Jacobi, Mary Corinna Putnam (1842–1906)

English-born US physician. She worked at the Women's Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women 1871–1889 and through her lectures, clinical practice, extensive publications, and varied organizational activities, she soon became recognized as the leading female physician in the USA. She was elected to most of the professional medical organizations (except the Obstetrical Society). Among her most consistent campaigns was to get women admitted to the leading medical schools. She also was in the forefront of those recognizing the need to change social, working, and environmental conditions if the health of people was to be improved.

Born in London, her father was the New York book publisher George Putnam. After serving as a medical aide during the US Civil War and graduating from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1864, she became only the second woman to take a degree from the Ecole de Médicine, Paris 1867–71; while there she contributed articles to various US magazines and newspapers, including some about the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. A suffragist, her ‘Common Sense’ Applied to Women's Suffrage 1894, was reprinted and used for the battle that eventually gained US women the vote. In 1873 she married the paediatrician Abraham Jacobi.