Ruth Fairbank, M.D., The First Female Neuropsychiatric Epidemiologist?

Blog readers know I'm trying to remedy general neglect of biographies of early and eminent women who were leaders in our field. I've had a longtime hypothesis that Ruth Fairbank was the first, based on some of my interviews with Paul Lemkau in the late 1970s during lunchtime history sessions in the wonderful 9th Floor Cafeteria of the JHPH Wolfe Street building. Paul described her as a compassionate intelligent psychiatrist whose leadership was crucial to the success of the Eastern Health District surveys that Adolph Meyer wanted to be carried out in a collaboration of the Phipps Clinic and the School of Hygiene and Public Health, each unit of the university positioned no more than a very short walk across Wolfe Street.

I have found a number of sources, but none better than Elizabeth Fee's paragraphs in her history of the SHPH, reproduced here in an effort to get you to buy and read her book.

Pay attention to the spot-mapping approach.