[6] Her infirmary was established in a suite of rooms in the Main Building, where she was responsible for the health of her patients and the entire college.

Avery believed in hydro-therapy and ensured sanitary conditions for food, water, and milk.

She was responsible for decisions regarding control of quarantine, whether staff should be retained or dismissed for health reasons, whether to hold chapel in bad weather, and when to turn on the heat in buildings.

[8] Physiology was a required subject in the junior and senior years for the first two decades of Vassar's history.

[7] Avery and astronomer Maria Mitchell, the only other woman on the faculty at that time, learned that their salaries were less than that of many younger male professors.

Wood, the head librarian, said: "She came in 1865 as the resident physician, was a strong member of the Faculty, high in the confidence and trust of [President] Raymond and [Lady Principal] Miss Lyman and sharing with them the responsibility of that important formative period.

So close were the friendly and confidential relations among these three 'powers that be'—hardly ever one appearing without the other—that some irreverent students dubbed them 'The Trinity.

[11] In 1881, she was admitted to the Denver Medical Society, as were Edith Root and Mary Barker Bates.

[2] After she moved to California, though, she established a medical office in San Francisco and she practiced medicine there for several years.

She was good friends of fellow staff members Maria Mitchell and Hannah Lyman.

Make a bonfire of the cruel steels that have lorded it over your thorax and abdomens for so many years and heave a sigh of relief, for your emancipation I assure you, from this moment has begun.She was an active member of the Unitarian Church, women's movement, and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.