May Farinholt Jones

Trained as a doctor at the Woman’s Medical College of Baltimore, she went on to build a notable medical career in Mississippi. Sources from medical history collections describe her as one of the state’s early women physicians, and later references to her career note that she was the first woman physician at the Mississippi State College for Women and the first woman admitted to the Mississippi State Medical Association.

Her best-known book, Keep-Well Stories for Little Folks, was published in 1916. In it, she used fairy-tale-style storytelling to teach children about cleanliness, food, fresh air, exercise, and other everyday habits connected to health.

The available sources are not fully consistent about her birth year: library catalogs list her as born in 1868, while several medical-history and public-domain book sources give 1866 and place her death in 1940. What is clear is that she stood out both as a medical pioneer and as an author who wanted to make health education accessible to young readers.