Louise Purington was a physician who became a leader in the temperance movement. She graduated from Mt. Holyoke Seminary in 1864 and went on to study medicine at Hahnemann Medical College. She wrote a number of articles and two books, The Literature of Missions (1876) and Medical Missions: Teaching and Healing (1903). She was appointed National Superintendent of the Department of Health and Heredity for the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union and named Superintendent of the Department of Health at the 1903 World Convention of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ella Gilbert Ives was an educator and author of The Evolution of a Teacher. Together Purington and Ives founded a private girls school and operated it for nearly a quarter of a century. .
