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The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West
Women studying medicine – late 1890s.
When Omaha Indian woman, Susan La Flesche Picotte entered the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in October 1886, she became the first Native American women to attend school to study medicine. The heavy course load for her first semester consisted of classes in chemistry, anatomy, obstetrics, and general medicine. In addition to her class work, she observed clinical practice at the women’s hospital, took weekly examinations in all her subjects, and learned how to dissect the human body. Other women had trouble with the dissections, but Susan did not mind the procedure: “The students and I laugh and talk up there just as we do anywhere,” Susan recalled in her journal. “Six students take one body…and [it] is divided into six parts. Two take the head…two the chest…two the abdomen and legs. Then we take off little by little…It is interesting to get all the arteries and the branches. Everything has a name…from the tiny holes to the bones. It is splendid.”
For more stories about lady healers on the frontier read The Doctor Wore Petticoats: Women Physicians of the Old West.
