 In January 1959, the courts finally put an end to the assault of the Byrd Machine on public education, ruling that school closures to avoid desegregation were a violation of equal protection and were, therefore, unconstitutional.After the 1958 elections, Wensel continued as a practicing physician until a few years prior to her death in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2005.For much of her career, she specialized in psychiatry, and in the 1970s, she played a major role in introducing acupuncture as a mainstream treatment approach in U.S. medicine.