Celebrating Women's History Month: Women in Medicine

As we celebrate Women’s History Month, we honor women and their contribution to medicine and STEM.

In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to be granted an MD degree. Blackwell’s journey started after losing a friend to a terminally ill disease. Both Blackwell and her friend believed that she would have received better care from a female doctor. As she tried to pursue a profession into the medical world, Blackwell was turned away by more than 10 schools because she was a woman! It was then a professor suggested that she disguise herself as a male to gain admission. Ultimately Blackwell ended up attending Geneva Medical College in western New York. However many of her male counterparts, as well as the college, thought it must have been a prank, and that Blackwell couldn't have been serious in taking up the profession as a doctor.  Even after graduating Blackwell struggled to find work. It wasn't until 1857, she co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children to serve the poor.

Shortly after, in 1864 Mary Putnam Jacobi received her MD degree from the Female (later Woman’s) Medical College of Pennsylvania. To further her studies she also became the first woman to study at l’École de Médecine in Paris.  Aside from her academic achievements, Jacobi fought hard for women’s rights and equality in the medical world, focusing on coeducation for medical students. Jacobi believed all women medical schools could not provide the same clinical experience as major hospitals. In 1872, Jacobi founded the Association for the Advancement of the Medical Education of Women to address the concerns of gender inequality when it came to medical studies. Many influential speakers attended, including Elizabeth Blackwell. 

After watching a young woman refuse to be treated by a white doctor which later resulted in death, Susan LaFlesche Picotte devoted herself to healing Native Americans. She became the first Native American woman in the United States to earn a medical degree. Picotte studied in New Jersey and then later taught at a Quaker school on the Omaha reservation. It was here she was deeply influenced by a sickly ethnologist, Alice Fletcher, to pursue medicine.  In 1889, Picotte graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. When she returned home, she served her population of more than 13,000 Native Americans. Finally, in 1913, Picotte opened her own hospital in the remote reservation town of Waterhill, Nebraska. 

Working alongside her husband, Gerty Theresa Cori became the first U.S. woman to win a Nobel Prize in science. After meeting in medical school, the couple later moved to Buffalo in 1922 and began conducting bio-medical research. During the time, the couple was often judged for working together. Many believed Gerty would ruin her husband's career due to their gender difference. However, her husband disagreed. In doing so, the couple have published over a dozen articles and were able to explain how glucose is metabolized, a key insight for the treatment of diabetes. We also saw the importance of allyship, as her husband continued to support her despite opposing views from colleagues.

We encourage you all to look further in Women's History yourselves! Here is a link to the Smithsonian's newest display, 120 orange statues to inspire and empower women in STEM.