Robert Latou Dickinson
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Robert L. Dickinson | |
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Born | Robert Latou Dickinson February 21, 1861 Jersey City, New Jersey, US |
Died | November 22, 1950 , US | (aged 89)
Occupation(s) | American obstetrician, gynecologist, surgeon, maternal health educator, artist, sculptor and medical illustrator, and research scientist |
Robert Latou Dickinson (1861–1950) was an American
Early life and education
Robert Latou Dickinson was born on February 21, 1861, in Jersey City, New Jersey,[1]: 7 the son of Horace and Jeannette Latou Dickinson. He sketched all his life, including many drawings in the margins of his school books.
According to James Reed,[2] as a boy of ten, Rob Dickinson was trying to beach a boat that he and his father had built. An eddy drove the metal prow into Dickinson's abdomen, gashing it deeply. Holding the two sides of the wound together and some internal organs inside, Dickinson dragged himself to shore; his injury was stitched by a lay person, but it took a long time to heal and a scar remained for the rest of his life. Thereafter, Dickinson determined to become a doctor.
He attended the
Career
Dickinson practiced obstetrics and
In 1910, Dickinson published "Toleration of the corset: Prescribing where one cannot proscribe", in which he investigated the medical effects of corsets, including the displacement and deformation of internal organs. He found that, while some women could wear these garments without evident damage, the vast majority of users sustained permanent deformations and damage to their health.[3]
Dickinson was one of the first physician-scientists to obtain detailed sexual histories of his patients.[
In the 1920s, he closed his practice and focused on sexual research and
Over the years Dickinson changed his assumptions about what constituted perverse sexual behavior. By 1934 he would write that homosexuality "has been stressed far beyond its numerical significance or its importance as a harmful interference with normal response. Physiology is teaching us that we are all in some degree bisexual and that we possess some sex traits other than those characteristics of our overt type, with two series of stages between extreme masculinity and complete femininity." He said that "To stamp [female homosexuality] a 'perversion,' instead of a deviation or deprivation, is to lack a sense of proportion, if not sound judgment." He also said, though, that women's "non-marriage and non-mating" was a "social and biological thwarting," constituting "the frustration of love-comradeship, child-rearing and home-making." He expressed no awareness of how women were faced with the male-dominant legal requirements for marriage, assigning women responsibilities for child-rearing and home-making from which men were exempt, and no awareness on the impact to children of this distortion.[4]
As a supporter of birth control and the
In the late 1930s, Dickinson retired from medical practice[5] and began a collaboration with the sculptor Abram Belskie, resulting in the creation of many life-size medical models.[1] Their Birth Series, depicting the processes of gestation and delivery, was displayed to crowds at the 1939 New York World's Fair,[1]: 7–18 and copies of the sculptures were distributed world-wide.[1]: 13 For many years, the popular series was on display at the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts. In later years, the two artists worked with plastic and latex, doing pioneering work in medical modeling. At the time of Dickinson's death, the Dickinson/Belskie studio was full of models of women and children, including a sculpture of the (then) "largest baby in the world" with the "smallest viable baby in the world" seated on its lap.[citation needed]
Personal life
Dickenson married Sarah Kidder Truslow, who worked with many New York City human services organizations, including the
Throughout his life Dickinson fascinated family and friends with his sketching;
Dickinson was, all his life, a vigorous outdoorsman. He enjoyed swimming and diving, doing backflips at Squam Lake well into his eighties. He also worked for many hours a week, improving hiking trails at Squam and helping friends and family with outdoor projects.[citation needed]
Dickinson and his wife and family walked and hiked, sailed and canoed all over the world, in China, in Europe, in Washington DC (where he was briefly Acting Surgeon General), on Squam Lake, and in New York City. He illustrated many editions of the New York Walk Book and published Palisades Interstate Park, written and illustrated by him in 1921 for the American Geographical Society of New York.[citation needed]
A man of deep
Publications
Books by Robert Latou Dickinson include:
- The American text-book of obstetrics for practitioners and students (1903), with James Chalmers Cameron and Richard Cooper Norris
- Palisades Interstate Park (1921)
- The New York Walk Book, many editions in the 1920s - present (early editions by Torry, Place, and Dickinson)
- The Safe Period as a Birth Control measure (1927)
- The Birth Control Movement (1927)
- Control of Conception: An Illustrated Medical Manual (Medical Aspects of Human Fertility) (1931)
- Human Sex Anatomy, (1932, 1949, 1971)
- Thousand Marriages: A Medical Study of Sex Adjustment (1933, 1970)
- The Single Woman: A Medical Study in Sex Education, by Robert Latou Dickinson and Lura Beam (1934)
- Techniques of Conception Control (1942, 1950)
- Atlas of Human Sex Anatomy (1949)
- Birth atlas: Of twenty four sculptures on fertilization, steps of growth, stages of labor and involution (Dickinson series of teaching models) (1953, 1960, 1968)
Papers
The Robert Latou Dickinson Papers were donated to the
Models
The Dickinson-Belskie Obstetrical Model Collection was acquired in 2007 by the Warren Anatomical Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It comprises over 200 medical models, including Normman and Norma, intended to represent the average American man and woman.[8][9]
The Birth Series was on public display for decades at the
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Holz, Rose (2017). "The 1939 Dickinson-Belskie Birth Series Sculptures: The Rise of Modern Visions of Pregnancy, the Roots of Modern Pro-Life Imagery, and Dr. Dickinson's Religious Case for Abortion". Papers in Women's and Gender Studies.
- ^ James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (Basic Books, 1978), Chapters 11-13
- ^ Dickinson, Robert L. (1910). Wikisource. – via
- ISBN 0-300-03164-5.
- ^ Sutherland, Bryan (February 19, 2019). "Staff Finds: Dickinson-Belskie". Harvard Countway Library. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
- ^ See Library of Congress
- ^ "Collection: Robert Latou Dickinson papers". HOLLIS for Archival Discovery. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
- ^ "Notable Warren Anatomical Museum Holdings". Harvard Countway Library. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
- ^ "Dickinson-Belskie Collection, 1939-2007. WAM 20500-20899". OnView: Digital Collections & Exhibits. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
External links
- Works by or about Robert Latou Dickinson at Internet Archive
- Some Dickinson sketches are in the Harvard Medical School Countway Library, and some may be found on the Internet
- "Tampons as menstrual guards", "The Dickinson Report," 1945
- Robert Latou Dickinson papers, 1881-1972 (inclusive), 1926-1951 (bulk). H MS c591. Harvard Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Boston, Mass.