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Nov 7, 2017 · From the ancient Greek physician Metrodora (the author of the oldest medical text) to Dorothea Bucca (the late 14th-century physician who held a chair of medicine and philosophy at the University...
- Jackie Mansky
Mar 5, 2024 · Today, hundreds of thousands of women doctors serve patients across the nation, and more than half of students in the country’s medical schools are women. How did we get where we are? This interactive timeline of pivotal moments, historic efforts, and courageous pioneers tells the story of U.S. women in medicine and their tremendous ...
- Stacy Weiner
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. In 1857, with her sister, Emily Blackwell, MD; and Marie Zakrzewska, MD, she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
- 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, 06520, CT
- Elizabeth Blackwell, MD (1821-1910): A Fabulous First
- Rebecca Lee Crumpler, MD (1831-1895): An African American Pioneer
- Mary Putnam Jacobi, MD (1842-1906): The Menstruation Myth
- Ann Preston, MD (1813-1872): in The Dean’s Office
- Susan Laflesche Picotte, MD (1865-1915): Devoted to Healing Native Americans
- Gerty Theresa Cori, Phd (1896-1957): Winning A Nobel
- Virginia Apgar, MD (1909-1974): Scoring For Babies
- Patricia Goldman-Rakic, Phd (1937-2003): Brain Breakthroughs
- Antonia Novello, MD (1944-): Fighting For The Vulnerable
- Joycelyn Elders, MD (1933-): First African American Surgeon General
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first womanin the United States to be granted an MD degree. Blackwell began her pioneering journey after a deathly ill friend insisted she would have received better care from a female doctor. Turned away by more than 10 medical schools, Blackwell refused a professor’s suggestion that she disguise herself as ...
The first African American woman in the United States to earn an MD degree, Rebecca Lee Crumpler was inspired by an aunt who took care of many ill neighbors. “I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the suffering of others,” wrote Crumpler in her groundbreaking 1883 publication, A Book of Medical Discourses: In Two P...
Mary Putnam Jacobi was interested in biology from the time she was young, and even briefly considered dissecting a dead rat she found to get a glimpse at its heart. With the reluctant support of her father, renowned publisher George Putnam, Jacobi received her MD degree from the Female (later Woman’s) Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1864. Determ...
As the first woman dean of a U.S. medical school, Ann Preston fought intense hostility to win opportunities for her female students. Preston first became interested in medicine and physiology while working as a temperance activistin Pennsylvania. After apprenticing with a local doctor in 1847, she applied to all four medical schools in Philadelphia...
When she was young, Susan LaFlesche Picotte saw a Native American woman diebecause a white doctor refused to care for her. Years later, Picotte would become the first Native American woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. The daughter of an Omaha chief who believed in partnering with white reform groups, Picotte studied in New Jersey ...
Gerty Theresa Cori — the first U.S. woman to win a Nobel Prize in science — and her husband Carl worked as equals, yet they were rarely treated that way. Gerty and Carl met in Prague during medical school, which she attended at the urging of her pediatrician uncle. The couple moved to Buffalo, New York, in 1922 and began conducting biomedical resea...
New parents anxiously await their child’s Apgar score, which is the gold standard for determining the health of a newborn. Virginia Apgar devised that score in 1953, creating the first tool to scientifically assess a neonate’s health risks and need for potentially life-saving observation. When she graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeo...
Alzheimer’s disease, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia — scientists’ understanding of these conditions and many more are founded on the groundbreaking research of Patricia Goldman-Rakic. Goldman-Rakic, who received her PhD from UCLA in 1963, achieved unprecedented insight into the brain’s frontal lobes. Working at a time when the p...
When Antonia Novello became U.S. surgeon general in 1990, her name was etched in two history books: one for Hispanics and one for women. As a child in Puerto Rico, Novello suffered from a congenital digestive condition that her family could barely afford to treat. That experience motivated her to study medicine and ensure that care was available to...
Joycelyn Elders grew up in a large family in a poor part of Arkansas, and she often missed school to help her sharecropper parents work in the fields. Decades later, she became the first African American surgeon general of the United States and the second woman to hold that position. Elders did not see a doctoruntil she was 16 years old, and when s...
- Stacy Weiner
Sep 25, 2018 · Timeline of women in medicine. September is the AMA’s Women in Medicine (WIM) Month, which celebrates the accomplishments of—and showcases advocacy for—female physicians, while also highlighting health issues impacting female patients.
One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States. Since then, the field of medicine has progressed with...
May 28, 2024 · Women now account for more than one-third of active physicians, and are expanding their presence to become a majority or significant share of active physicians in such specialties as pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, pathology, and psychiatry.
