When African American homeopathist Susan Marie Smith graduated from the New York Medical College for Women in 1870, she entered her new profession at a moment of intense debates over the training, certification, and organizational standing of female and Black doctors. These debates centered in the nation’s capital, where powerful medical and political actors pushed for gender and racial inclusion, while widespread reactionary forces aimed to keep the medical field under strictly white male control. Tensions over who might practice medicine magnified already existing conflicts over what constituted legitimate medical practice; homeopathy represented a home for abolitionists and supporters of Reconstruction-era reforms, while deeply entrenched allopathic conservatism increasingly questioned the legitimacy of homeopathy and favored exclusionary norms: “
Social equality, white or black, may be a nice toy to contribute to the interests of corrupt demagogues, but science has higher and nobler aspirations,” wrote one adherent of traditional or “regular” medicine.
Amid this tension, uncertainty, and promise, Dr. McKinney (née Smith) developed her own medical practice in Brooklyn, New York, serving a racially diverse, often low-income clientele. This presentation will highlight how her embrace of homeopathic practices and procedures - in particular as these pertained to listening to and exhibiting empathy toward her patients - were key to her navigating a patriarchal climate that increasingly threatened the rights and opportunities of African Americans. Her degree in homeopathic medicine gave Dr. McKinney [later known as Dr. Steward] a certain degree of gendered professional standing; “The best physicians now in the community, as everyone knows, are the women,” asserted the New York Times. As the nation’s third Black female doctor, she tested alternative medicine’s capacity to serve as a beacon of moral authority and superior health care.
