Charlotte Blake Brown (1846 – April 19, 1904) was an American physician. She was one of the first female doctors to practice on the West Coast of the United States and was a co-founder of the

Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children (later, Children's Hospital; later, The Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses) was a women's and children's hospital in San Francisco, California, US, founded in 1875, renamed Children's ...

, and San Francisco Hospital for Children and Training School for Nurses.

Biography

Charlotte Amanda Blake was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, in 1846. Both her parents were from

Brewer, Maine Brewer is a city in Penobscot County, Maine, United States. It is part of the Bangor, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city is named after its first settler, Colonel John Brewer. The population was 9,672 at the 2020 census. Brewer ...

, and Charlotte was subsequently sent to attend high school in

Bangor, Maine Bangor ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat of Penobscot County. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's 3rd-largest settlement, behind Portland (68,408) and Lewiston (37,121). Modern Bangor ...

while living with relatives. After that she entered Elmira College in New York, graduating in 1866. She married Henry Adams Brown, and in 1872 attended the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, graduating with an MD in 1874. She moved to San Francisco the following year and founded the

with Dr. Martha Bucknell. A third female physician, Dr. Sara E. Brown, subsequently joined them, and the institution was re-organized as the San Francisco Hospital for Children in 1878. Brown had lived in California once before. Her father went to San Francisco at the height of the

California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...

in 1849, and the family joined him in 1851. In 1854 they moved to

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, where her father (a Presbyterian minister) ran a mission for Scottish miners until 1854, when they returned to Philadelphia. Brown's first application to join the San Francisco Medical Society was rejected on account of her gender. In 1876, however, she was one of four women admitted into the California Medical Society, causing the San Francisco physicians to re-consider and grant her membership two years later. In 1880, Brown and her colleagues organized within their hospital the first nurses' training school on the West Coast. Brown wrote 18 articles for medical journals in addition to carrying on a busy practice and raised three children, two of whom also became physicians. Charlotte Blake Brown died in 1904, aged 58 years, in San Francisco. Elizabeth A. Follansbee
"Death of Noted Medical Woman"
''Southern California Practitioner'' (May 1904): 180-181. Children's Hospital merged with another institution to become

California Pacific Medical Center Sutter Health California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) is a general medical/surgical and teaching hospital in San Francisco, California. It was created by a merger of some of the city's longest established hospitals and currently operates three ac ...

in 1991.

References

External links

"First Report of the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children. Incorporated March 24, 1875. San Francisco.Charlotte Blake Brown
''foundsf'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Charlotte Blake 1846 births 1904 deaths Physicians from Philadelphia Elmira College alumni Drexel University alumni American feminists American women physicians American non-fiction writers Bangor High School (Maine) alumni American women non-fiction writers 19th-century American women writers Physicians from California

Biography

Further reading

References

External links