return to their reservations and become Christian wives and mothers. La Flesche decided in 1886 to apply to medical school. Medical school Though women were often healers in Omaha Indian society, it was uncommon for any Victorian-era woman in the United States to go to medical school. In the late 19th century, only a few medical schools accepted women. La Flesche was accepted at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), which had been established in 1850 as one of the few medical schools on the East Coast for the education of women. Medical school was expensive, however, and she could not afford it on her own. For help, she turned to family friend Alice Fletcher, an ethnographer from Massachusetts who had a broad network of contacts within women's reform organizations. La Flesche had previously helped nurse Fletcher back to health following a flareup of inflammatory rheumatism. Fletcher encouraged La Flesche to appeal to the Connecticut Indian Association, a local auxiliary of the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA). The WNIA sought to "civilize" the Indians by encouraging Victorian values of domesticity among Indian women, and sponsored field matrons whose task was to teach Native American women "cleanliness" and "godliness." La Flesche, in writing to the Connecticut Indian Association, had described her desire to enter the homes of her people as a physician and teach them hygiene as well as curing their ills; this was in line with the Victorian virtues of domesticity which the Association wanted to encourage. The Association sponsored La Flesche's medical school expenses, and also paid for her housing, books and other supplies. She is considered the first person to receive aid for professional education in the United States. The Association requested that she remain single during her time at medical school and for several years after her graduation, in order to focus on her practice. At the WMCP, La Flesche studied chemistry, anatomy, physiology, histology, pharmaceutical science, obstetrics, and general medicine, and, like her peers, did clinical work at facilities in Philadelphia alongside students from other colleges, both male and female. While attending medical school, La Flesche changed her appearance. She began to dress like her white classmates and wore her hair in a bun on the top of her head as they did. After La Flesche's second year in medical school, she had to return home to help her family, many of whom had fallen