Pioneers and Trailblazers
Pioneers and Trailblazers
Elizabeth Blackwell, MD (1821-1910) - A native of the United Kingdom, Dr. Blackwell earned her MD from Geneva Medical College of New York in 1849, graduating first in her class. Blackwell practiced as a nurse in Paris after being denied a position as a doctor. When she returned to New York, Blackwell started a free community clinic and later found the New York Infirmary in 1857 to provide service to women and children.Mattis, Richard L. 2019. “Elizabeth Blackwell: The First Woman Doctor.” Cricket, March 1.
Mary Putnam Jacobi, MD (1842-1906) - Dr. Jacobi completed studies at the New York College of Pharmacy and earned her MD from the Female Medical College of Philadelphia. In 1871, Jacobi became the first woman admitted to the prestigious Ecole de Médecine in France, where she earned her second MD in 1871. Dr. Jacobi taught at the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary and the New York Post-Graduate Medical School. She also practiced at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and St. Marks Hospital while being instrumental in establishing the Mount Sinai Pediatric Clinic. Jacobi advocated for more direct connections between experimental research and clinical care; her book on The Question of Rest for Women During Menstruation, published in 1877 and recipient of the Harvard Boylston Prize; and her research of brain tumors and hysteria from a neurological perspective.
Bittel, Carla Jean. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 2009.
Patricia Bath, MD (1942-2019) - Dr. Bath earned her MD from Howard University in 1968. She shed light on health disparities in underserved populations while practicing at Harlem Hospital and on a fellowship at Columbia University. She became the first woman on the faculty of the ophthalmology department of UCLA. Dr. Bath is best known for her work on cataracts and the subsequent invention of a laser technology method to remove them, finalizing the patent in 1988.
Genzlinger, Neil. "Dr. Patricia Bath, Who Took On Blindness and Earned a Patent, Dies at 76." New York Times, June 5, 2019, B14(L).
Antonia Novello, MD, MPH (1944-) - Dr. Novello earned her MD from the University of Puerto Rico in 1970 before being appointed a fellow in the nephrology department of the University of Michigan’s Department of Internal Medicine. After stints in private practice, a pediatric fellowship at Georgetown University, and her MPH from Johns Hopkins University, she became the first woman to be appointed Surgeon General in 1990.
Berman, Janet Ober. 2021. “Antonia Novello.” Great Lives from History: Latinos, August, 1–2.
Mabel Farrington Gifford (1880-1962) - Gifford chose to attend the Natural Speech Institute in Buffalo, New York, before working in the speech clinic at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1915, she became “Chief of the Speech Clinic Out-Patient Department” and one year later organized the speech pathology program for the San Francisco Public Schools. She became Director of Speech Correction at the UC Berkeley clinic in 1920 after several years of focus on speech recovery for shell-shocked soldiers from the first World War. In 1925, she took her expertise to the state level, becoming head of the California Bureau of Correction of Speech Defects and Disorders within the California Department of Education until her retirement in 1952.
Malone, Dale George. 1966. "A Biography of Mabel Farrington Gifford." Master’s Thesis, Chapman University.
Mary McMillan (1880-1959) - Mary McMillan is one of the most influential figures in the history of physical therapy. After earning her BA in “Physical Culture and Corrective Exercises,” McMillan became a “reconstruction aide” (the predecessor to what is now physical therapy) at Walter Reed General Hospital during World War I. McMillan was a founding member and the first president of the American Women’s Physical Therapeutic Association, eventually becoming the American Physical Therapy Association. She published the first textbook in the field in 1921, titled, Massage and Therapeutic Exercise, and was influential in establishing the association’s journal, The P.T. Review.
Moffat, Marilyn. "The History of Physical Therapy Practice in the United States." Journal of Physical Therapy Education 17, no. 3 (Winter, 2003): 15-25.
Florence P. Kendall (1910-2006) - Kendall began her professional life as a high school PE teacher after earning her BS in physical education from the University of Minnesota. She then received an appointment to the Walter Reed Army Hospital in 1931 to begin her training in physical therapy, where she stayed until transferring to the Children’s Hospital in Baltimore. Kendall taught at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland in intervals between the 1940s-1980s and was Supervisor of physical therapy for Maryland’s Department of Health. She is best known for co-authoring the textbook, Muscles: Testing and Function in 1949.
Lawrence, Lucie P. "Florence Kendall: What a Wonderful Journey: Magazine of Physical Therapy." Pt 8, no. 5 (05, 2000): 36.
Virginia Apgar, MD (1909-1974) - After earning her bachelor’s degree in zoology, Dr. Apgar graduated from Columbia University with her MD in 1929. She was part of the first anesthesiology department in the United States at the University of Wisconsin –Madison. She became the first woman named Full Professor at Columbia’s department of anesthesiology in 1949. Dr. Apgar is best known for creating the eponymous Apgar Score to measure the health of newborns.
Tan, Siang Yong, and Catherine Allday Davis. 2018. “Virginia Apgar (1909-1974): Apgar Score Innovator.” Singapore Medical Journal 59 (7): 395–96.
