Pediatrics

“Since the late nineteenth century, women physicians had enjoyed public acceptance as physicians for children. Prior to the end of the century, most children’s hospitals were women’s and infant’s hospitals rather than centers dedicated exclusively to the care of children. Several such institutions were founded by women, including the Blackwells’ New York Infirmary for Women and Children (established in 1857), Dr. Marie Zakrezewska’s New England Hospital for Women and Children (1862), Dr. Mary Thompson’s Chicago Hospital for Women and Children (1865), the Children’s Hospital of San Francisco (1875), and the Babies Hospital of the City of NY (1887). In the early twentieth century, widespread recognition of women physicians’’ child health work in voluntary societies and municipal agencies, the still shaky status of pediatrics as an academic specialty, and the unstinting support of several well-placed male academic pediatricians helped ease the way for women to make inroads in the new field” (More, 170-71).