Anna Broomall

Anna Elizabeth Broomall (March 4, 1847 – April 4, 1931) was an American obstetrician, surgeon, and educator who taught obstetrics at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She established the first maternal health and prenatal care clinic in the United States, located at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, and used surgical innovations to reduce birth mortality.

Early life and education

Born in 1847, Broomall was raised in Upper Chichester Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Her parents were John Martin Broomall, a lawyer, state representative, and future U.S. Congressman, and Elizabeth (Booth) Broomall. Her mother died when she was one year old, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle until her father remarried in 1853.

Educated in Pennsylvania, she attended a private school in Chester, then Kennett Academy in Kennett Square, and finally the Bristol Boarding School in Bristol, graduating in 1866. A Quaker, John Martin Broomall supported women's suffrage and higher education and, when his daughter told him she intended to become a physician, simply told her to become a good one.

Broomall enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania at the age of 19 and graduated with her doctor of medicine degree in 1871, choosing to repeat the two-year medical course. She worked at the college to cover the costs of her education, doing household labor such as scrubbing floors, building fires, and carrying coal. Broomall and eight other medical students were the first women to attend lectures at the Pennsylvania Hospital. Male medical students jeered, catcalled, threw spitballs, and even chased the women from the building during their first visit. However, the nine women pushed through the harassment and continued to attend lectures, eventually receiving grudging toleration and even apologies from some of the men.

Broomall completed the hospital lecture series followed by a one-year internship at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia. She then traveled to Europe to study obstetrics under Carl Braun in Vienna and train with leading French obstetricians in Paris. She returned to Philadelphia in 1874 and accepted a position as a physician at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Career in medicine

From 1874 to 1883, Broomall was chief resident physician of the Woman's Hospital and taught concurrently at the Woman's Medical College, having been appointed an instructor of obstetrics in 1875. She became a full professor and chair of obstetrics after her mentor, Dr. Emeline Horton Cleveland, died in 1879. After leaving her full-time duties at the Woman's Hospital in 1883, Broomall established a private practice at her home on Walnut Street and worked as a gynecologist for the Friends Hospital in Frankford, Philadelphia. In 1890, she traveled to China and India to deliver lectures, inspect medical facilities, and visit former students on medical missionary duty. A beloved teacher, she continued to teach obstetrics and chair the Woman's Medical College obstetrics department until she retired from practice in 1904. She caused a stir in the spring of 1892, when she arranged mock trials of a hypothetical infanticide case, requiring students to practice presenting medical evidence to juries.

In her thirty years as a physician and professor, Broomall implemented rigorous European-style standards for nurses' training and patient care. She insisted on highly antiseptic clinical environments and utilized and improved on state-of-the-art surgical procedures such as episiotomies, cesarean sections, and symphysiotomies. Her efforts reduced mortality rates to less than one-tenth of one percent of the two thousand expectant mothers whom she treated. In January 1888, she established the first outpatient maternal health and prenatal care clinic in the United States. Part of the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia and nicknamed South Pole, the clinic was largely staffed by medical students who cared for the predominantly working-class and Eastern and Southern European immigrants living in South Philadelphia

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