proved women showed an azing ability to wit stand isolation and inactivity. she reviewed the test in the isolation tank she had completed with dr. shirley in oklahoma city and indicated that oths had performed equally well. new research, she continued, revealed women could withstand more noise, heat, and vibration than men. with such results, cobb argued, how could the united states government discontinue testing of women astronauts. space should not be blocked off as an environment only. it was an antiquated idea to suggest women only wanted to stay home tied to the kitchen. women wanted to explore the universe, push themselves to the far reaches of their ability just as men did. besides opening the door to women was part of a large national effort toward equity and fairness for all americans. as johnson knew, president kennedy announced on the very day john glenn orbited the earth that he was establishing a

commission on the status of women. in an executive order posted of all government agencies, including nasa, the president made it clear, women are entitled to quality of opportunity for employment in government and industry. >> johnson looking above his head noticed there were four allegorical frescoes depicting human ambition. all for were women dressed in impressive robes staring down at him. many minority groups are asking for attention from nasa, the vice president told cobb. they wanted to be astronauts, too. if the united states allowed women in space, then blacks, mexicans, chinese and other minorities would want to fly, too. cobb listened politely, looking trim in her tailored dress with three strands of pearls around her neck. what's wrong with minorities serving as astronauts if they were qualified.

johnson did not answer her question. she continued. if the vice president were proposing that only citizens who were in the majority should be launched into space, then women should be considered. women were certainly not in the minority, she thought in terms of numbers, money, votes and tax dollars. than a pained expression on his face he leaned to cobb and hart and gave the final thought, as much as he would like to help the cause of women's astronaut it was really an issue for james webb and those at nasa. it hurt him to say it, because he was eager to help, but the question was not up to him to address. johnson called an end to the meeting and started talking on his private phone. hart was angry. she knew johnson was putting on a performance that made it look as though it was painful to tell us. clearly johnson was not going to lend a hand to the cause even though a word from the vice president to james webb would have made an enormous difference. what hart did not understand was why. hart and cobb left johnson's chambers and met with a group of

reporters outside in the capital hallway. cobb stood with her arms folded across her chest, her pocketbook stuffed into the crook of her arm. her goal at this point seemed to be to mind her manners and hold her anger in check. cobb leaned near the wall. her face set rigidly in a practiced smile. i'm hoping something will come of these meetings, she politely said, as reporters scribbled in notebooks. two would be astro nets pleaded their case in washington. the women were a-okay but the decision was not his to make. cobb and hart never saw the letter from elizabeth. johnson decided not to show it to them because he had no intention of signing it. he did not want to ask james webb to look into the question of women astronauts. perhaps, johnson thought, starting a women's program would jeopardize the whole works

carpenter later said. taking out pen, drew across large desk and scribbled forcefully across the page. in his distinct large hand he announced the verdict cobb and hart and press never knew, let's stop this now. i think we have time for a few questions. yes. >> what originally motivated. >> my father told me to read newspapers. i always read newspapers. in 1977, i saw a little clip in a paper that said john glenn was getting his second chance to go into space aboard the shuttle.

paragraph 8 said jerrie cobb is not too happy about that. like most people i said, who is jerrie cobb. i grew up in a space family. my father worked on the space program. i thought i knew something about space and project mercury. it came as a great astonishment to me i didn't know. so i began to find out. yes? >> i was wondering, how many women of mercury 13 are still around, how many you were able to interview. how painful was it to revisit? >> they were open to talk about it, and it was painful for them to relive it. of the 13, 11 are still work and alive. i met and spoke with all of them. for the ones who passed away, i spoke to their family members.

this was an important center of their lives. they were eager to tell the story they feel much of it has been largely forgotten. it was difficult for them to relive the disappointment. yes? >> 1983 was the first time a woman went up. >> american woman. >> sally ride. >> we were there. i'm going to give you this hat that commemorates -- >> oh, my goodness. >> what did the women continue to do with their lives after the program? >> what did the women do with

their lives afterwards? >> are we okay here? they went on to a variety of interesting things. hart, who i mentioned in the last piece, shortly after she testified in congress, she got a call from new york that said, we're on the same wavelength. won't you come to a meeting in new york and talk about concerns. hart became one of the founding board members for the national organization for women. 2011 them went on to become president of 99s, national organization of women pilots founded by amelia earhart. another went on to become investigator for national safety board, really extraordinary lives.

>> i'm interested, a congressional hearing in "life" magazine. a lot of our parents remember this in the early '60s. then it seems to have been forgotten. why do you think this is a forgotten episode? >> that's a great question. that's true that it was well publicized in the 1960s with multiple page spreads in "life" magazine. lots of press coverage that i had the good fortune to read. after 1963, the story did disappear. i think that has a lot to do with what might be a regrettable american notion, unless in this case somebody succeeds in what they want to do, unless they go up into space. it's really not a story. in a sense, nothing happened. so what is important about it. i think that's a little like

saying this little meeting that happened down the road in seneca falls in 1988, women got together to talk about the vote because nothing immediately happened from it. so i think it's a case that we can't see the way of history being paved. however, i should mention that eileen collins, who became the first women to command the space shuttle in 1999, the scene that closes the book when i was down with the 13 for that launch, she is quick to point out every chance she gets that her achievement was a result of their kicking in the door and she stands on the shoulders of these 13 incomparable pioneers. yes? >> i don't understand the reason for the secrecy. i'm confused on the dates. 1963 they met with johnson when he shut down the program.

>> to answer your -- >> repeat the question. >> the first part of the question had to deal with why was it secret, and then was johnson responsible in '62 for shutting down the program. >> there are some pretty big folks blocking the door, i think. the reason it was secret, even the project mercury men when they traveled to the lovelace clinic traveled under secrecy, sometimes even under assumed names. we didn't know how the tests would come out. didn't know how people would score. i think it was lovelace, who was head of nasa's life science committee, i think it was his thought that it was best to test first, see how they did, and then announce results to the public. i think particularly with

jerrie cobb, he was sticking his neck out. he wanted to see how it would go. i would not say it was johnson alone who put an end to this experiment, this wonderful program. i think like most things there were many, many forces at work, certainly the most powerful being cultural attitudes towards women, particularly women in daring professions. keep in mind this is a time when many people thought that women did not have the courage, did not have the brains, did not have the nerve to do something like this. so i think that was probably the most formidable goal that they met. after the meeting with johnson, the women still were not satisfied. again, through lots of lobbying by jane hart, they pushed for a congressional hearinon it to determine what the precise qualifications for astronauts should be. it was then that congress decided that the status quo should be followed, that all astronauts should be pulled from

the ranks of military jet test pilots. no woman could be military jet test pilot, so it was a catch-22. yes? >> on the flip side of that, why did lovelace choose to test women in the first place? >> that's a good question as well. i think it began with sheer scientific curiosity. what would happen if they gave the same medical tests we had just given to the men to women, how might they perform. he was initially fueled by just that sense of wonder and curiosity about it. lovelace was certainly a man who believed that women had a quality in all aspects of life. lovelace was killed in a plane crash shortly after congressional hearings. i was able to interview members of his family including daughters who told me wonderful stories abouten couragement he

gave them. i think curiosity first and just a fundamental belief in the equality of women. >> did you encounter any opposition to your research, any people who wouldn't talk, any records you couldn't see? >> oh, sure. yes. >> to follow up on that, what has been the response at nasa? >> that depends on who at nasa you talk to. aids great of research at nasa history office in washington, d.c. those folks couldn't be more forthcoming, wonderful archivists there. also just in very recent years, nasa as part of their public website have included a section on women in space that includes "the mercury 13" as part of the steps that led to sally ride and

ultimately to eileen collins. but the last time, i should preface that by saying the last time i was at the air and space museum at the smithsonian, there were no public governmental exhibits acknowledging the merc 13 or cape canaveral. it's in some pockets but not in others. yes? >> once the soviets put a woman in space, was there no pressure from the american government to say, well, we can do that, too. it's not the stereotype of the russian woman steroided and trained and all that. i would think there would have been a counter-revolution to push the program forward. >> that's an interesting point. no, there wasn't. in fact, some of the public comment from nasa and the government was it was a publicity stunt. so they dismissed that achieveme

achievement. there wasn't people advocating mercury 13. the response largely as the next year or so went on because of randy lovelace's death. so it was -- tereshkova was dismissed. it wasn't until the hard work of the feminist movement of the 1970s as well as the civil rights movement that i think finally began to open the doors in 1978 for the first class of women astronauts. >> women astronauts in russia encounter the same obstacles? did they have to fight as hard? >> the first class? they were a minority among a larger group of women. interestingly when i interviewed eileen collins not part of that first class but a current astronaut and talked to her about what kind of exams, physical and medical exams we took, she said the exams we have

are nothing like the exams these people went through. in part because our knowledge of space in those years was very minimal, so everything was tested. as far as discrimination and obstacles, yes, i think there certainly was some. there's an editorial cartoon in the book about sally ride where reporters are badgering her with questions that seem all too familiar. can you make coffee up there? you're going to be scared. that kind of thing. the stereotypes persist. i think they persist even today. we have to keep in mind that the astronaut they see as the women of their drims was eileen collins, when she went up as a mission special is. it wasn't until 1999 that eileen collins became the first woman to command the space shuttle,

too, as mercury 13 says, dre the bus. so that's still a very, very long time. collins is the only woman astronaut still trained as a commander. only one after all these years. one more woman who is a pilot, nasa language for copilot. those are still pretty low figures. yes? >> could i mention a parallel i mentioned to you before? >> yes, you may. >> betty ryan wolf of 1935 -- >> '36. >> burden of proof? '36. >> you have the experts here. >> she became a pilot and enlisted or tried to enlist in the navy when the war broke out as a pilot. was naturally refused. she then spent the war in pensacola teaching male pilots celestial navigation. that's a very good point.

"the mercury 13" were too young to participate in any way in the national effort in world war ii, too old to be part of sally ride's generation. they were squeezed right in the middle there. they looked to women like the alum you mentioned as the shoulders they stood on. particularly point to the wasps, women's air force pilots of world war ii, who ferry planes domestically. without their efforts they wouldn't have been able to start rattling that door a little bit. well, i think that just about does it. i'd like to thank you all once again for coming. it's been a real pleasure. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> next week on history book shelf, brotherhood of the bomb, tangled lives and loyalties of robert oppenheimer, ernest lawrence. the book tells the story of the physicist who created atomic bombs dropped on japan at the end of world war ii. history book shelf airs on american history tv every saturday at noon. >> hosted by cable partner c-span's content vehicle visited many historic sites in shreveport, louisiana's third largest city. learn more about shreveport all weekend long on american history tv.

>> we're in our doctor's office. pioneer medicine . modern medicine evolved over a long period of time. pioneer medicine stayed stagnant without a lot-of- changes. it was archaic things in this area. they were doing blood letting, leeches, doing things that modern medicine kind of has found upon but we know some of those have come full circle. you consider that, the things we take for granted today when we go to the doctor, things like instruments being as germ free as possible, or the doctor has washed his hands before he decides to work on us of the tools are sterilized. modern painkillers. anesthetics. a lot of these things were nowhere on the radar yet for these doctors that were

practicing. we use the term loosely for doctors when we're talking early medicine. a lot of these doctors in our region were self-taught or had worked under somebody else self-taught. they were getting ready to retire. so they would just learn as they went. this would be the room you would come into for possibly a tooth pulling, if they were going to take tonsils out, remove an appendix, deliver a baby, do an eye exam. you came to the one exam room that they had. warmer weather, better days, people would sit outside and wait. if it was cold and winter, ever easily be crammed into the exam room with maybe just a sheet pulled across the patient. privacy wasn't that huge of an important thing to have to have when you went to the doctor. so oer things that make it scary to come to the doctor during this pioneer time if you

look at the exam table, the exam table is all metal. this is a metal exam table. would they sterilize it? no. clean paper like the doctor today when you go to the exam table? no. of course we have our mannequin on her. under the mannequin there's a groove into the center tray of the exam table. that groove runs into a pan, which is basically called the blood pan or blood groove. if the doctor was doing work, appendix, the blood would run around the side of the patient, around his back, in the groove and the pan. the smaller pan would allow the blood to drip bought larger pan on the floor. once the surgery was done, did they sterilize it? no. bucket of water and a rag, they would wash it off. that's about as clean as they would get it. the same with tools. a good doctor would have

something similar to this, wash basin, water for hands, bar of soap, not anti-bacterial, homemade lye soap. it was better than nothing. they would wash up work. there was no x-rays, nothing to render you unconscious for surgery. nothing to give you for pain, really good painkillers. morphine had not been invented yet. oo either had not been invented yet. take a patient who got thrown off his horse. he broke his leg. his foot is appointed in the wrong direction, so we know it's broken. they load him in the wagon, bouncing around in a buck board. they get him to the doctor. the doctor looks at it, gives

his best medical opinion. yes, it's broken. the doctor says, okay, the first thing we have to do is try to get boots off. our mannequin doesn't have his boots on. they would have to remove the boots. in order to do that, they would have to rotate the leg back in the right position. that would entail the doctor rotating the leg back with him screaming and hollering the entire time. something else the doctors would do that they don't do today, he would ask his buddies that brought him, i'm going to they'd your help. their job would be to pin him to the table while the doctor did his work. say i was the person who brought him in. my job would be to do this, pin him to the table while the doctor rotated that foot back into the upright position. the doctor gets ready to take his boot off. he addition around in his bag, may pull out -- may just pull his pocket knife out, go to cut the leather on the boot.

he may moan and grown, ask the doctor not to cut the boots offer. why not cut his boots off? simple reason, it may be the only pair of boots he had. the doctor has to make the decision, do i cut the boot off or go by his wishes. the doctor with the broken leg manages to get the boot loose. he hears a slurpy sound when the boot comes loose. when he does so, the pants are bloody, pants sticking out, there's blood, the reason for that is the bone is exposed to the skin. the doctor does his best. remember, no painkillers. no x-ray. a doctor has to try to set this bone the only way he knows how. the first efforts is going to be, he's going to take the heel and foot and apply pressure and pull, see if he can pull the

bone back under the skin. well, that works somewhat, but doesn't work as well as it should. then what is he going to do, grab the ankle, put his fingers and pressure on the broken bone, push it back through the hole made in the skin, then push his fingers in there. he'll rotate the bone and foot around until he thinks he feels those bones come back together. at that appoint he's going to bandage it up. no plaster cast. what's he going to do? splint it. splinting involves two boards. one side on each side of the leg. take the two boards, take dressings and tightly wrap the board on and that would become the cast. they get him home. within 10 days, maybe a little longer, the house starts getting this foul odor to it.

they notice there may be flies buzzing around the wound. their biggest fear is maybe it's got infected. of course an infection was not something you wanted to get on any major scale because with gangrene setting in, they didn't have any antibiotics to apply to it or give them orally to fight the infection. you had to hope your body was strong enough to fight it off. if infection set in, the curall was amputation. brought him back to the doctor. the doctor was afraid it was going to happen, get infected. why? a good reason would be the doctor had his fingers in the wound to do what he had to do. he had to do what he had to do to save the leg. now the in fact was there. the doctor would have to come up above the infected area and remove the leg. it would generally first amputation would be at the knee. they would come in, maybe come up mid part of the thigh.

they would use something very crude and very -- what we would say very crude. it would be an amputation kit. the amputation kit would have everything needed to actually remove the limb. most doctors would be pretty practiced in amputation, especially after the american civil war, because they had just had hundreds of thousands of patients to work on. so amputation was the route to go. so they would take their amputation tools. the first one they would have to use would be the scalpel. these are not nice and delicate tools, as you can see. it's long. it's very narrow, got a sharp edge on it. the reason for the length, this blade here would have to be pushed completely through the thigh, through the top and out the bottom. then they would take the bone saw. the bone saw has very small teeth on it. it would be used, just like it says, to saw through the bone.

they would saw the bone as close up to the top as they could. what they would do is put the bone higher than what the flesh would be. they would fold the flesh back over the bone, stitch that. that's what would make the stump. you would think a lot of folks would die with this kind of surgery. it's a very effective surgery if done properly. you talk about doctor's offices -- we have doctor's offices here. a lot of times they were timid doctors, farmed. also saddle bag doctors, not only stayed home at their doctor's offices but go out and roam the country side, not only would they have a saddle bag with amp tiegs kit and whatnot, we have a great example of a