Celebrating The History of Female Physicians

Every February we celebrate National Women Physicians Day. In honor of women physicians—this month and throughout the year—we’re highlighting a few of the trailblazing female physicians whose contributions have helped shape modern medicine.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell Becomes First U.S. Female Physician in 1849

It’s been 177 years since Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell earned her medical degree. Her birthday, Feb. 3, is designated as National Women Physicians Day, a time to celebrate her and all women physicians.

In her book, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, Blackwell shared that she was initially repelled by the idea of studying medicine. Her mind was changed when a friend who was dying suggested she would have been spared her worst suffering if her physician had been a woman.

Blackwell was turned away from more than a dozen medical schools before being accepted at Geneva Medical in New York—but only after the all-male student body jokingly voted yes when asked whether admitting a female student was acceptable.

Blackwell graduated top of her class in 1849. In 1857, she co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children to serve the poor.

Female Physicians Comprise 37% of Workforce

Blackwell expressed optimism about the future of female physicians when they comprised 10% of all physicians by 1914. However, that percentage dropped over the intervening decades until 1980, when nearly 12% of all physicians were female. The trajectory has been upward ever since, with a 37% female physician workforce by 2021, up from 28% in 2007. By the 2023-24 academic year, more than 55% of the country’s medical students were female.

First Black Woman Doctor in U.S.

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, earned her medical degree in 1864 from the New England Medical College during the Civil War. After the war, she moved to Richmond, Virginia, to care for freed slaves in the Confederate state. She is remembered for the Book of Medical Disclosures, one of the first medical publications by a Black author.

Treating Patients on the Omaha Reservation

The discrimination Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte saw inspired her to become the first Native American woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree, graduating at the top of her class in 1889. She was also the first person to receive federal aid for professional education.

In 1894, La Flesche Picotte set up a thriving private practice in Bancroft, Nebraska, where she treated white and nonwhite patients. In 1915, she opened a hospital in the reservation town of Walthill, Nebraska, which now houses a museum dedicated to her and the Omaha tribe to which she belonged.

Test for Newborns Used Worldwide

In 1952, Dr. Virginia Apgar developed the Apgar score, a test performed on newborns at one and five minutes to gauge how the baby tolerated birth and is doing outside the womb.

Apgar completed her MD in 1933 as one of just nine women at Columbia University’s medical school. In 1938, she returned to Presbyterian Hospital, where she had received post-doc training in anesthesia, as director of the Division of Anesthesia within the Department of Surgery, the first woman to head a division at the New York City hospital.

Pioneer in Clinical Cancer Chemotherapy

A cancer researcher and surgeon, Dr. Jane Cooke Wright, helped develop chemotherapy as a clinical treatment for solid tumors. Wright studied anticancer agents, developing methods to test them using patient tumor tissue and new methods for administering chemotherapy. She was the only female founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1964. Wright was then named professor of surgery, head of the cancer chemotherapy department, and associate dean at New York Medical College, becoming the highest-ranking Black American woman at a nationally recognized medical school in the United States at that time.

Identifying Genetic Markers for Breast Cancer and Other Disorders

Dr. Mary-Claire King is an American geneticist who demonstrated that breast and ovarian cancers can be inherited due to mutations in a gene she termed BRCA1. Her work has led to widespread testing that has saved countless lives.

Since 1995, King has been the American Cancer Society Professor of the Department of Genome Sciences and of Medical Genetics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

King also studied the potential genetic and environmental influences on other conditions, such as inherited deafness, HIV, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia, and systemic lupus erythematosus.

180 Years of Medical Contributions

For nearly 180 years, women physicians have shaped medicine through innovation, advocacy, and service to underserved communities. Their contributions deserve appreciation and respect every day for the lasting impact they have on patients, science, and the future of healthcare.