Dr Jane Cooke Wright

I recommend Christie Watson's book about her experience of nursing, The language of kindness (1).  There is a chapter about cancer nursing, which mixes Watson's experience of nursing cancer patients with her experience of her father living with cancer, and being nursed by a Marie Curie Nurse.

In that chapter, Watson mentions Dr Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013), clinical oncologist, who discovered the anticancer properties of methotrexate, and investigated anticancer agents in vitro.   She was one of the founders of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which was started because the America Association for Cancer Research was too laboratory based.  African American, Cooke Wright's father was one of the first African American medical graduates from Harvard, and her step grandfather the first African American graduate of Yale.

Jane Cooke Wright is the subject of a 2016 article in the Journal of Medical Biography (2), and of a 2013 article in the Oncologist (3). Those two reference several of her 135 papers.   She was also the subject of obituaries in the BMJ (4) and the Lancet (5), and the New York Times.

She also has an entry in the National Library of Medicine's Changing the face of medicine: celebrating America's women physicians.

I did start thinking about this post in Black History Month, and even though the Month itself ended yesterday, it is not too late to read it.

References

1. Watson C. The language of kindness : a nurse's story. London: Chatto & Windus; 2018.

2. Crosby HL. Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013): Pioneering oncologist, woman and humanitarian. J Med Biogr. 2016;24(1):38-41.

3. Swain SM. A Passion for Solving the Puzzle of Cancer: Jane Cooke Wright, M.D., 1919‐2013. The oncologist (Dayton, Ohio). 2013;18(6):646-8.

4. Newman L. Jane Cooke Wright. BMJ : British Medical Journal. 2013;346:f2902-f.

5. Watts G. Jane Cooke Wright. The Lancet (British edition). 2013;381(9875):1354-.