National Women Physicians Day marks the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn a medical degree. Blackwell was drawn to medicine after a dying friend remarked that had a female doctor cared for her, she might not have suffered so much. Blackwell faced discrimination and prejudice as a woman entering the field, and was rejected from all the medical schools she applied to—except for one, where the all-male student body voted to accept her as a joke. She began her medical training in 1847, making history as the first woman to be accepted to an American medical school, and graduated first in her class in 1849.
Today, in honor of National Women Physicians Day, we’d like to give special recognition to the women on our medical advisory board:
Connie Deline, MD
founder of Spinal CSF Leak Foundation
Deborah Friedman, MD, MPH
Neuro-ophthalmologist and Headache Medicine Specialist
Linda Gray Leithe, MD
Associate Professor of Neuroradiology and Radiology at Duke University Medical Center
Simy Parikh, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology at Thomas Jefferson University
Jill Rau, MD, PhD
Neurologist and Headache Medicine Specialist at HonorHealth Neuroscience Institute
Thank you for all the work you do for your patients, and for working so hard to raise awareness and educate others about spinal CSF leak!