Women in history are often overlooked. Women in medicine, even more so. Here are five female healthcare professionals who broke the glass ceiling and changed the world of medicine.
1. Ogino Ginko (1851-1913) – Japan’s first female doctor
After contracting gonorrhoea from her first husband, Ogino Ginko spent two years in hospital being treated by male gynaecologists with what was considered a “shameful” disease. This experience made her determined to become a doctor to help other women in similar circumstances.
In 19th century Japan, medicine was considered a male-only profession and for women to train in a medical school was almost impossible. After completing her formal education, Ginko met with Tadanori Ishiguir, President of the Japanese Red Cross, and women’s activist Shimoda Utako, who helped her gain permission to attend the medical school of Kojuin – becoming their first female student. She then obtained a place at the private medical academy, Tokyo Women’s Normal School.
There was much resistance to Ginko attending lectures and sitting medical exams, and she experienced harassment from both teachers and students. Despite this, Ginko graduated in 1882 and qualified as Japan’s first female doctor in 1885. She then opened the Ogino Hospital in Yushi ma and focused her work on Gynaecology and Obstetrics where she went on to treat countless women throughout her career. Ginko’s incredible achievements and determination in the face of gender discrimination inspired many other women at the time to pursue a career in medicine.
2. Mary Seacole (1805-1881) – Pioneering nurse who defied racism and injustice
Mary Seacole helped the sick and injured her whole life – from working as a nurse through the Jamaican Cholera and Yellow-fever epidemic, to aiding soldiers on the frontlines of the Crimean War.
Undeterred by a previous trip to England where she experienced racist comments, Mary travelled to England to meet with the British War Office to request to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea. After being rejected, Mary funded her own trip to Crimea where she set up the British Hotel to provide medical aid and support to soldiers. Her treatment and care of soldiers in the war earned her the name ‘Mother Seacole’ by those she had helped.
Mary’s achievements have often been overlooked, despite her countless years of nursing, acts of bravery and kindness. She broke social standards and prejudices to travel the world, run a business and provide healthcare to those in need.
3. Mary Broadfoot Walker (1888-1974) – Contributed groundbreaking discoveries to neuromuscular medicine
Mary graduated from the Edinburgh Medical College for Women in 1913, when women were unable to train alongside men at the University of Edinburgh. She faced further gender bias when serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps where male physicians were paid more than women and received military rank, whereas female physicians did not.
Limited by the positions available to women at the time, Walker spent her career working in workhouse infirmaries, where medical research was not supported or funded. Despite these challenges, Walker pioneered the use of potassium chloride in familial periodic paralysis, a rare disorder causing sudden weakness or paralysis.
For her significant work to neuromuscular medicine, Walker received the University of Edinburgh’s Thesis Gold Medal in 1935. However, the extent of Walker’s contribution was still not fully recognised during her career. It was only after she retired that she was awarded the first Jean Hunter Prize in 1963, acknowledging both her contribution to the understanding of myasthenia gravis and the barriers she faced while accomplishing this groundbreaking work.
4. Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) – Nobel Prize recipient for changing the landscape of drug design
Despite graduating at the top of her university cohort, Gertrude Elion’s PhD applications were rejected, making it incredibly difficult to start her career as a chemist. Elion faced further gender barriers as she struggled to secure pharmaceutical work, resorting to unpaid lab roles. However, reductions in the male workforce during the Second World War opened new doors for women and Elion was hired by Hitchings at Burroughs Wellcome in 1944.
Hitchings and Elion together produced a range of advanced drugs through replacing the existing ‘trial and error’ approach to drug development with methodical ‘rational’ drug design, and specifically targeted drugs to interrupt DNA replication. Elion became the head of her department in 1967 and moved her research to antiviral drugs.
Elion and Hitchings are credited with altering the pace and landscape of drug design and were awarded the Nobel Prize in ‘Physiology or Medicine’ in 1988, which made Elion only the fifth woman to receive this prize at the time.
5. Marie Curie 1867-1934 – Discovered and championed the use of radiation in medicine
Marie Curie’s persistence and resolve in medical research made her an icon in the world of modern science. Despite a career of physically demanding and ultimately dangerous work, she discovered and championed the use of radiation in medicine which fundamentally changed our understanding of radioactivity.
Marie Curie moved from her home country Poland to Paris in 1891 to further her studies and enrolled at the Sorbonne University. She could not attend the University of Warsaw, the Russian government prohibited women from attending university. Curie was introduced to science while studying and felt like a new world had opened up to her.
Curie did her thesis on radiation, recently discovered by Henri Becquerel. She found that an ore containing uranium was more radioactive than could be explained by its uranium content. This led to her and her husband, Pierre, discovering a new element 400 times more radioactive than uranium and it was added to the Periodic Table as polonium, named after Curie’s birth country. Curie then discovered an even more radioactive element, radium. She and her husband had identified that radium destroyed diseased cells faster than healthy cells, and thus radiation could be used to treat tumours.
Curie became the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. French academics originally proposed her husband and Henri Becquerel, but Pierre Curie insisted that his wife share the honour.
Published by Maisy Stant, Collections and Content Assistant, with thanks to Hidden Histories Project Researcher, Ellen Coleman, for their research into the lives of Mary Broadfoot Walker and Gertude Elion.
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Using smell, sound and sight, explore Mary Seacole’s extraordinary life in this interactive and sensory approach to curriculum learning.