California Biographies
Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
 
Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 

Source:
History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
With Biographical Sketches
History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry
Illustrated, Complete In One Volume
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914


LATHROP MALPAS, M. D. � One of the most startling developments 
oi the opening era of the twentieth century has been the advance made by 
women in every professional and occupative activity. Particularly has the 
medical science shown the results of the identification of women with its 
advance. In the study of therapeutics, in the development of the science of 
materia medica, in the practice of the profession and even in surgical cases 
requiring the most exact and unerring skill, women have stood side by side 
with men, winning a prestige that formerly would have been regarded as 
impossible and achieving a success that is drawing the science out of the 
realm of the empirical into the region of certainty, absoluteness and positive 
results. It is not too much to say that Dr. Malpas has borne her share in this 
task of advancement and by her own pronounced progress in the profession 
has shown what it is within the power of women to accomplish when their 
faculties are trained and their mental endowments rightly developed. 

The distinction of rising to prominence among the professional leaders of 
Northern California supplements with Dr. Malpas the honor of being a native 
daughter of the state (having been born at San Jose) and the further honor 
of being the daughter of a devoted minister of the Gospel, Rev. Levy B. 
Lathrop, a New Yorker bj' birth and a Forty-niner by choice. The recipient 
of exceptional educational advantages, she attended the Hollister high school 
and after graduating therefrom became a student in Florence College. Later 
she took a course of study in Miss Field's Seminary at Oakland and still later 
had the advantages of a commercial course in Heald's Business College at San 
Francisco. In 1897 she was graduated from the Cooper Medical College, 
after which she spent one year as an interne at the San Francisco Children's 
hospital and a year in similar practice at Santa Barbara. After a period of 
professional service in the McNutt (afterward the St. Winifred) hospital at 
San Francisco, she came to Ukiah in 1902 and has since conducted a hospital 
at this point, making a specialty of the treatment of women's and children's 
diseases and of surgical operations connected with the same. Journals devoted 
to therapeutics receive her careful study. It is ever her aim to keep abreast 
with modern developments in the profession and to this end she is a student 
of medical literature and an interested member of the Mendocino County, 
California State and American Medical Association, being secretary of the 
County Medical Society. All civic enterprises for the improvement and up- 
building of Ukiah and Mendocino county receive her hearty co-operation, and 
she gives willingly of time and means to forward all such movements. Evi- 
dence of her popularity in the county and city of her residence appears in her 
selection as chairman of the Ukiah Woman's Board for the Panama-Pacific 
International Exposition of 1915 at San Francisco, and in her recent service 
as matron of Casimir Lodge No. 252, Order of the Eastern Star, as well as in 
her distinct success as a physician and the recognition of her skill as a 
surgeon.