Caroline Schultze (born Karola Szulc, 20 May 1866) was a Polish physician who worked in France. Schultze was born in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

. Her father was a musician. She gained a baccalaureat in 1884 and became a medical student at the

University of Paris , image_name = Coat of arms of the University of Paris.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of Arms , latin_name = Universitas magistrorum et scholarium Parisiensis , motto = ''Hic et ubique terrarum'' (Latin) , mottoeng = Here and a ...

. In 1888, at the age of 22, she completed a doctoral thesis, "The Woman Physician in the Nineteenth Century." Schultze argued in the thesis that the achievements of women doctors were part of "a general movement of intellectual and professional emancipation for women" that had begun in the 1850s. Her thesis defense was controversial, with the neurologist

Jean-Martin Charcot Jean-Martin Charcot (; 29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurology, neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot ...

objecting to the "pretension" of Schultze's argument that medicine could be practiced ably by women as well as by men. However, the thesis was finally accepted, and Schultze won the doctorate. Schultze's thesis was influential, inspiring a wave of dissertations by other French women scholars on women-related topics. It also inspired various novels about "new women," featuring women doctors and other professionals as protagonists and investigating the dilemma of balancing a career with family matters. Schultze was part of the flourishing of women's education in the later nineteenth century, as one of the thousands of women completing university degrees; she was also one of many women of her time who, having been barred from advanced training in their home countries, relocated to find it elsewhere. In 1888, Schultze was one of the contributors to ''La Revue scientifique des femmes'', a short-lived journal edited by the feminist activist Céline Renooz. Schultze later worked as the chief physician for women employees of La Poste, the French

postal, telegraph and telephone service A postal, telegraph, and telephone service (or PTT) is a government agency responsible for postal mail, telegraph, and telephone services. Such monopolies existed in many countries, though not in North America or Japan. Many PTTs have been partial ...

. Schultze married the statistician

Jacques Bertillon Jacques Bertillon (11 November 1851 – 4 July 1922) was a French statistician and demographer. Born in Paris, Bertillon was the son of statistician Louis Bertillon and the older brother of Alphonse Bertillon. He was educated as a physicia ...

; they had two daughters.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schultze, Caroline Physicians from Warsaw 1866 births French women physicians 19th-century French physicians University of Paris alumni Year of death missing Polish emigrants to France 19th-century women physicians