Women’s Influence in Medicine

Women’s Influence in Medicine

There are many women who had huge influences in the advancement of heath and medicine. Many people don’t realize how much women do and how much they have contributed to the medical world and its advancements. From Lillian D. Wald, who worked with the less fortunate and children in schools, to Virginia Apgar, who worked with mothers and their newborns and also came up with the “Apgar Score,” and Eku Esu-Williams who is an immunologist and an AIDS Educator. Even though women did so much, many people were sexist and didn’t want to acknowledge what they did or give them the chance to do things, such as become doctors. I want to inform people on how much these women have contributed to the world of healthcare and medicine so that people won’t be so sexist towards women.

There are too many times that the nurses are taken for granted as a part of the school system. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the school nurse was completely unknown, even though diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, chickenpox, and many other eye and skin conditions affected thousands of school children, and not to mention all of the injuries that could occur from day to day at school, in class or during recess. But, thanks to Lillian D. Wald and her visions, efforts, dreams, companions, and her hard work, the situation in most schools changed. In 1902, the school-nurse program began to succeed, and it was one of the very first steps in the development of the public-health nursing system in the United States.

Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 10, 1867 into a cultured Jewish family. Both of her parents were immigrants, her mother was from Germany and her father was from Poland. The Walds’ moved from Cincinnati to New York where Lillian’s father, Max, dealt in optical wares in Rochester. She had the advantage of a very good education; not only did she know Latin, but she also spoke German and French as well as English.

By the time she reached the age of 21, Lillian felt that she needed secure work because she didn’t have any plans for marriage. To try to fill the need she had felt, Lillian chose nursing. She enrolled into the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses, and after finishing the two-year program at the Nursing School in 1891, she took a position at the New York Juvenile Asylum.