Susanna Way Dodds (November 10, 1830 – January 20, 1911) was an American physician, hydrotherapist and natural hygiene proponent.
Biography Dodds was born in Randolph County, near Richmond, Indiana.Willard, Frances E; Livermore, Mary A. (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women In All Walks of Life. Buffalo. p. 247 She was a vegetarian and advocate of women's rights.Iacobbo, Karen; Iacobbo, Michael. (2004). Vegetarian America: A History. Praeger Publishing. p. 118. Dodds was the fourth woman in America to become a physician. In 1864, she graduated from Russell T. Trall's New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College. Dodds practiced medicine in St. Louis from 1886 to 1909.Hoolihan, Christopher. (2008). An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform, Volume 3. University of Rochester Press. p. 199.
Dodds' sister-in-law Mary was also a physician. Dodds and her husband Andrew espoused a hygienic method of treating disease.Fisher, Carol. (2008). Pot Roast, Politics, and Ants in the Pantry: Missouri's Cookbook Heritage. University Of Missouri Press. pp. 19-20. In 1878, Dodds and her sister opened a sanitarium, the Dodds' Hygeian Home. In 1887, they established the Hygienic College of Physicians and Surgeons in St. Louis, Missouri. They did not use any drugs except in cases for relieving pain.Johnson, Charles P. (1914). Notable Women of St. Louis, 1914. St. Louis. p. 59 They focused on "natural methods of treatment: diet, exercise, massage, electricity and hydrotherapy in all of its manifold applications". Dodds proposed a strict hygienic vegetarian diet which forbid the consumption of baking powder, meat, milk, soda, spices and sweeteners. She published the magazine, The Sanitarian.Kirchfeld, Friedhelm; Boyle, Wade. (1994). Nature Doctors: Pioneers in Naturopathic Medicine. Medicina Biológica. p. 226.
Dodds was Vice-President of the Vegetarian Society of America."Vegetarian Societies in the USA". ivu.org. Retrieved 8 March 2022. Natural hygienist Herbert M. Shelton was influenced by Dodds.
Death
Dodds died on January 20, 1911, from senile debility at Long Beach, California. After Dodds died in 1911, her sister continued to manage the Hygienic College until she sold it in 1912.
Publications
The Diet Question (1884) Health in the Household: Or, Hygienic Cookery (1891) Race Culture: Mother and Child (1910) Drugless Medicine: Hygeiotherapy (1915)
References