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10 Famous Female Doctors you should know about

Medicine, like any other professional field, has been dominated by women over the last two decades. It wasn’t long ago that men could only fill these roles. The skepticism toward female doctors appears to be fading. Medicine is a field that is extremely important in our lives. This includes bringing back to live lives that were on the verge of extinction. Famous female doctors who have made significant contributions to medicine will be discussed in depth in this article. Let’s take a look at some of the most famous doctors you should be aware of. It is Discover Walks’ custom to provide you with the necessary information.

1. Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Rebecca Le kicks off our list of the best and most famous female doctors. Lee Crumpler became the first Black woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.

Crumpler was raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt. Crumpler decided to pursue a career in medicine after witnessing her aunt care for the sick people in her community. Despite being treated unfairly by some professors due to her race, she graduated in 1864 and established a medical practice in Boston for poor women and children.

In her Book of Medical Discourses, published in 1883, she provided medical advice for women and children, making it one of the first medical publications by an African American. What a lovely lady she was!

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2. Elizabeth Blackwell

Picture By Public Domain

Elizabeth Blackwell, who was born in the United Kingdom, was the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.

After a friend told her how humiliating it was to see male doctors, Blackwell decided to become a doctor. Unfortunately, she was rejected from many medical schools due to her gender.

Despite professors’ and students’ opposition, Blackwell graduated first in her class in 1849. She traveled to Europe and performed numerous successful surgeries. During one operation, she contracted a disease that caused her to lose sight of one eye.

Despite the fact that Blackwell could no longer perform surgeries, she continued to pave the way for women in medicine. She returned to New York and established her own practice. Years later, she established a women’s medical school as well as two clinics for impoverished women and children.

3. Mary Edwards Walker

Dr. Walker photographed by C. M. Bell

Mary Edwards Walker, who was already a practicing physician, volunteered her services during the Civil War. She was assigned to the Patent Office Hospital in Washington, D.C., by the Union Army, where she worked to improve military medical care.

Walker also founded the Women’s Relief Association to provide shelter for the mothers, wives, and children of soldiers. Walker offered to let these women and children stay in her home when no other options were available.

She took a break from volunteer work in 1862 to pursue a second medical degree at New York Hygeia Therapeutic College. She rejoined the war effort and worked in tent hospitals in Virginia and Tennessee as an assistant surgeon.

Mary continued to provide medical care at various locations until the war’s end. President Andrew Johson bestowed the Congressional Medal of Honor on her in 1865, making her the first woman to receive this honor.

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4. Gertrude Belle Elion

Gertrude Elion struggled to find work after graduating with honors from Hunter College at the age of 19 because no one wanted to hire a female chemist. Despite this setback, Elion continued to work as a part-time lab assistant and substitute high school teacher while studying for her master’s degree in chemistry.

Elion’s career took off in 1944 when she began working at a pharmaceutical company with Dr. George H. Hitchings. Elion developed medicines by comparing normal human cells to pathogens, rather than the traditional trial-and-error method (microorganisms that cause disease). She developed drugs to prevent kidney transplant rejection and treat serious diseases like leukemia, herpes, and AIDS.

Her work saved lives, and she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine in 1988.

5. Antonia Novello

Antonia Novello was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in public health at Johns Hopkins University.

She advised legislators on health issues such as organ transplants and tobacco-related diseases in the early 1980s. President George W. Bush appointed her as US Surgeon General, making her the first Hispanic to hold that position.

Novella raised public awareness of smoking-related health issues while serving as Surgeon General. She also improved AIDS education and advocated for better minority health care.

She joined the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1993 and worked to prevent substance abuse, smoking, and nutritional issues such as iodine deficiency.

Novello, as commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, improved Medicaid and other health programs to make health care more affordable. In 2002, she was awarded the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal.

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6. Virginia Apgar

Virginia Apgar. By Original Repository. Wikimedia Commons

According to Jone Johnson Lewis’ ThoughtCo article from November 2017, Virginia Apgar, a native of New Jersey, graduated fourth in her class from Columbia University and became the first woman to head a department at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1938.

Apgar made medical breakthroughs that increased infant mortality rates in the United States. She devised a method (the Apgar Newborn Scoring System) for evaluating a baby’s heart rate, breathing, skin tone, and muscles.

She also discovered that injecting certain anesthetics into a pregnant woman harmed the unborn child. Physicians no longer use these drugs as a result of Apgar’s research. Apgar devoted the rest of her career to preventing birth defects after receiving her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1959.

According to Changing the Face of Medicine, she helped raise funds for medical research, lectured at colleges, and worked with several public health organizations, including the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (now the March of Dimes).

7. Margaret Chung

 She graduated from the University of Southern California Medical School, becoming the country’s first Chinese-born female doctor.

According to Annie Wilson’s March 2021 article for Columbia Medical Association, Chung, a devout Christian, applied to be a medical missionary but was turned down because of her race. Chung completed her residency in Chicago after deciding she wanted to be a doctor. She later relocated to Los Angeles, where she rose to prominence as a celebrity surgeon.

Chung volunteered to be a surgeon during WWII. Instead, the government assigned her to find pilots for a unit known as the “Flying Tigers.” These pilots grew up to be like her sons. Throughout the war, she kept them in good spirits by sending them letters and Christmas gifts. Chung passed away at the age of 69 from Cancer.

8. Susan La Flesche Picotte

Susan La Flesche witnessed a white, male doctor refuse to treat an American Indian woman while growing up on the Omaha Reservation. This inspired her to become the first female Native American in the United States to obtain a medical degree.

She returned home after graduating as valedictorian in 1889 and spent the next 20 years treating thousands of patients. According to Carson Vaughan of Smithsonian Magazine in March 2017, this meant walking hundreds of miles to tribe members’ homes and treating deadly diseases like tuberculosis and cholera.

She had hoped to open a hospital on the reservation for many years. She eventually assisted in raising funds for the construction of a hospital in Walthill, Nebraska. Following her death in 1915, the hospital was renamed Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte Memorial Hospital.

9. Mary Putnam Jacobi

Mary Putnam Jacobi was fascinated by biology since she was a child, and she even considered dissecting a dead rat she found in order to see its heart.

Jacobi received her MD degree from the Female (later Woman’s) Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1864, with the reluctant support of her father, renowned publisher George Putnam.

She also managed to study because she was determined to get a better education than she could in the United States. Jacobi worked tirelessly on behalf of her female peers.

She argued for medical student coeducation, pointing out that existing women’s medical schools could not provide the same clinical experience as major hospitals. To address inequities, she founded the Association for the Advancement of Women’s Medical Education in 1872.

10. Joycelyn Elders

Picture By Public Domain

Joycelyn Elders grew up in a large family in a poor part of Arkansas, missing school frequently to assist her sharecropper parents in the fields.

Decades later, she was appointed as the first African American surgeon general of the United States, and the second woman to hold the position.

Elders didn’t see a doctor until she was 16, and once she did, she knew she wanted to be one.

She enrolled in the University of Arkansas Medical School with GI Bill funding after serving in the Army, and she graduated as the only woman in her class in 1960. She went on to become Arkansas’s first board-certified pediatric endocrinologist.

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