The Chronicle www.charlestonchronicle.net February 7, 2018 - 3B HEALTH & WELLNESS African-American Health Pioneers               1831-1895 Dr. Rebecca Crumpler was the !rst African American woman to earn an M.D. degree.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler chal- afterward, I received the degree that city," she explained, "I re- lenged the prejudice that pre- of doctress of medicine." turned to my former home, vented from Dr. Crumpler practiced in , where I entered into the pursuing careers in medicine to Boston for a short while before work with renewed vigor, prac- became the first African Ameri- moving to Richmond, , ticing outside, and receiving chil- can woman in the United States after the Civil War ended in 1865. dren in the house for treatment; to earn an M.D. degree, a dis- Richmond, she felt, would be "a regardless, in a measure, of re- tinction formerly credited to Re- proper field for real missionary muneration." She lived on Joy becca Cole. Although little has work, and one that would pres- Street on Beacon Hill, then a survived to tell the story of ent ample opportunities to be- mostly black neighborhood. By Crumpler's life, she has secured come acquainted with the 1880 she had moved to Hyde her place in the historical record diseases of women and children. Park, , and was with her book of medical advice During my stay there nearly no longer in active practice. Her for women and children, pub- every hour was improved in that 1883 book is based on journal lished in 1883. sphere of labor. The last quarter notes she kept during her years Crumpler was born in 1831 in of the year 1866, I was enabled . . of medical practice. , to Absolum Davis . to have access each day to a very No photos or other images sur- and Matilda Webber. An aunt in large number of the indigent, vive of Dr. Crumpler. The little , who spent much and others of different classes, in we know about her comes from of her time caring for sick neigh- a population of over 30,000 col- the introduction to her book, a bors and may have influenced her ored." She joined other black remarkable mark of her achieve- career choice, raised her. By 1852 physicians caring for freed slaves ments as a physician and medical she had moved to Charlestown, who would otherwise have had writer in a time when very few Massachusetts, where she no access to medical care, work- African Americans were able to worked as a nurse for the next ing with the Freedmen's Bureau, gain admittance to medical col- eight years (because the first for- and missionary and community lege, let alone publish. Her book mal school for nursing only groups, even though black physi- is one of the very first medical opened in 1873, she was able to cians experienced intense publications by an African Amer- perform such work without any working in the postwar South. ican. formal training). In 1860, she was "At the close of my services in admitted to the New England Female Medical College. When she graduated in 1864, Crumpler was the first African American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African American woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College, which closed in 1873. In her Book of Medical Dis- courses, published in 1883, she gives a brief summary of her ca- reer path: "It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to re- lieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under differ- ent doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. From these doctors I received letters commending me to the faculty of the New England Female Med- ical College, whence, four years Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler at work Donate A Boat or Car Today! Putting you

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