Anastasia Golovina
Anastasia Golovina was Bulgaria’s first woman doctor, earning her doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1878.
Category Archives: Science > Medicine
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Tebello Nyokong
South African chemist and professor Tebello Nyokong is helping to pioneer a safer method of cancer detection and photodynamic therapy, a treatment without the harmful side effects of chemotherapy.
Dr Yvonne Sylvain
Dr Yvonne Sylvain was the first female doctor from Haiti and the first woman accepted into the University of Haiti Medical School, earning her medical degree in 1940. She played a vital role in providing improved medical access and tools for Haitian citizens and was a leading advocate for the physical, economical, social and political equality of Haitian women.
Dr Vera Peters
Canadian oncologist and clinical investigator Dr Mildred Vera Peters was told to “go do women’s work” after upstaging the medical community in her treatment of Hodgkin’s disease. So she revolutionized breast cancer treatment through years of painstaking, meticulous work.
Tsai Ah-hsin
Tsai Ah-hsin was the first female physician in colonial Taiwan’s first female physician. She graduated from the Tokyo Women’s Medical College in 1921, then completed her residency at the Taihoku Hospital in Japanese Taiwan and founded her own hospital at Taichu in 1925. She created a seminar to train midwives in obstetrics, which was offered through her hospital. She had to end the seminar in 1938 as the Japanese, who had invaded northern China in 1937, came to her seminar and forced some of her students to work for them as nurses on the front lines.
The serial drama “Wave Washing Sands,” based on her life, won Best Serial Drama at the Golden Bell Awards (celebrating Taiwanese television) in 2005.
Dr Yin May
Yin May, the first Burmese obstetrician and gynecologist, founded and ran the country’s main maternity hospital during the Japanese occupation of Burma. She was the first person to perform the Caesarian section in Burma and is known for her research on amoebic vaginitis, also called May’s disease.
While pregnant and separated from her family, Yin May founded the country’s primary maternity hospital during the Japanese occupation (1942–1945), working long hours with staff who had no OB/GYN experience. Burma had lost its main maternity hospital, Lady Dufferin Maternity Hospital, on 25 December 1941 due to Japanese aerial bombing and then the Japanese army commandeered Rangoon General Hospital for their use only. She later co-founded wartime medical and nursing schools (1943–1945). After World Wai II, she ran Lady Dufferin Maternity Hospital from 1946 to 1959, and was head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Faculty of Medicine of Rangoon University from 1947 to 1959. Under her leadership, Dufferin became a maternity hospital recognized by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1957.
Angélique de Coudray
In 1759, French king Louis XV launched a project to reduce infant mortality in the country and commissioned Parisian midwife Angélique du Coudray to train peasant women as midwifes. From 1760 to 1783, she trained approximately 10,000 women across France, visiting poor women in rural areas and sharing her extensive knowledge with them. Presumably the women she taught also passed those skills on to outhers in following years. Du Coudray also invented the first lifesize obstetrical mannequin, so the women could practice mock births, and published a popular midwifery textbook, Abrégé de l’art des accouchements (The Art of Obstetrics, 1759). Due to the lack of accurate data collection, it is impossible to quote statistics about infant mortality rates (which were frequently underreported in the 1700s and earlier), but it seems inarguable that du Coudray must have directly and indirectly saved countless lives, of both mothers and children.
Thung Sin Nio
Betsy Thung Sin Nio was an Indonesian-Dutch women’s rights activist, medical doctor, economist and politician.
Adah Thoms
Adah Belle Samuels Thoms was an African-American nurse who co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and served as president from 1916 to 1923.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham
Minnie Fisher Cunningham was an American suffrage activist, who was the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters.