[Narrator] The year is 1871. Just six years after the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant is President.
The West is far from being won as skirmishes between Indian warriors and the U.S. Cavalry
continue to build toward all-out war. The American industrial revolution is underway
P.T. Barnum launches the Greatest Show on Earth and on November 9th,
in the tiny frontier town of Central City, Colorado, a baby girl is born. Her parents,
George and Serena Sabin, name her Florence and she will grow up to do things women in America
had never before even dared dream of doing. Young Florence's life changed forever when she was seven
years old. Her mother died and she and her sister were sent to live with relatives in Chicago.
Summers however, were spent with grandparents in Vermont and that led to prep school and Smith
College, where Florence majored in Zoology, receiving a BS degree in 1893. While at Smith,
Sabin had been encouraged to study medicine at the new co-ed medical school at Johns Hopkins.
Florence Sabin entered Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1896, one of 14 women in a class
of 45. Her skill and originality and laboratory classes caught the eye of noted Anatomist Franklin
Maul, who became her mentor and role model and it was Maul who convinced her to concentrate on
pure science, suggesting two projects that would help establish her reputation among
researchers. One was a three-dimensional model of a newborn baby's brain stem which became the
basis of a widely used textbook called an Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain. Published in 1901.
The other project was an investigation of the embryological development of the Lymphatic System.
At the turn of the century, Johns Hopkins refused to hire females to the medical school faculty
but Sabin's work on the Lymphatic System was so outstanding and received so much praise
from colleagues that the Hopkins trustees made an exception in her case. And in 1902,
Florence Sabin became the first woman faculty member at Johns Hopkins, teaching Embryology
and Histology in the Department of Anatomy. She was promoted to associate professor in 1905 and
12 years later became the first woman to hold the rank of full professor at Johns Hopkins. During
her years at Hopkins, Dr. Sabin became a legendary teacher, combining intellectual discipline with
warmth and a willingness to engage her students on many levels. In 1921, the Rockefeller Foundation
invited her to China to speak at the opening of its Peking Union Medical College. In 1924, the
American Association of Anatomists elected her its first woman president and the following year Dr.
Sabin became the first woman elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. At Hopkins,
Dr. Sabin grew increasingly dissatisfied with dividing her time between teaching and research.
So, when Simon Flexner, Director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research,
suggested that she considered joining the institute staff, as head of the newly
created Department of Cellular Studies, Sabin was intrigued. She knew that Flexner admired her work
so she accepted the offer on the condition that salaries also be provided for several of her
Hopkins lab colleagues. Florence Sabin moved to New York and began her work at the Rockefeller
Institute in the fall of 1925. It was the perfect opportunity to further her exploration of how
Monocytes, and other white blood cells, defend the body against infection. She and her team became
part of a massive study being conducted by the National Tuberculosis Association and, inspired
by what was learned there, Dr. Sabin fine-tuned her research, investigating how antibodies are
formed in response to foreign substances. In 1931, at the pinnacle of her 13-year stint at
the Rockefeller Institute, a Good Housekeeping magazine poll named her one of America's 12
most eminent living women. Those years in New York were especially stimulating for Florence Sabin.
Letters to her sister reveal a constant whirlwind of social and work-related activity. But by 1938,
Dr. Sabin decided it was time to retire. She returned to her childhood roots in Colorado.
Retirement was pretty quiet until 1944 when it was suggested that Colorado's governor appoint
Dr. Sabin to his new Committee on Health. Over the next two years, Sabin found that Colorado's
morbidity and mortality rates were unacceptably high and its public health infrastructure
was antiquated and unacceptably poor. So, the saving committee drafted public health bills to
remedy the situation and Sabin herself traveled around the state drumming up public support
for new health legislation. In 1947 the Colorado legislature passed four so-called Sabin bills.
Then Dr. Sabin became manager of Denver's Department of Health and Charities
and she organized a massive program of chest X-rays to identify cases of Tuberculosis and
other lung diseases. In 1951, Dr. Sabin received the Lasker Foundation's Public Service Award
for her work in public health administration and by then she was again ready to retire. Turning
her attention to caring for her ailing sister the strain of that however eventually took a toll on
her own health and about with Pneumonia put Dr. Sabin in the hospital. She recovered enough to
return home but several months later, on October 3rd 1953, Florence Sabin quietly passed away.
Florence Sabin was a pioneer, literally and figuratively.
In fact, Sabin established such an awe-inspiring legacy in the world of medical science,
and in the realm of public health in her native Colorado, that the state honored
her with this statue that stands in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol.