Dr. Eleanor Dorcas Pond Mann, Boston, is said to be the perfect complement to Sarah Ida Shaw’s visionary personality. She is known as the influential developer of our Ritual and the first to suggest a triple-letter name, which led to Delta Delta Delta. Get to know Eleanor, the strides she made for women in medicine and her struggles as a female doctor during her time.
After graduating from Boston University, Eleanor Dorcas Pond was drawn to medicine, but her earliest medical school applications were immediately rejected. She spent the next four years teaching Latin and science in Webster and Salem, Massachusetts, before being accepted at Tufts Medical College in 1893, along with four other women. While at Tufts, she and her classmates founded a Greek letter organization called Alpha Delta, applying what she learned from the creation of Tri Delta.
Because their attendance was such a novelty, several Boston newspaper articles charted the progress of Eleanor and her classmates through medical school, including this excerpt chronicling their 1896 graduation that appeared in the Boston Post:
“From the medical department of [Tufts College], there will be five young ladies who have passed examinations . . . Miss Eleanor Pond of Medway will appear at commencement. The subject of her thesis will be ‘Antisepsis from a Modern Point of View.’ Miss Pond is a particularly bright, ambitious girl and deserves great praise for the obstacles she has overcome during her college career.”
In an article entitled “The Woman Doctor,” written for The Trident, Eleanor recalled that most of her friends opposed her studying medicine, telling her they were perfectly certain that her womanhood would be marred. But she said that women had unique qualities to contribute to the field and that “the desire [to practice and contribute to the field of medicine] has grown and developed and has been passed on to her sisters of the future generations. They have overcome almost insurmountable obstacles to attain their purpose, until now they have made a place for themselves and a worthy one beside their brother physicians.”
A well-known figure in Schenectady, New York, where she and her husband Arthur Mann eventually settled, she could often be found out in her buggy making rounds. She practiced for over 20 years in the town, focusing on obstetrics and pediatric diseases. Her professional Christmas card provided a warm holiday greeting to patients and friends.
In 1915, her life was shattered by her husband Arthur Mann’s unexpected illness and death. Eleanor cared for him devotedly and, after his passing, spent her remaining years doing pro bono work for the poor. Eleanor died suddenly in 1924 at the age of 56 from a stroke.