Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/187

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CLEAVES.
CLEAVES.

become a member of the Iowa and Illinois Central District Medical Association. During her residence in Davenport she was an active member of the Davenport Academy of Sciences. In 1879 the board of trustees of the State Asylum for the Insane chose her their delegate to the National Conference of Charities, which that year met in Chicago, Ill. In that conference she read a paper on "The Medical and Moral Care of Female Patients in Hospitals for the Insane." It attracted widespread attention, and was printed in a volume, "Lunacy in Many Lands," which was published by the Government of New South Wales. In June, 1880, she was appointed by the Governor of Iowa a Slate delegate to the National Conference of Charities in Cleveland, Ohio, and thus the distinction was conferred upon her of being the first female delegate from Iowa to that body. She reported for the State to the conference, and her report was subsequently incorporated in the Governor's annual message. That same year she was appointed physician-in-chief in the Female Department of the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital in Harrisburg. After three years of hard work, rendered all the more arduous by her conscientious devotion to the minutest details of her duties, Dr. Cleaves was compelled by failing health to resign her position. She went abroad in 18S3, remaining nearly two years, visiting insane hospitals in Scotland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, everywhere receiving nattering courtesies from men of recognized eminence in the treatment of insanity. She witnessed operations in general hospitals in England, France and Germany, and in Paris she was for several months a regular attendant at lectures and clinics. After returning to the United Stales, she opened a private home for the reception of patients in Des Moines, Iowa, conducting also an office practice in connection with her other work. In March, 1885, she was appointed one of the examining committee of the Medical Department of the Iowa State University. It was the first honor of that kind bestowed on a woman by any standard medical school in the United States. In July 1886, she was sent as a delegate to the yearly meeting of the National Conference of Charities, which was held in St Paul, Minn. During her residence in Des Moines she was an active member of the Polk County Medical Society, of the Missouri Valley Medical Association and of the Iowa State Medical Association. Before all those bodies she read papers and she served the last-named body as chairman of obstetrics and gynaecology in the session of 1889. At that time she was the only woman who had received such an appointment Her work was not confined to medicine alone. She took a deep interest in all that pertains to the welfare and advancement of women. She organized the Des Moines Woman's Club and was its first president. Some time prior to that she had become a member of die Association for the Advancement of Women. Becoming interested in die subject of electro-therapeutics, she went to New York in the winter of 1887 and to Paris in the following summer, to prosecute her inquiries and investigation. After her return she continued to practice for a while in Des Moines, but in 1890 she retired from that field and went to New York, where she opened an office. She there joined the Medical Society of the County of New York, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association and the New York Women's Press Club. In the Post-Graduate Medical School, New York, she is now clinical assistant to the chair of electro-therapeutics. Since she took up her residence in New York, she has read papers before the Medical Society of Kings County, Brooklyn, the New York Medico-Legal Society, the American Electro-Therapeutic Association and the National Conference of Charities. Many of them have been published, and all of them are distinguished by painstaking research, clearness of statement and logical reasoning. Though a very busy woman, though her chosen fields of labor and study have taken her far away from the paths followed by most women, she has sacrificed none of those sweet, helpful and peculiarly womanly characteristics which endear her to her friends. She is a woman who combines in a most felicitous way gentleness of speech and manner with firmness of character. She has keen insight and quick sympathies, yet cool judgment.

CLEMENT, Mrs. Clara Erskine, see Waters, Clara Erskine Clement.


CLERC, Mme. Henrietta Fannie Virginie, educator, born in Paris, France. 7th February. 1841. She is the daughter of Alexandre Louis Sulpice Clerc and Marie Josephine Virginie Grand-Fils. Her grandfather, Gen. Le Clerc, fought for the first Napoleon, and was knighted De Saint Clerc by him at the battle of Austerlitz. Sulpice Clerc was too strong a republican to bear any title. He was opposed to the Empire of Napoleon III and was HENRIETTA FANNIE VIRGINIE CLERC. one of the conspirators to take away his life. The plot was discovered, and those who escaped imprisonment were obliged to leave Paris, and all their property was confiscated. Sulpice Clerc and his wife lived in various parts of Europe until their children's education was finished. They had two sons and two daughters. Henrietta, the eldest daughter, was graduated from the Convent of the Dames Benedictines, where she had been since the age of five. The family then came to this country and settled in New York City. In April, 1861. Henrietta was married to her first cousin, Felix Clerc, who was killed the following July in the