Born: 28 June 1876, United States
Died: 24 August 1901
Country most active: United States, Cuba
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from New Jersey Women’s History, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Nurse Clara Louise Maass (1876-1901) of East Orange volunteered to participate in an immunization experiment against yellow fever in Cuba.
The first time Maass was bitten by an infectious mosquito, she contracted a mild case of the disease which caused doctors to believe that she was immune. The second bite, however, proved fatal. Maass succumbed to the disease at the young age of 25. Her death convinced doctors and researchers that yellow fever was caused by the mosquito. The Clara Maass Memorial Hospital in Newark, a city where Maass received her nursing degree and served as head nurse at the Newark German Hospital School of Nursing, is named in her honor.
References:
Burstyn, Joan N. “Clara Louise Maass”. In Past and Promise, Lives of New Jersey Women. 1990. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54486243.
Clara Louise Maass: the tradition of caring. Belleville, N.J.: The Clara Maass Foundation, 1990. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/22348136.
Cunningham, John T. Clara Maass: A Nurse, A Hospital, A Spirit. Belleville: Rae Publishing Company, 1976.
Graf, Mercedes. “All the Women Were Valiant.” Prologue 46, no. 2 (2014): 24-34.
Additional Resources
Herrmann Eleanor Krohn. 1985. “Clara Louise Maass: Heroine or Martyr of Public Health?” Public Health Nursing 51–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1446.1985.tb00676.x. https://www.worldcat.org/title/5154651683
Turner, Lloyd. Newark : City of Destiny. 350th anniversary edition. Place of publication not identified: [Lloyd Turner], 2018. https://www.worldcat.org/title/1100473521
Tengbom Mildred. 1978. No Greater Love : The Gripping Story of Nurse Clara Maass. St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House. https://www.worldcat.org/title/3609182