Anne, the Female Council of Health was a formal body established in 1851, to teach basic hygiene and health, and herbal medicine according to the knowledge of the time. If I recall correctly, female blessing and reliance on faith were also stressed. The Council dissolved in 1857 when so much of Mormon society was disrupted by the Utah War and wasn’t reestablished when things calmed down.

I don’t know much more about it, but should. (Anybody with a copy of Daughters in My Kingdom — does the new history discuss it at all? or what is in that book about women’s medical efforts sponsored by the Relief Society? Let’s give our new resource a workout.)

Thanks, Mark. Whether we know the details or not, I’ll best most of us with ancestry going back to early Deseret have the ancestors we have in part because they survived due to Relief Society and other women’s medical training efforts.

And thanks, Researcher, for your comment as well. I wonder, if Sister Jarvis practiced her art in St. Johns for all those years, how many of my great-uncles and -aunts and cousins of varying degrees she assisted into this world.

I found very interesting the fact that Martha felt the subject important enough to ask Brigham Young to reconsider a policy decision: ‘reestablish the council of health’. I’ve read previously about sending women elsewhere to be trained a doctors, but what was the ‘council of health’? Was it a formal body, a calling, or is she using some sort of colloquial term?

“In 1910, [Margaret Jarvis] was chosen by the Relief Society of the St. Johns [Arizona] Ward to go to Salt Lake City and take the course in General Nursing and Obstetrics, being offered by the Church Relief Society for the benefit of the members everywhere, so that in each settlement someone with training and understanding would be available to help people in time of sickness. The Relief Society offered to pay part of the cost of tuition. She went, taking [her daughter], who was about sixteen years old [and also received training as a nurse], with her, and leaving her husband and son … to manage at home.”

“This seemed the opportunity she had craved, for she took right up with the work and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. She learned the medical terms, and made such rapid progress, that it seemed a marvel that a woman of her age [52] and previous lack of education and technical training could obtain such wonderful insight and understanding of modern practice in the time allotted for the course. When it was through, she passed the Medical Board Examination of the State of Utah with high points, and returned home ready at call to help in sickness whenever she was needed. She presented her Certificate to the Medical Board of Arizona, and was readily accorded a certificate to practice Nursing and Obstetrics in Arizona also. Her calls were many. She lived fifteen years after her husband’s death, lived alone in a home she built, and went whenever or wherever called, night or day. Her grand-daughter … was the second baby she cared for, and her Great Grand-daughter … was the 272nd one and she never lost a case.”

“She attributed this to the blessings of the Lord. She had some unusual and abnormal cases when she was alone and could get no help, but through her faith and the blessings of the Lord, as she always said, they got along without a loss. She was a veritable Angel of Mercy in many homes. Especially was she depended on and appreciated among the Mexican mothers of the town, to whom her skill and jovial personality were such a comfort. Many of them depended upon her implicitly.”

I know you don’t want to give the date of the letter, but was this before or after Romania Bunnell Pratt was sent back east?

Undoubtedly this was not the first or only such communication to BY, so I suppose sending Romania for medical training may have been in response to this?

[And were other women sent also? It seems odd to send just one person when you need to cover such a broad area, or even when you are simply looking to teach others.]