Elizabeth Ann Follansbee (December 9, 1839 – August 22, 1917) was an American medical doctor, the first woman on the faculty of a medical school in California.

Early life

Elizabeth Ann Follansbee was born in

Pittston, Maine Pittston is a town in Kennebec County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,875 at the 2020 census. The town was named after the family of John Pitt, who were early settlers. Pittston is included in the Augusta, Maine micropolitan New En ...

,George H. Kress
''A History of the Medical Profession of Southern California''
(1910): 134-135. or possibly Dorchester, Massachusetts, the daughter Nancy Sherman (Macintosh) and sea captain Alonzo Follansbee.Adelaide Brown
"The History of the Development of Women in California"
''California and Western Medicine'' (May 1925): 579-580. She was the great-granddaughter of

Roger Sherman Roger Sherman (April 19, 1721 – July 23, 1793) was an American statesman, lawyer, and a Founding Father of the United States. He is the only person to sign four of the great state papers of the United States related to the founding: the Con ...

, a signer of the

Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...

. She attended medical school at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

, one of only two women students enrolled there in 1875. Facing much resistance, she left after a year and continued her medical training at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, before completing her degree in 1877 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 ...

Career

Follansbee returned to California. Along with Charlotte Blake Brown and a few other women doctors, she co-founded the Women and Children's Hospital of San Francisco. For health reasons she moved to Los Angeles in 1883, where she was the first woman admitted as a member of the

Los Angeles County Medical Association Los Angeles County Medical Association (LACMA) is a professional organization representing physicians from every medical specialty and practice setting as well as students, interns and residents. The organization was founded in 1871 and is a cons ...

. She taught pediatrics and chaired the pediatrics department at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

, "the first woman medical school faculty member in California". She arranged for women medical school graduates of the school to intern at the Children's Hospital of San Francisco. She was an assistant editor of ''The California Medical and Surgical Reporter'' when it launched in 1905. For two years, she shared a small practice in pediatrics with Rose Talbot Bullard, another early woman physician in Los Angeles. She was also on-call physician at the Florence Home for Erring Girls in the 1890s. When Charlotte Blake Brown died in 1904, Follansbee wrote her colleague's obituary for a professional journal.

Personal life

Follansbee died in 1917, aged 77 years, in Los Angeles. In 1919, the Cabrillo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution raised money to dedicate a children's hospital bed in memory of Follansbee.Alice M. Church
"Cabrillo Chapter"
''Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine'' (November 1919): 689.

References

External links

Sherman Genealogy, Thomas Townsend Sherman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Follansbee, Elizabeth 1839 births 1917 deaths American pediatricians Women pediatricians University of Michigan alumni University of Southern California faculty Physicians from California