Emma Louise Call (1847–1937) was an American physician, and one of the first female physicians in the United States. Along with

Sigmund Exner Sigmund Exner (also ''Sigmund Exner'', ''Siegmund Exner-Ewarten'', ''Siegmund Exner Ritter von Ewarten''; 5 April 1846 – 5 February 1926) was an Austrian physiologist born in Vienna. Academic career He studied in Vienna under Ernst Wilhelm ...

, she is one of the namesakes of Call-Exner bodies, a

pathognomonic Pathognomonic (rare synonym ''pathognomic'') is a term, often used in medicine, that means "characteristic for a particular disease". A pathognomonic sign is a particular sign whose presence means that a particular disease is present beyond any doub ...

feature of

granulosa cell tumor Granulosa cell tumours are tumours that arise from granulosa cells. They are estrogen secreting tumours and present as large, complex, ovarian masses. These tumours are part of the sex cord-gonadal stromal tumour or non-epithelial group of tumours ...

s. These tumors are associated with

ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different c ...

Biography

Call received her MD from the

University of Michigan Medical School Michigan Medicine (University of Michigan Health System or UMHS before 2017) is the wholly owned academic medical center of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan Medicine includes the Univers ...

in 1873, and moved to

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

as Sigmund Exner's postgraduate student. In 1875, they published the manuscript announcing their findings of the pathology findings -

eosinophil Eosinophils, sometimes called eosinophiles or, less commonly, acidophils, are a variety of white blood cells (WBCs) and one of the immune system components responsible for combating multicellular parasites and certain infections in vertebrates. A ...

ic follicles present in ovarian tumors - that would later be named after the two of them. This would be Call's only publication, as she later returned to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and practiced clinically as an obstetrician for 40 years. Call would become the first woman to receive membership into the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1884.

"I entered the Medical Department of the University the first year that women were admitted. The first class of women...were naturally the objects of much attention critical or otherwise (especially critical) so that in many ways it was quite an ordeal. I believe that only one of the medical faculty was even moderately in favor of the admission of women, so that it speaks well for their conscientiousness when I say (with possibly one exception) we felt that we had square deal from them all."

With regard to Call's quote, Robert H. Young stated that "Corydon Ford had taught

Elizabeth Blackwell Elizabeth Blackwell (3 February 182131 May 1910) was a British physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, and the first woman on the Medical Register of the General Medical Council for the United Ki ...

at Geneva Medical College and was tolerant of the women students, but not all the professors were so kind. The professor of chemistry, Silas Douglas, did not intervene when the men students stamped their feet and shouted as the women entered the lecture room for the one subject that was taught to mixed classes."

References

1847 births 1937 deaths American women physicians University of Michigan Medical School alumni {{US-physician-stub