Martha Tracy, MD (1876-1942)

Evarts Tracy's sister, Martha Tracy, MD, was one of
New Jersey's pioneering female doctors, and relatively unknown in New Jersey history even though she was a dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (1918-1940), now Drexel University. Dr. Tracy worked with Coley's toxins, an early possible cancer cure.

Dr. Tracy was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on
April 10, 1876; she graduated from Bryn Mawr College
in 1898, and from Woman's Medical College in 1904.

Her father, Jeremiah Evarts Tracy, was on the Board of Governors of Muhlenberg Hospital, and her brother, Evarts Tracy, was chosen as the architect of the "New" Muhlenberg. It can be surmised that the family plan was to have her come back and run Muhlenberg as a woman physician.

Dr. Tracy was an authority on preventive medicine, and in 1940, resigned her post at the Woman's Medical College to become the assistant director of Philadelphia's Public Health Department, first woman to hold that position.

At the time of her death she was assisting the war effort - medical preparedness for the city of Philadelphia in the event of air raids. She succumbed to pneumonia on March 14, 1942.

By N. A. Piwowar, 2011.