year met in Chicago, Illinois. In that conference, she read a paper on "The Medical and Moral Care of Female Patients in Hospitals for the Insane." It attracted widespread attention, and was printed in a volume, Lunacy in Many Lands, which was published by the Government of New South Wales. In June 1880, she was appointed by the Governor of Iowa a Slate delegate to the National Conference of Charities in Cleveland, Ohio, and thus the distinction was conferred upon her of being the first female delegate from Iowa to that body. She reported for the State to the conference, and her report was subsequently incorporated in the Governor's annual message. That same year she was appointed physician-in-chief in the Female Department of the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital in Harrisburg. After three years, Cleaves resigned due to failing health.[5]

She went abroad in 1883, remaining nearly two years, visiting insane hospitals in Scotland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium, everywhere receiving courtesies from men of recognized eminence in the treatment of insanity. She witnessed operations in general hospitals in England, France, and Germany, and in Paris, she was for several months a regular attendant at lectures and clinics. After returning to the United States, she opened a private home for the reception of patients in Des Moines, Iowa, conducting also an office practice in connection with her other work. In March 1885, she was appointed one of the examining committee of the Medical Department of the Iowa State University. It was the first honor of that kind bestowed on a woman by any standard medical school in the United States. In July 1886, she was sent as a delegate to the yearly meeting of the National Conference of Charities, which was held in St. Paul, Minnesota. During her residence in Des Moines, she was an active member of the Polk County Medical Society, of the Missouri Valley Medical Association and of the Iowa State Medical Association. In 1885-86 she served as the first president and charter member of the Des Moines Women's Club Before all those bodies she read papers and she served the last-named body as chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology in the session of 1889. At that time she was the only woman who had received such an appointment.[5]

In the medical fields of radiation oncology and gynaecology, Margaret Cleaves is remembered as the first physician to successfully apply radium in the treatment of cancer of the uterine cervix.[6] In her seminal paper of October 1903, she wrote:

"...an inoperable primary pelvic case of epithelioma, involving the cervix, anterior and posterior vaginal walls, almost to the introitus; rectum, bladder, and both broad ligaments." (page 605)

The patient was treated first by a combination of x-rays and ultraviolet light, followed by intravaginal insertion of one gram of bromide of radium in a sealed glass tube. On September 15, 1903, the patient had radium brachytherapy for five minutes to the posterior wall of the vagina, followed by five minutes to the anterior surface, because of the vesical involvement. A second application of five minutes was given on September 16, 1903.

"September 21, 1903. Five days subsequent to the use of radium, no bleeding, no odor, no discharge, no ulceration, and vaginal and cervical mucous membrane normal in appearance." (page 605)

"September 28. Is looking and feeling well. No symptoms; still no bleeding from rectum since radium first used, two weeks since."

Since then, brachytherapy is a pivotal part of the curative treatment for women with inoperable cervical cancer. Cleaves introduced a technique that has saved the lives of millions of women with cancer.

Illustration from Light energy, its physics, physiological action and therapeutic applications (1904)

Her work was not confined to medicine alone. She took a deep interest in all that pertained to the welfare and advancement of women. She organized the Des Moines Women's Club and was its first president. Some time prior to that, she had become a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women. Becoming interested in the subject of electro-therapeutics, she went to New York in the winter of 1887 and to Paris in the following summer, to prosecute her inquiries and investigation. After her return, she continued to practice for a while in Des Moines, but in 1890, she moved to New York City. She there joined the Medical Society of the County of New York, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association and the New York Women's Press Club. In the Post-Graduate Medical School, New York, she served as clinical assistant to the chair of electro-therapeutics. Since she took up her residence in New York, she read papers before the Medical Society of Kings County, Brooklyn, the New York Medico-Legal Society, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association and the National Conference of Charities. Many of them were published, and all of them were distinguished by painstaking research, clearness of statement, and logical reasoning.[5] She was author of Light Energy: Its Physics, Physiological Action and Therapeutic Application, and American editor of the Journal of Physiological Therapeutics, London.[7]

Cleaves died in a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, November 7, 1917.[7]

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Kelly, Howard Atwood; Burrage, Walter Lincoln (1920). American Medical Biographies (Public domain ed.). Norman, Remington Company. p. 228.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 500.