Category: Women in Medicine
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Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012): “Chance favors the prepared mind”
James L. FranklinChicago, Illinois, United States On December 10, 1986, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Stanley Cohen shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in neurobiology and for the discovery of “nerve growth factor” (NGF) that has since shed light on tumors, wound healing, and other medical problems. Levi-Montalcini was the first Italian…
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Book review: Meeting the Challenge: Top Women in Science
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Women have long faced difficulties in acceptance to scientific fields. Science today remains male-dominated, but there are more examples of brilliant female scientists who have broken through the so-called glass ceiling. In her preface to Meeting the Challenge, Magdolna Hargittai illustrates this point with the 2020 Chemistry Nobel Prize winners,…
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Dr. Lucy Hobbs Taylor, DDS
Natalie Horakova Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic Lucy Hobbs Taylor. Photo via Kansas Historical Society Kansapedia. “I am a New Yorker by birth, but I love my adopted country—the West. To it belongs the credit of making it possible for women to be recognized in the dental profession on equal terms with men.” – Dr.…
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Alexa Canady, MD: The first Black woman neurosurgeon
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”– Albert Einstein Alexa Canady (b. 1950) was the daughter of Clinton Canady, Jr., DDS, and Elizabeth Canady, a civil rights activist and the first African American to serve on the Michigan Board of Education. Alexa’s maternal grandmother taught at Lane College, a…
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Books, bangles, and bravado
Jill Kar New Delhi, India Figure 1. Anandi Gopal Joshi (March 31, 1865 – February 26, 1887). Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Anandibai Joshee (Anandi) set sail from India at the age of eighteen. Bartering her bangles for books, she traded convention for an education, which was considered shameful in nineteenth-century India.1 In doing so,…
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Dorothy Russell: The complete pathologist
Nephrologists are familiar with Dorothy Russell because in 1930, long before renal biopsies, she published a monograph in which she classified cases of glomerulonephritis into mitis, intermedia, and gravis. But in the world at large she is better remembered for her research into cancer and neurologic diseases. Born in Sydney in 1895, Dorothy Stuart Russell…
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Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte: tradition, assimilation, and healing
Mariel Tishma Chicago, Illinois, United States Fig 1. Susan La Flesche Picotte. 1889. Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center Archives & Special Collections. Published with permission. “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night.” — Susan LaFlesche Picotte1 It was August of 1889 and Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte…
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Dr. Joycelyn Elders: An unwelcome prophet
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “No prophet is welcome in his hometown.”— The Gospel of Saint Luke, 4:24. New American Standard Bible Joycelyn Elders, MD (b. 1933) was Surgeon General of the United States of America from 1993 to 1994. She was the second woman and the first Black person to have that position. Her life story…
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Women surgeons
Moustapha Abousamra Ventura, California, United States Cactus flower with buds.Image courtesy of the author. Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire…
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Book review: The Doctors Blackwell
Elizabeth Coon Eelco Wijdicks Rochester, Minnesota, United States The Doctors Blackwell. Janice P. Nimura. Edith Lutzker celebrated the centennial anniversary of the struggle of five British heroines in her 1969 groundbreaking book Woman Gain A Place in Medicine. Much less has been written on women physicians in Europe and Asia, but the Italian universities…