Mary V. Clymer

Mary V. Clymer (January 8, 1861 – September 28, 1942) was an American nurse. Trained at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Training School for Nurses (now the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing), she kept a detailed journal of her experiences in hospital ward settings and later established the school's alumni organization and wrote its constitution. She is remembered today for her detailed diary, maintained as The Clymer Diaries by the University of Pennsylvania, which served as an important primary source for nursing practices and daily lives of nurses in the late nineteenth century, and for her portrayal in the Thomas Eakins painting The Agnew Clinic.

Life Credited by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) as the first trained operating room nurse in Philadelphia, Clymer was born in 1861 in the Yardville section of Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, to a prominent Civil War veteran. Clymer was among the first graduates of HUP's nurse training school, which was established in 1886. Clymer was the recipient of the Nightingale Award for her exceptional patient care and scholarship. Students of the medical class of 1889 who commissioned The Agnew Clinic are portrayed as the audience for the surgery—as historian Amanda Mahoney points out, all individuals depicted in the work can be identified by name, except for the patient—and this audience of male medical students creates a composition that highlights power dynamics between the masculine and the feminine in the academic medical hierarchy. Others argue that Clymer's presence challenges this dynamic: Clymer's presence demonstrates the increasing technical advancements within nursing and medicine, her placement in the scene is a nod to the contributions to sanitation and organization that nurses brought to the operating room. These diaries have been described as a "vivid glimpse into the past" and an invaluable primary source on American nursing history.

Clymer's notes reveal Eakins' artistic license in the depiction of the mastectomy in The Agnew Clinic; Clymer wrote that, when preparing a patient for operation, one must cover the healthy breast and reveal the affected breast; this is confirmed in Agnew's own writings. Care of the skin: Bran and gelatin to protect skin, zinc oxide for burns and blisters, camphorated oil to prevent bedsores, and wound dressings with "lead water and laudanum" for amputations. Disinfectants: Alcohol, borax, salt, lime, mercuric chloride, carbolic acid, and prussic acid. Respiratory support: Steam inhalation, Turlington's Balsam and mustard plasters for cough, hot brandy or ammonia and hot water for shortness of breath. Obstetrics and gynecology: syrup of ipecac for hysteria, cosmoline for cleaning newborn infants, cotton "once dipped in bichlor" for cleaning skin during labor/delivery. "A few [tablets from druggists] we ought always have": 1/4 gr. Morphia 1/100 of Atropia 1/8 of pilocarpine Ergotine 1% nitroglycerine