Ann Preston
| Ann Preston | |
|---|---|
Ann Preston, c. 1867
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| Born |
December 1, 1813 West Grove, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | April 18, 1872 (aged 58) |
| Occupation | Doctor, activist, educator |
Ann Preston (December 1, 1813 – April 18, 1872) was an American physician, activist, and educator.
Ann Preston was the first woman dean of a medical school, the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), which was the first medical school in the world to admit women exclusively. At a time when the medical profession was nearly all-male and considered unacceptably coarse for women to enter, Ann Preston campaigned for her female students to be admitted to clinical lectures at the Blockley Philadelphia Hospital, and the Pennsylvania Hospital. Despite the open hostility of male medical students, and sometimes of male faculty, Preston determinedly negotiated the best educational opportunities for the students of WMCP.
Preston was born in 1813 in West Grove, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, to prosperous farmer and prominent Quaker Amos Preston and his wife Margaret Smith Preston. One of eight siblings, she was educated in a local Quaker school and later briefly attended a Quaker boarding school in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania. The Chester County Quaker community was ardently abolitionist and pro-temperance, and the Preston family farm, Prestonville, was known as safe harbor for escaped slaves. As the eldest daughter, Ann took on the responsibility of caring for family during her mother’s frequent illnesses, interrupting her formal education. She began to attend lectures at the local lyceum, belonged to the local literary society, became a member of the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society, and was active in the temperance and women’s rights movement.
Once her younger siblings were old enough, Preston began to work locally as a schoolteacher. In 1849, she published a book of nursery rhymes, Cousin Ann's Stories. By the 1840s, she became interested in educating women about their bodies and taught all-female classes on hygiene and physiology. She was privately educated in medicine by apprenticing to Dr. Nathaniel Moseley from 1847–1849. Unable to gain admittance to medical schools because of their policies against admitting women, Preston entered the Quaker-founded Female Medical College of Pennsylvania (later changed to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867) at the age of 38 as a student in its inaugural class of 1850. While studying at the Female Medical College In 1851, Preston wrote to her friend and fellow Quaker activist Hannah Darlington:
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