Capable bodies
Clelia Duel Mosher (Wikimedia)
Clelia Duel Mosher
Repeated studies refuted the pseudoscientific wisdom so widespread in the medical community. Clelia Duel Mosher, while a medical student at Johns Hopkins in the 1890s, again used physiological data to demonstrate that women’s health was not damaged by education and physical exertion. During her long career, Mosher did not hesitate to use her scientific knowledge in the service of suffrage.
Mosher completed her MD in 1900 and published her preliminary research on menstruation in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin in 1901. This work would prove that activity during menstruation was not harmful.
Mosher also tested the medical truism that women breathed from the chest, while men breathed more deeply, from the diaphragm, allowing men to partake in more vigorous activity. This false impression was caused by binding garments; her work gave credence to the dress reform movement, which advocated non-restrictive clothes.
Julia Obear, messenger for the Natonal Woman's Party, 1922 (Library of Congress)
Starting in the 1890s, bicycles and bloomers signified the physical freedom and progressive thinking of the "New Woman," who rejected corsets.
Title page, Health and the Woman Movement, 1915 (Internet Archive)
In 1915, as American suffragists escalated their campaign, Mosher published a pamphlet asserting that, from a medical perspective, "being a woman is not a handicap" to work and political participation.
Nature versus corsets, illustrated, 1903 (Library of Congress)