Clara Maass, born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1876, was the first nurse ever to be honored on a United States postage stamp.

Maass was thrust into a caring role from early in life. She was the oldest of ten children of German immigrant parents. While in high school, she worked as a mother’s helper to help support her large family. At 15, she began working at the Newark Orphan Asylum and, two years later, the 17-year-old enrolled in the Christina Trefz Training School of Nurses at Newark German Hospital. At the age of 21, only a few years after her graduation, Maass was named head nurse of the school.

Maass left her post at Newark German Hospital in April 1898 to volunteer as a contract nurse at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Her two terms of service took her to Florida, Georgia, Cuba, and the Phillipines, where battle wounds took a backseat to deadly diseases like yellow fever, typhoid fever, and malaria.

In 1900, the Army began a series of yellow fever experiments at Las Animas Hospital in Havana, Cuba. By this time, it was known that yellow fever was transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Major William C. Gorgas and Dr. John Guiteras hoped to prove that by inducing a controlled case of the disease from a mosquito bite, they could treat the light illness and help patients develop an immunity. In the hopes of aiding medical science, Clara Maass volunteered to be bitten.

Maass received seven bites from infected mosquitoes over the course of several months. Her last exposure took place on August 14, 1901. Shortly afterwards, she grew ill. On August 24, 1901, Maass died of yellow fever. The experiments had demonstrated that bites from infected mosquitoes could not safely induce immunity from yellow fever. Clara Maass was the only woman and the only American to die in Gorgas’ and Guiteras’ yellow fever experiments.

Related Web sites

Women in American History: Clara Maass
Clara Maass Medical Center History
Belleville History: Clara Maass Memorial Hospital