Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth (05 April 1901–24 June 1968), microbiologist and pediatrician, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of William Bain Alexander, a merchant, and Elsie May Townsend, both of Scottish ancestry. The family remained in Baltimore throughout Alexander’s relatively happy and comfortable childhood. She attended Baltimore’s Western High School for Girls prior to enrolling in Goucher College, to which she won a partial scholarship. While at Goucher, her enthusiasm for a variety of sports—hockey, baseball, basketball—exceeded that for academics, and she was an unimpressive student. Nevertheless, she exhibited marked, though largely unapplied, skill in Dr. Jessie King’s bacteriology class, and fellow students in the Goucher yearbook declared that “ambition fires her; hygiene claims her; kindness portrays her.”...
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Alexander, Hattie Elizabeth (1901-1968), microbiologist and pediatrician
Allison Aydelotte
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Andersen, Dorothy Hansine (1901-1963), pediatrician and pathologist
Allison Aydelotte
Andersen, Dorothy Hansine (15 May 1901–03 March 1963), pediatrician and pathologist, was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the only child of Hans Peter Andersen, a secretary for the YMCA, and Mary Louise Mason. Andersen’s father died in 1914, leaving her alone to care for her invalid mother. The two moved to Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, where Louise Andersen died six years later. At the age of nineteen Andersen, with no close relatives, became fully responsible for her own upbringing....
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Apgar, Virginia (1909-1974), physician, anesthesiologist, and teratologist
Jacalyn Duffin
Apgar, Virginia (07 June 1909–07 August 1974), physician, anesthesiologist, and teratologist, was born in Westfield, New Jersey, the daughter of Charles Emory Apgar, an insurance executive, and Helen May Clarke. She had two brothers, one of whom died of tuberculosis at age three. Apgar’s father conducted amateur experiments in electricity and astronomy, which stimulated her interest in science and medicine. After schooling in Westfield, Apgar attended Mount Holyoke College, obtaining her A.B. degree in 1929. She completed her M.D. at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City, in 1933. Then followed two brilliant years in surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, but the department chairman, Alan Whipple, discouraged her from surgical practice. He cited the depression and financial insecurities experienced by his previous female trainees and urged her instead to consider anesthesia, not yet a medical specialty but often done by women nurse practitioners. Apgar spent six months in anesthesia training at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and six months at Bellevue Hospital in New York City before returning to Columbia-Presbyterian in 1938 as director of the Division of Anesthesiology; she was the first woman to head a medical division in that institution....
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Fraser, Sarah Loguen (1850-1933), a pioneering African American physician specializing in pediatrics
David Marc
Fraser, Sarah Loguen (29 January 1850–09 April 1933), a pioneering African American physician specializing in pediatrics, was born in Syracuse, New York, as Marinda Sarah Loguen, the daughter of Caroline Storum and the Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Both parents were lifelong activists in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and they established their family home as a “station” (safe house) in the underground railroad, harboring some 1,500 African Americans who passed through Syracuse en route to asylum in Canada during the decades preceding the Civil War. The U.S. Fugitive Slave Act, which criminalized any failure to report knowledge of the whereabouts of an escaped slave, became federal law the year of Sarah Loguen's birth. This posed new threats to the entire family and especially to Reverend Loguen, who had escaped from slavery in his youth....
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Jackson, Edith Banfield (1895-1977), pediatrician and psychoanalyst
Sara Lee Silberman
Jackson, Edith Banfield (02 January 1895–05 June 1977), pediatrician and psychoanalyst, was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the daughter of William Sharpless Jackson, a railroad executive, mining entrepreneur and banker, and Helen Fiske Banfield, an 1879 graduate of Vassar College. Jackson graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Vassar College in 1916 and from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1921. She held an internship at University of Iowa Hospital in 1921–1922 and a pediatric internship at Bellevue Hospital in 1922–1923. After four years on a rickets research project at the Yale School of Medicine, Jackson began a residency in psychiatry at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. in 1928. Between 1930 and 1936 she completed a training analysis with Sigmund Freud and participated in seminars at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. Upon leaving Vienna, Jackson provided Anna Freud with the seed money to establish the world’s first day-care center for infants from impoverished families. The “Edith Jackson Krippe” became the prototype for the Hampstead Nurseries for refugee children that Anna Freud directed in England during World War II....
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Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway (1880-1965), pediatrician and health educator
Donald L. Opitz
Kenyon, Josephine Hemenway (10 May 1880–10 January 1965), pediatrician and health educator, was born in Auburn, New York, the daughter of Charles Carroll Hemenway, a Presbyterian minister, and Ida Eliza Shackelford. When Kenyon was eleven, the family moved to Glasgow, Missouri, where her father accepted a position as president of Pritchett College. Later she studied at Pritchett, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1898 and a master’s degree the following year....
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Rodríguez-Trías, Helen (7 July 1929–27 Dec. 2001), pediatrician, public health activist, and feminist
Felicia Kornbluh
Rodríguez-Trías, Helen (7 July 1929–27 Dec. 2001), pediatrician, public health activist, and feminist, was born in New York City, the daughter of Damian Trías, a businessman, and Josefa Rodríguez, a schoolteacher. Her parents relocated to Puerto Rico while she was still an infant, but she returned to New York City in ...
