As re­cent­ly as the 1970s, women’s his­to­ry was vir­tu­al­ly an un­known top­ic in cur­ricu­lum or in the pub­lic con­scious­ness. To ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion, the Ed­u­ca­tion Task Force of the Com­mis­sion on the Sta­tus of Women ini­ti­at­ed a “Women’s His­to­ry Week” cel­e­bra­tion in 1978. The day March 8th, In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, was cho­sen as the fo­cal point of the ob­ser­vance. This mo­men­tum grew and state-by-state ac­tion was used to lob­by US Con­gress to af­firm the en­tire month of March as Na­tion­al Women’s His­to­ry Month and this was achieved in 1987, when Con­gress de­clared March as Na­tion­al Women’s His­to­ry Month in per­pe­tu­ity. Up to to­day, a spe­cial Pres­i­den­tial Procla­ma­tion is is­sued every year which ho­n­ours the ex­tra­or­di­nary achieve­ments of women.

De­spite Prej­u­dice and Dis­crim­i­na­tion, Women cre­ate His­to­ry in Med­i­cine

Through­out his­to­ry, women were large­ly ex­clud­ed from the realms of sci­ence and med­i­cine, ex­cept for nurs­ing or mid­wifery. Of­ten in the face of prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion, many women over the cen­turies have made out­stand­ing med­ical con­tri­bu­tions and con­tin­ue to do so to­day. The mid-1950s marked a turn­ing point in so­ci­ety’s view to­wards women work­ing in sci­ence and med­i­cine, al­though for the next decades, there was still con­sis­tent strug­gle to be seen as equals and recog­ni­tion of such work.

This sum­ma­tion is by no means an ex­haus­tive list, but a few of his­to­ry’s most in­flu­en­tial women in life sci­ences and their ex­tra­or­di­nary achieve­ments and con­tri­bu­tions that have saved count­less lives and con­tin­ue to in­spire gen­er­a­tions of women in med­i­cine to this day.

Metrodo­ra (c. 200-400 AD)

Metrodo­ra, a Greek fe­male physi­cian, wrote On the Dis­eases and Cures of Women, the old­est med­ical text known to be writ­ten by a woman. No­tably, it did not in­clude in­for­ma­tion on ob­stet­rics, the study of child­birth, which was ex­treme­ly rare in a time when women were re­strict­ed to gy­nae­col­o­gy and mid­wifery. How­ev­er, Metodo­ra is known to have cov­ered all ar­eas of med­i­cine re­lat­ed to women, de­vel­op­ing var­i­ous ther­a­pies and sur­gi­cal tech­niques that were rev­o­lu­tion­ary in her time. She was heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by the work of Greek physi­cian Hip­pocrates, and her work has in­flu­enced and been ref­er­enced by many oth­er physi­cian writ­ers through­out his­to­ry.

Marie Curie (1867-1934)

Pol­ish math­e­mati­cian and sci­en­tist Marie Curie col­lab­o­rat­ed with her hus­band, Pierre, to dis­cov­er two chem­i­cal el­e­ments in the pe­ri­od­ic ta­ble: polo­ni­um and ra­di­um. This im­por­tant work ob­served that there was a re­la­tion­ship be­tween ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty and the heavy el­e­ments of the pe­ri­od­ic ta­ble, and led to much ad­vance­ment in med­i­cine. Most no­tably, it led the way to the de­vel­op­ment of the x-ray, which al­lowed in­ter­nal im­agery to be used for di­ag­no­sis with­out the need for open surgery, and ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py for treat­ing can­cer.

Dur­ing WWI, Marie and her daugh­ter Irene brought mo­bile X-Ray ma­chines and ra­di­ol­o­gy units to the front line, which al­lowed more than a mil­lion wound­ed sol­diers to be treat­ed.

Curie earned a No­bel Prize in Physics in 1903, and yet an­oth­er in Chem­istry in 1911, the first and on­ly woman to have been ho­n­oured twice. The Curie In­sti­tute in Paris, she found­ed in 1920, is still a ma­jor can­cer re­search fa­cil­i­ty to­day.

Vir­ginia Ap­gar (1909-1974)

Vir­ginia Ap­gar is fa­mous for her in­ven­tion of the Ap­gar score, a vi­tal test that was quick­ly adopt­ed by doc­tors to test whether new­born ba­bies re­quired ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion. The Ap­gar score is re­spon­si­ble for re­duc­ing in­fant mor­tal­i­ty rates con­sid­er­ably and is still used to­day to as­sess the clin­i­cal con­di­tion of new­borns in the first few min­utes of life. Ap­gar was the first woman to be­come a full pro­fes­sor at Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Physi­cians and Sur­geons.

Eliz­a­beth Black­well (1821-1910)

British-born Eliz­a­beth Black­well is best known as the first woman to earn a med­ical de­gree (MD) in the US. She was raised in a for­ward-think­ing, so­cial­ly ac­tive fam­i­ly. Her fa­ther was a pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate for the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, and her sib­lings went on to cam­paign for women’s rights. Af­ter fac­ing re­jec­tion from sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties, Black­well was fi­nal­ly ac­cept­ed to Gene­va Med­ical Col­lege in 1847. She re­ceived hos­til­i­ty from her fel­low stu­dents at first, even­tu­al­ly earn­ing their re­spect and grad­u­at­ing first in her class in 1849. In 1857, she opened the New York In­fir­mary for Women and Chil­dren along with her sis­ter, Dr Emi­ly Black­well (the third woman to earn an MD) and Dr Marie Za­krzews­ka.

Fran­coise Bar­ré-Sinous­si (born 1947)

Parisian sci­en­tist Fran­coise Bar­ré-Sinous­si is a cel­e­brat­ed for her dis­cov­ery of HIV as the cause of the im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy dis­ease, AIDS. In 2008, Bar­ré, along with Luc Mon­taign­er, dis­cov­ered that the HIV retro­virus at­tacked lym­pho­cytes, a blood cell that plays an im­por­tant role in the body’s im­mune sys­tem. Her vi­tal work has helped mil­lions of peo­ple who are HIV-pos­i­tive to live long, healthy lives, and could pave the way for a cure in the near fu­ture.

Pa­tri­cia S. Cow­ings (born 1948)

The first Amer­i­can woman to be trained as a sci­en­tist as­tro­naut by NASA as an aero­space psy­chophys­i­ol­o­gist. She is most well known for her stud­ies in the phys­i­ol­o­gy of as­tro­nauts in out­er space, as well as help­ing find cures for as­tro­naut’s mo­tion sick­ness. She did most of her re­search at NASA Ames Re­search Cen­ter. There she de­vel­oped and patent­ed a phys­i­o­log­i­cal train­ing sys­tem called Au­to­genic-Feed­back Train­ing Ex­er­cise (AFTE), which en­ables peo­ple to learn vol­un­tary self-con­trol of up to 24 bod­i­ly re­spons­es in six hours.

We hope this sum­ma­tion has jolt­ed your synaps­es and we wel­come you to share with us.

Which women in med­i­cine

in Trinidad and To­ba­go have in­spired you?

Email to

guardian­health­plus2021@gmail.com

and look out for those sto­ries

on March 29th.