I truly had not given consideration to my sex in choosing medicine as a career. Entering school at a time when discrimination against women in the professions and higher education was di rigeur of course presented some challenges. Most are not worthy of mention.
I briefly address the fact that I entered a world in which men predominated. No quarter was given to any during the training process and I was, as were most of the other women, obliged to develop an assertiveness that has since supported me in comfort in meeting all on equal footing. I am grateful for the conditions which permitted me to know and judge my assets, my powers and failings uninfluenced by gender or other group stereotyping.
Perhaps as important was the lesson to know others in the same way. I cannot conceive how one could be an effective physician or for that matter wholly functional human otherwise. In later years I have discovered this to be much in the spirit of the strivings of that great American feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I am grateful to her and all the women who met at Seneca Falls.
I am appreciative of the family that gave me the eyes and the women who gave me the visions. My intellectual curiosity and ambitions were nurtured and reflected in those of my mother and both grandmothers. A pre-teenager during World War II, I also took advantage to learn from scant visits with my grandmother's sister, a World War I veteran nurse. It was she who, during those highly charged wartimes, introduced me to the notion that a suffering wounded solider bears only the uniform of kinship. Practicing that philosophy as the physician, I now recognize it is a value to be promoted universally.
The few women I have known professionally are especially precious to me. As I follow memories along a chronological path I come upon Jesse Candlish, R. N. She was Scottish, a World War I veteran who had come to The Henrietta Hospital for Children at its opening, in I believe, 1928. When I first met her she was serving her final year as Administrator. The hospital was at that time in its last year of occupancy of the original building. I served rotations as Junior Assistant Resident there and then Senior Assistant Resident and as its second Chief Resident at the current location on the Emory campus.
This Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children was a community hospital endowed by Thomas the son of Henrietta Egleston and further supported by the Atlanta Junior League. It had been established with the charge; "And the object of the corporation is the relief of human suffering of poor and unfortunate children, and to this end make available to them the free or at cost within their means the very best medical attention and skill that is now known to the medical profession or that may be discovered through scientific study and research." — Charter of the hospital.
Most patients during my time came from the mountains of North Georgia. The hospital had open wards on the wings, each for 20 children. The partitions separating the beds were decorated with original paintings by Walt Disney, done on a visit sometime in the past. On the second floor were ten private rooms each providing for continuous rooming in for a parent, an unbelievably radical idea for the times. We house officers roomed in the nurses quarters, a building behind the hospital. It had been built at a time when many nurses were unmarried and was in 1958 still occupied by a surprising number of long time employees.
Of course often, about 3:00 A M, Dixon Lackey and I were to be found down the way on Ponce de Leon at the Plaza Pharmacy or further at the Krispy Kreme awaiting emergence from deep fry the day's supply of doughnuts.
I soon became aware that there was no regular employee at Egleston, whether in the kitchen or on the wards, who was not a superb bedside clinician.One late night Miss Candlish joined me working in the laboratory. As we discussed a recent admission and examined the blood smears I began to recognize the source of the clinical training of staff.
What a truly brilliant and remarkable woman Miss Candlish was. She was always impeccably civil. I have known few women or men as modest yet as unashamed in confidence; this. In a time of great limitations on opportunities for women. In pursuits of intellectual substance she had found the ways. She had guided this small hospital in a backwater southern town to clinical excellence. I have since turned many times to my few conversations, her history and bearing for guidance.
Miss Candlish was then in the process of influencing greatly the future for The Henrietta Hospital for Children. This future has become actualized in the hospital's current regional and national prominence as a provider of the highest quality medical care. Its nursing staff served a pioneering role in promoting the premier principle in the treatment of childhood illness, the nurturing of the entire child and family .
The remainder of my Junior Assistant Residency was served in rotations through the various pediatric clinical services at Grady Memorial Hospital. The approximately 7000 full term and 1000 premature births annually created great demand for extended attention to such delicate procedures as exchange transfusions for Rh incompatibilities and numbers of tiny babies who often forgot to breath. (No such thing as useful positive pressure respirators existed.) Margaret E. Wooten, R. N. was Head Nurse of the premature nursery and sick baby, quasi neo-natal, unit. Due to her obdurate demands it was an (the only) integrated patient area. I spent many hours working with her. A woman of high clinical standards she demanded firm commitment to physical contact for even the tiniest of "preemies." Rocking chairs were standard equipment in all units and infants were held and rocked frequently.
Mrs. Wooten treated the most callow of students and doctors in training with respect yet to be earned. As for so many of us far away from our families she took me in personally. I enjoyed many weekends of a real bed and real food at her home in Sandy Springs. I became close and life long friends with her and her husband and continue so with her daughter and grandchildren. Her serene beauty when I first knew her was only surpassed by that in age. In later years as I am able I have attempted to return her kindness to me through passing it on to the those in similar need who come my way.
I soon became aware that there was no regular employee at Egleston, whether in the kitchen or on the wards, who was not a superb bedside clinician.One late night Miss Candlish joined me working in the laboratory. As we discussed a recent admission and examined the blood smears I began to recognize the source of the clinical training of staff. 
