Marjorie Winchester Hayes Wallace, M.D.
1916-2011
Marjorie Winchester Hayes Wallace, M.D. practiced psychiatry into her mid 80’s and died at the age of 94 in San Rafael, California on January 22, 2011 of Altzheimer’s disease.
Marjorie was born September 25, 1916, the second daughter of a geologist. As a young child, she traveled the world with her parents on geologic expeditions until she attended high school in Princeton, New Jersey while her father was a professor at Princeton University. She attended Vassar College and graduated with a degree in music. Her specialty was the cello. While at Vassar she played lacrosse but was asked to choose between lacrosse, with its potential for hand injuries, and cello. She chose the cello.
Between college and medical school Marjorie spent a year in Europe and was in Vienna when Hilter invaded. She was asked to register her race and listed it as Eskimo. The Nazis had limited experience with Eskimos and sent a “scientist” to measure her head for proper classification.
Marjorie attended Johns Hopkins Medical School. The medical school curriculum was compressed to prepared physicians for service in WWII. Johns Hopkins was one of the few medical schools at the time that would accept women. Marjorie says she never noticed any harassment or hostility from the male medical students or faculty, although during the first day of anatomy class, the male students did play catch and keep away with a set of male genitalia. Marjorie thought all this good fun. To earn money during medical school she was a paid subject in many scientific experiments. Her favorites were studies of essential amino acids. They were extremely popular as they provided food, usually good food, for a week or two to stabilize the subject’s diet, and then a diet missing one amino acid. She said they were very interesting as you commonly would lose many pounds a week during the experimental phase when missing an essential amino acid. “Gee, my acne cleared up, menses stopped, and I lost 20 pounds in a week. It was very interesting.” She only knew of one medical student who had died in the studies. On the last day of medical school, Marjorie was in a study in which she took a multiple choice test. She had never seen one previously. They gave her a shot and then she took the test again. She thought she had done much, much better the second time. The next day she graduated and partied all night long. She said she felt great; she had never partied like that before. The next morning she took the test yet again, and thought she had performed much better still. They then explained that she had been injected with amphetamines to evaluate their effects.
Marjorie, the Wallaces and the Joneses, December 1993