Sarah Dolley (March 11, 1829December 27, 1909), was an American

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

who became one of the first women in the United States to receive a medical degree and the first woman to complete a medical internship, at

Blockley Almshouse The Blockley Almshouse, later known as Philadelphia General Hospital, was a charity hospital and poorhouse located in West Philadelphia. It originally opened in 1732/33 in a different part of the city as the Philadelphia Almshouse (not to be conf ...

. She ran a private practice in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

, and briefly taught

obstetrics Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgi ...

at the

Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) was founded in 1850, and was the second medical institution in the world established to train women in medicine to earn the M.D. degree. The New England Female Medical College had been establishe ...

Life and work

Sarah Read Adamson was born in

Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania Schuylkill Township is a township in Chester County, Pennsylvania. It contains the village of Valley Forge. The population was 8,516 at the 2010 census. History The Moses Coates Jr. Farm, Gen. Frederick Von Steuben Headquarters, Moore Hall, ...

, on 11 March 1829. She attended a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

school 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 ...

as a child. Her uncle, Dr. Hiram Corson, initially opposed her desire to become a doctor, but eventually agreed to tutor her and later allowed her to study in his office before applying to medical school. After being denied entry to many medical colleges, Dolley became one of four women admitted to the Central Medical College, in

, and received her

M.D. Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. T ...

in 1851. She became the first woman intern in America at

in Philadelphia, completing a one-year internship. In 1852, she married one of the professors at Central Medical College, Dr. Lester Dolley, and returned to Rochester where they ran a private practice together until his death in 1872. She attended clinics in the

Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital The Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital ( ) is a French teaching hospital in the 15th arrondissement of Paris. It is a hospital of the Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris group and is affiliated to the Université Paris Cité. Necker–Enfa ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

from 1869 to 1870 and clinics in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

and

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

in 1875. Dolley temporarily worked as a professor of

from 1873 to 1874 at the

in Philadelphia, before returning to private practice in Rochester. She made efforts to help women get hired in hospital positions that they could not previously obtain, knowing how much she had benefited from the experiences of her internship. In 1886 she was one of a group of women who founded a clinic for the medical and surgical care of underprivileged women and children, naming it the Provident Dispensary Association, and Dolley became its first president. The same group also founded the Practitioners Society, which in 1906 was renamed the Blackwell Society. The Women's Medical Society of the State of New York was launched by the Blackwell Society, also with Dolley as the president. She helped to organize a chapter of the

Women's Educational and Industrial Union The Women's Educational and Industrial Union (1877–2006) in Boston, Massachusetts, was founded by physician Harriet Clisby for the advancement of women and to help women and children in the industrial city. By 1893, chapters of the WEIU were estab ...

in 1893. Dolley also worked to help her community, co-founding the Rochester chapter of the

American Red Cross The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...

. She was politically active in advocating for women's

suffrage Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...

, and in the 1872 presidential election attempted to register and vote. She had a reputation in the community of being a skilled doctor, even among her male colleagues, which was unusual of a woman physician in the nineteenth-century United States.

Personal life and death

Dolley and her husband had two children together, Loilyn and Charles Sumner, although only her son survived to adulthood, as Loilyn died of pneumonia as the age of 4. Dolley died on 27 December 1909.Ogilvie & Harvey, pp. 744–45

Notes

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dolley, Sarah 1829 births 1909 deaths 19th-century American women physicians 19th-century American physicians American obstetricians American suffragists People from Chester County, Pennsylvania Physicians from Rochester, New York Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania faculty