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Alida Cornelia Avery (June 11, 1833 – September 22, 1908) was an American physician and Vassar College faculty member. In Colorado, she was thought to be the first woman licensed to practice medicine in the state. She was also the Superintendent of Hygiene for Colorado. Avery was among the first women first admitted to the Denver Medical Society.
She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.
Women began entering the medical profession in the second half of the 19th century. Some of them attended medical schools founded by and for women.Regina Morantz-Sanchez (2005). 9780807876084, University of North Carolina Press. . ISBN 9780807876084 Avery studied medicine for one year in 1858 at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and graduated from the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1862.
Her Hospital was established in a suite of rooms in the Main Building, where she was responsible for the health of her patients and the entire college. Avery believed in hydro-therapy and ensured sanitary conditions for food, water, and milk. She was responsible for decisions regarding control of quarantine, whether staff should be retained or dismissed for health reasons, whether to hold chapel in bad weather, and when to turn on the heat in buildings.
All new students were required to take her course in hygiene. She emphasized the importance of a healthy, balanced diet to become successful intellectually. Many young women with impaired digestion or uncertain health became healthy as a result. Physiology was a required subject in the junior and senior years for the first two decades of Vassar's history. Avery and astronomer Maria Mitchell, the only other woman on the faculty at that time, learned that their salaries were less than that of many younger male professors. They insisted on a salary increase, and got it.
She was seen as a guiding force in Vassar's early years. Frances A. Wood, the head librarian, said: "She came in 1865 as the resident physician, was a strong member of the Faculty, high in the confidence and trust of President Raymond and Lady Miss Lyman and sharing with them the responsibility of that important formative period. So close were the friendly and confidential relations among these three 'powers that be'—hardly ever one appearing without the other—that some irreverent students dubbed them 'The Trinity.'"
In 1876, she was elected vice president of the Women's Suffrage Association. She created the reform strategy in 1877 for Colorado suffragettes to win the right to vote. She proposed the arguments that women were entitled to the right to vote due to their important responsibilities within the home and that having women vote would "contribute to the triumph of rule by reason over rule by violence." In 1885, she spoke about A Plea for Purpose before the Association for the Advancement of Women, of which she was a member. Avery signed a paper, along with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and other women from the National Council of Women, that expounded upon the negative effects of women's fashion, particularly the corset.
She was an active member of the Unitarianism, women's movement, and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Her involvement in these organizations deepened following her retirement. She moved to San Jose, California, in 1887. She lived in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, when she lost all of her property. She returned to San Jose, where she died on September 22, 1908.
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