Posts Tagged nursing

Photo Credit: Alan L. Brown

Last year, I was mentoring an undergraduate student at Leeds University who was writing her history dissertation on the London School of Medicine for Women. This school, established in 1874, was the first medical school in Britain to admit women. My student’s particular focus was the violence these pioneering women faced from threats of physical violence to being shunned by society, which included their own families. These young women showed extreme courage and determination to forge a path that today’s women find much less challenging.  However, this was Britain. What was it like in Canada for our own pioneering women in medicine? What was the first Canadian school to admit women into their medical programs? Who was the first licensed female doctor in Canada?  How did these events help the development of medical treatment for women in general? To answer some of these questions, we’ll examine two of those pioneering Canadian women as well as the Women’s Medical College of Toronto and the roles they played in bringing Canadian women into the medical professions.  (more…)