WOMEN AS HEALTH
PROFESSIONALS
A. HISTORY
Historically, women in
health care have primarily been care- takers and nurturers in their roles
as wives, mothers, and nurses and in the responsibilities for the care
of the sick, aged, and the disabled …
Early history of
women in health care
Women have always
been healers as well as caretakers; they have acted as pharmacists, physicians,
nurses, her-balists, abortionists, counselors, midwives, and “sagae” or
“wise women” …
Women in early American
Medicine
In colonial North
America the healing role or women was critical to survival; many thousands
assumed medical roles. Ann Hutchinson, the early seventeenth-century religious
leader, functioned as a general practitioner and midwife. Since there were
relatively few university-trained physicians and no medical schools … |
Women in nineteenth-century
medicine
In 1847 Elizabeth
Blackwell became the first woman to be admitted to a “regular” medical
school in the United States. She graduated first in her class from Geneva
(New York) Medical School in 1849 …
Women physicians
in Europe and Canada
In 1859 America’s
Elizabeth Blackwell was placed on the British Medical Register; the year
following, the British Medical Association ruled that those with foreign
medical degrees could not practice in England ...
Nineteenth-century
midwifery
There was considerable
opposition to the practice of midwifery by women in the mid-nineteenth
century, particularly in the United States. In 1820 John Ware, a Boston
physician, is said to have written Remarks on the Employment of Females
as Practitioners of Midwifery, in which he raised objections based
on his view of women moral qualities ... |
