1900–1915

Bradley emphasized prevention with patients because curing diseases remained problematic in early twentieth century medicine. The zeitgeist of the Progressive Era boded well for expanding health care in urban areas, but the doctor worried about rural families, especially in Appalachia. She closed her Atlanta office in 1915 and became a rural field doctor for the US Children’s Bureau.

1925–1928

The climate favorable to reform darkened by the mid-1920s. Bradley taught courses at Berea College and assisted at mountain clinics offering primary care. Mostly, the doctor sold more stories and articles that exposed the ill health of rural families to national publications.

1917–1918

Working in four other southern states (Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi), Bradley chafed under scheduling and logistical pressures. World War I brought new opportunities for her when Julia Lathrop, the head of the Children’s Bureau, persuaded President Wilson to declare a “Children’s Year.” Then doctors working for the American Red Cross in France recruited Bradley to join them treating refugees and evaluating civilians’ health in war zones.

1922–1923

Directing Sheppard-Towner programs in Arkansas plunged Bradley into a political imbroglio and forced her resignation. She authored a set of booklets describing healthcare issues of a fictional couple. Praise for this method of disseminating accurate medical information came from all over the United States and Canada. In 1923 she delivered four lectures to the new American Child Health Association.

1921–1922

Field assignments in Arkansas and Tennessee, both poor and backward states, damaged Bradley’s mobile clinic and challenged her spirits. After enactment of the Sheppard-Towner law, she pleaded for an administrative job in Washington. Grace Abbott refused, and Bradley resigned to pursue rural healthcare reform differently.

1919–1921

A truck outfitted as a mobile clinic gave Bradley a new way to reach isolated rural families. She wrote a book, urging organizations to adopt this new healthcare delivery system. She spent a year and a half in Kentucky. She blamed poor child development and many military draft rejections upon the baneful effects of malnutrition.

Introduction

On a cold spring morning in 1925 a stocky, smiling elderly woman stood on the bank of the raging Yaak River in northwest Montana. Coming toward her in a makeshift chair suspended from a zipline was a mother holding an infant. A small boy held tightly on from behind his mother. The family had come a long way seeking her help. She was Dr. Frances Sage Bradley. For a quarter century she had worked to spare the lives and health of women, their infants, and children. The doctor moved to the edge of the bank and snapped a photograph of the family to add to her massive collection. Then she helped them to safety and began her health conference....

1862–1896

Having New England roots but growing up in Atlanta gave Bradley a dual Yankee-Southern identity. Her father’s sudden death when she was twelve plus her nursing her mother and siblings through serious illnesses brought an early but shadowed maturity. Marriage to Horace Bradley in 1885 took her to New York City. After his early death from tuberculosis in 1896, she faced poverty and raising four children alone.

1896–1900

Attending the Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, then graduating from Cornell Medical School in 1899 transformed Bradley into a physician with superior training. She relocated her family to Atlanta, where the Sage and Bradley families were well known. She practiced in bustling downtown and publicized medical advances as well as public health.

1923–1925

Bradley moved to Berea, Kentucky, where she wrote a variety of stories and articles based on her medical field work. She then replaced an ill colleague, administering Sheppard-Towner programs in Montana. She traveled throughout the then third largest state, encouraging public health workers and publicizing shocking conditions of Native Americans on several reservations.