Medical women of the West

The presence in the West of women physicians with degrees from regular medical schools spans a period of approximately 130 years. Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania graduated many of these early women physicians. The first woman medical graduate of a western school was Lucy M. Field Wanzer, who finished in 1876 at the Department of Medicine, University of California in San Francisco. Soon thereafter, schools that would become Stanford University and the Oregon Health Sciences University schools of medicine, as well as the newly founded University of Southern California, were contributing to the pool of women physicians. The University of Michigan Medical School, the first coeducational state medical school, also educated some of the western women physicians, who by 1910 numbered about 155. This regional account of the progress of women physicians as they strove to become an integral part of the profession emphasizes the familiar themes of altruism, ingenuity, and perseverance that characterized their efforts.