Susan La Flesche Picotte: a doctor who spanned two cultures

Abstract

As a child, she accompanied her father and the Omaha people on buffalo hunts. As an adult, she saw their traditional way of life disappearing, provided medical care to her community, and acted as an advocate for the Omaha people's rights over land. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American woman to qualify as a doctor in the USA, learned the ways of the dominant white population while never rejecting her Omaha identity. Dorothy Stopford Price and the control of tuberculosis in IrelandDuring the 1930s, tuberculosis was a leading cause of death in Irish children. By then, Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin had demonstrated their Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine in France and it was beginning to be used elsewhere, but the British and Irish medical establishments were not convinced. Against this background, a young Anglo-Irish paediatrician, Dorothy Price, decided to do her own studies in Dublin. Her persistence was instrumental in the introduction of a national tuberculosis vaccination schedule for Ireland in 1949, ahead of the UK's in 1954. Full-Text PDF Women making medical history: introducing A Woman's PlaceIn December, 2017, The Lancet issued a call for papers for its special theme issue on women in science, medicine, and global health .1 The Comment outlined the gender inequalities in medicine that still persist, long after many overt barriers to women's participation have fallen. While that theme issue will be forward-looking, I believe we can also gain insights from looking to the past for examples of women who have made their mark against the odds, and by asking what it was about their particular circumstances that enabled them to do so. Full-Text PDF Marie Boivin: from midwife to gynaecologistThe authoritative Traité pratique des maladies de l'uterus et de ses annexes, published in Paris in 1833, was one of the most forward-thinking gynaecological texts of 19th-century Europe. It was more specific than previous texts, such as the British physician Marshall Hall's Commentaries on Some of the More Important of the Diseases of Females of 1827, and it focused on the reproductive organs as a system rather than simply in relation to childbirth. This textbook was based not on previous authorities but on first-hand case studies and autopsies, including the first account of the surgical removal of a cancerous cervix. Full-Text PDF