In the early 19th century, the American medical field was almost exclusively a men’s club. However, a few resilient women refused to accept the status quo, stepping forward as pioneers to carve out a new path.
Today, that landscape is shifting dramatically. While men currently account for 61% of active physicians in the U.S., women now make up the majority of medical students and residents. We are standing on the brink of a major demographic shift.
Below are the stories of six unsung women who challenged the establishment and moved the field of medicine forward.
Table of contents
Women Medical Leaders: Lydia Pinkham
Lydia Estes Pinkham (1819-1883) was one of the first people to take women’s health issues seriously. She opened a closed door on the health matters that are unique to women. To help friends and neighbors, she created a vegetable tonic that helped with “women’s ills.” The family decided to package the product, and her sons soon took to the road to help place the tonic in stores.
Up until this time, women had no resources for health advice. Because Pinkham’s product became so popular, women wrote her for advice. Her responses were mostly common sense (eat well, exercise, and avoid the tight, restrictive clothing that was popular in the 19th century). Eventually some of the advice was collected in pamphlets.
Though the compound has evolved to meet modern FDA standards, Lydia Pinkham’s Compound (now owned by Numark Brands) can still be found online and in major drug stores.
Clara Barton
Clara Barton (1821-1912) is well-known as the “Angel of the Battlefield”for her work during the Civil War. Later she brought the Red Cross to the U.S. and formed the American Red Cross.
Barton is less well-known for running the Office of Missing Soldiers. During the Civil War, the military had no official identification system. Sometimes soldiers caried a note in their pocket or wallet. Other times, their buddies buried them with something saying who they were.
Clara Barton set up an office in Washington, D.C. that operated from 1865-1867. She received 63,000 letters from families whose loved ones were missing, and she or her staff answered them all. They also managed to identify 22,000 soldiers.
Dr. Rebecca Crumpler
Dr. Rebecca Crumpler (1831-1895) was a Black woman who worked as a nurse for several white doctors in Massachusetts in the 1860s. She was so well-regarded by the men that they recommended her for admission the New England Female Medical College; she became the first African American to be admitted.
Once she became a physician, she cared for Black patients in the Massachusetts area at a time when white doctors refused to treat people of color. At the end of her career, she wrote a home health guide for women about everything from nursing a newborn to managing cuts and wounds. For the first time, households had a reliable reference as to how to manage various health issues.
Dorothy Harrison Eustis
Dorothy Harrison Eustis (1886-1946) was a dog breeder who became interested in training guide dogs for the blind. While she was not a medical professional, her service to humanity was important to the health of people with impaired vision.
Eustis trained the first seeing eye dog brought to this country (1928). She went on to dedicate the rest of her life to breeding and training guide dogs. She and Morris Frank, the fellow who received the first dog she trained, created the school, The Seeing Eye. The school still operates today and continues to train and place dogs.
Dr. Virginia Apgar
Dr. Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) hoped to be a surgeon but she graduated from medical school during the Depression when men were taking all the available jobs. She went into the relatively new field of anesthesiology. This placed her in delivery rooms where she had the opportunity to observe what happened with mothers and babies shortly after birth.
Apgar was alarmed that babies were only cursorily evaluated before being sent off to the hospital nursery. To solve the problem, she developed a method for assessing newborn health. She originally called it the Newborn Scoring System, and it greatly changed the mortality rate for infants. The system is still used today but it is now referred to as the Apgar Score. She then went on to run the March of Dimes.
Dr. Antonia Novello
Dr. Antonia Novello (1944– ) grew up in Puerto Rico and became a physician. She is the first Latino to ever serve as U.S. Surgeon General. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, she made many contributions to public health, among them working to improve medical care for women and minorities.
Dr. Novello also targeted underage drinking and smoking, which involved a focus on cigarette advertising. The cartoon image of Joe Camel was a particular target that she felt made smoking attractive to the young.
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This information is based on my six-volume history of medicine as well as a speech I gave at Arizona State University for their Barrett Honors Program. If you’d like to see the full presentation given at ASU, click here:
Little-Known Women in Medicine Presentation with Kate Kelly.