Category: healthcare

Bessie Blount Griffin: Inventor, Crime Fighter, Hospital Wonder Woman

Above is Bessie Virginia Blount Griffin’s patent for an invention that enabled paralyzed or limbless veterans of World War II to feed themselves.

That Bessie Blount Griffin became a inventor, physical therapist, business women, forensics expert and social activist before she passed on in 2009 is all the more remarkable, given that she was born in an era before women — particularly African American women — could expect opportunities in any one of the multiple fields in which she ultimately succeeded. Her life is a lesson in tenacity, irrepressible creativity and a deep sense of empathy for the people and causes she helped.

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Dr. Virginia Apgar: Medical Pioneer, Lifesaver… and Exotic Wood Thief?

Virginia Apgar, physician and orchestral stringed instrument craftsman.
Born in 1909, Virginia Apgar spent her life in the field of medicine as a pioneer in the development of anesthesiology and neonatology while simultaneously becoming an accomplished musician, fly fisherman, student pilot and builder of stringed orchestral instruments — this last interest being one that entangled her in a humorous exotic wood theft caper.

You may not know her name, but this Wednesday’s Woman, Dr. Virginia Apgar, touched the lives of everyone born in the United States after 1952 within moments of their birth with a simple test that changed the field of neonatology forever.

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Dorothea Lynde Dix — Early Champion of Better Care for the Mentally Ill

Dorothea Dix mental health reformer
Dorothea Dix was a leading 19th-century advocate for more humane and effective treatments for the mentally ill.

Over her lifetime, Dorothea Lynde Dix became a famed advocate for more humane and effective treatment of mental illness in the United States and Europe. When she began her life’s work in the first half of the 19th century, victims of mental illness were viewed with fear and annoyance; the only solution was to “put them away” in hellish lunatic asylums. By the time she died in 1887, Dix had touched countless lives with campaigns that moved state and federal governments to begin recognizing mental illness as an illness rather than a moral weakness.

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Susan La Flesche Picotte: America’s First Native American Doctor

Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first first native American female doctor
In the middle of both background images, a young Susan La Flesche is shown in the two different worlds of her 19th-century life. The mature Susan La Flesche in the foreground is the woman who became the first Native American physician.

The idea that “it was only an Indian and it did not matter” if a person received adequate medical care or not changed the life of Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte (1865-1915), the first Native American woman in the United States to receive a medical degree. Continue reading “Susan La Flesche Picotte: America’s First Native American Doctor”

Elizabeth Blackwell, MD: America’s First Formally Accredited Female Physician

Elizabeth Blackwell was one of America's most important historical female doctors.
Elizabeth Blackwell played a major role in organizing medical relief facilities for soldiers of the Union Army during the Civil War. The Women’s Central Association for Relief (WCAR) she founded led to the creation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission which operated 30 major facilities like this one in Alexandria, Virginia.

Elizabeth Blackwell, MD., was America’s first formally accredited female doctor. Admitted to medical school as a joke, she proved she who laughs last, laughs best. Continue reading “Elizabeth Blackwell, MD: America’s First Formally Accredited Female Physician”