Clark County lore credits Louisa Van Vleet Wright as the first woman to practice medicine in Clark County. Almost, but not quite. In 1885, Ella Whipple, M.D., graduated from Willamette University Medical School in Salem, Ore., and established her practice a year or more before Wright returned to the area.
Louisa Van Vleet, M.D., practiced first in Missoula, Mont., upon graduation from the University of Michigan in 1885. In 1886, she lived and practiced in Portland, as an ad that year attests. A February advertisement in The Oregonian listed her practice as “Louisa Van Vleet, M.D., Room 4 S.W. cor. First and Yamhill” and added her residence as “194 Twelfth.” Sometime after 1887, she set up her Camas medical practice.
Born on a Fern Prairie farm northwest of Camas to Lewis and Elizabeth Van Vleet in 1862, her parents raised her and six other children. They nicked named Louisa “Lutie.”
After finishing school, she received $25 a month for teaching school at Grass Valley, northwest of Camas, as well as other schools. She stashed away her earnings for medical school by living with her parents.
When she had accrued enough, she enrolled in the Oregon Medical College but later transferred to the University of Michigan Ann Arbor to complete her studies at 23. At the time, medical school was equal to a Bachelor of Science degree, not the decadelong program doctors must pursue today.
After setting her practice up in Camas, she treated patients for broken bones, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough and typhoid fever. She delivered babies, traveling as far away as Yacolt and Mount Norway. She married a druggist, William Spicer, and had three children. After they divorced, she married James Wright, a widower who had five children and owned a livery stable. Raising her brood and doctoring the community kept her busy.
Wright diligently went to any patient needing help. In an oral history, her son Cecil recalled this story: Once a husband came to her needing help for his wife and was returning with Wright when a tree fell over the road. They rolled the horse under the log and disassembled the wagon to continue.
Like Whipple, Wright was an activist for women’s rights and an education advocate. Wright was a member of the Camas board of education for several years and advocated a new high school building.
Shortly before her death, Wright ran for mayor of Camas, losing by one vote. Then, on Memorial Day 1913, she and her husband decided to ride their buggy, not their car. Her husband had backed the horse between the buggy shafts. Wright came out, her apron flew up and spooked the horse, which kicked her in the chin, killing her instantly. Wright’s death was noted in papers across the Northwest and in The Journal of the American Medical Association. She was buried in the Fern Prairie Cemetery, once her parents’ donation land claim, and rests not far from where she grew up.
Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
