March 13, 1939

Ida Josephine Brooks, who in 1906 was the first woman to have a private practice in psychiatry in Arkansas, died at the age of eighty-five at St. Vincent’s Infirmary in Little Rock (Pulaski County). The daughter of Joseph Brooks, of Brooks-Baxter War fame, she applied for admission to the University of Arkansas Medical School but was rejected. This led Brooks to campaign ardently for the education and training of woman physicians in the state. She earned a medical degree from a Boston University in 1891, later studied psychiatry, and in 1914 received an appointment as associate professor at the very school that had first rejected her.