Lucy Rider Meyer
| Lucy Jane Rider Meyer | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Lucy Jane Rider September 9, 1849 New Haven, Vermont |
| Died | March 16, 1922 (aged 72) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | educator, social worker, author, physician |
Lucy Jane Rider Meyer (September 9, 1849 – March 16, 1922) was an American social worker, educator, physician, and author who cofounded the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions in Illinois. She is credited with reviving the office of the female deacon (or deaconess) in the U.S. Methodist Episcopal Church.
Lucy Jane Rider was born in New Haven, Vermont to Jane Child Rider and Richard Rider. She attended various public schools as well as the New Hampton Literary Institution (a college-preparatory school) and the Upham Theological Seminary. She went on to Oberlin College, from which she graduated in 1872 with a degree in literary studies after just two years.
In 1873 she entered the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania but withdrew after two years. She had intended to become a Methodist medical missionary but changed her mind after her then-fiancé died in 1875. She did not get her medical degree until 1887, when she was awarded the M.D. by the Women's Medical College of Chicago.
In 1885, she married a Chicago businessman and Methodist pastor named Josiah Shelly Meyer.
Meyer began her career in various educational capacities. For a year (1876–77) she was principal of the Troy Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont. Then, after studying chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1877–78), she became a professor of chemistry for two years at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois (1879–81).
She would later write an introductory book for children about chemistry, Real Fairy Folks, or, The Fairy Land of Chemistry: Explorations in the World of Atoms (1887). This book stands in a Victorian tradition of using fairies to explain the sciences (especially botany, through the folkloric connections between fairies and flowers). The frontispiece, for example, shows fairies clambering over a glass retort; another illustration shows the fairies H and Cl holding hands to form HCl, or hydrochloric acid. Meyer's book offered numerous practical examples of experiments that could be carried out with everyday materials like candles and vinegar. The illustrations reinforce the concepts being presented: fairy gases fly about actively, while fairy solids huddle together on the ground. For Victorians like Meyer, there was no contradiction in using fancy to present fact, for the natural world was full of wonders just as marvelous as those of the imagination.
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