Franklin Paine Mall: The Story of a Mind by Sabin, Florence Rena - 1934

Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1934. First edition.

BIOGRAPHY OF JOHNS HOPKINS FIRST HEAD OF ANATOMY BY HIS MENTEE, FIRST WOMAN ELECTED TO THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES--COPY OF NOTED NY CARDIOLOGIST.

8 1/4 inches tall hardcover, blue cloth binding, gilt title to cover and spine, decorative bookplate of Sidney P Swartz MD. to front paste-down, frontis portrait of Franklin Pain Mall, i-xiii, 342 pp, 8 photographic portraits of Mall from early chilhood to the year of his death. Light wear to cover edges, light browning to pages, clean and unmarked except for in underlining of one sentence on page 48: "the quality of the teacher is more important than the subject taught". Very good in custom archival mylar cover.

FLORENCE RENA SABIN (1871 – 1953) was a pioneer for women in science; she was the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In 1896, Sabin enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as one of fourteen women in her class. The school opened in 1893 and was co-ed from the beginning because of an early donor's contingency which required the admittance of female students. while at Hopkins, Sabin's observational skills and perseverance in the laboratory caught anatomist Franklin P. Mall's attention. Mall's mentorship was foundational to her future research and consequent legacy. Upon graduation, Sabin obtained an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital under physician Sir William Osler. She was finally appointed professor of embryology and histology in June 1917, the first woman to become a full professor at a medical college. She continued her research on the origins of blood vessels, which in 1924, Sabin's earned her presidency of the American Association of Anatomists. In 1925, she was voted into the National Academy of Sciences. She was the first woman to gain membership in this prestigious body and would remain the lone female member for the next 20 years.

FRANKLIN PAINE MALL (1862-1917) earned his MD from the University of Michigan in 1883. After completing his degree, Mall moved to Heidelberg to study ophthalmology. However, in 1884, he moved to Leipzig where he became a student of embryologist Wilhelm His and met William H. Welch, future dean of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1886 Mall enrolled in a fellowship in the department of pathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital where he started a collaboration with William S. Halsted. In 1889 Mall was offered an adjunct professorship of anatomy at Clark University in Worchester, Mass., where he developed an embryological research program. With the opening of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893, William Welch appointed Mall head of the department of anatomy. At Johns Hopkins Mall worked with Ross G. Harrison, Florence R. Sabin, George L. Streeter, and Warren H. Lewis. Mall edited the first six volumes of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Contributions to Embryology. In 1913 Mall had appealed to the Carnegie Institution to create a department of embryology that would be housed at Johns Hopkins. He received a $15,000 grant that established the department, which Mall chaired until his death in 1917.

PROVENANCE: SIDNEY P. SWARTZ (1896-1977) earned his MD from Columbia University, where he later served as professor of cardiology. He practised at Montefiore Hospital, New York, for over 50 years.