Anna Wessels Williams

Dr. Anna Wessels Williams (1863–1954) worked as a bacteriologist at the first municipal diagnostic laboratory in the United States, helped develop the diphtheria antitoxin and was the first woman to be elected chair of the laboratory section of the American Public Health Association.

Anna Wessels Williams was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1863, to Jane Van Saun, and William Williams. In 1887, her sister Millie became very ill during childbirth and, partly due to the inexperience of the person caring for her, lost her baby and almost died. Anna Williams decided that she would train as a physician to give herself more control in such terrible situations. That same year she enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary. She later wrote, "I was starting on a way that had been practically untrod before by any woman. My belief at the time in human individuality, regardless of sex, race, religion or any factor other than ability was at its strongest. I believed, therefore, that females should have equal opportunities with males to develop their powers to the utmost."

Williams graduated in 1891 and then stayed on as an instructor in pathology and hygiene. In 1894, she volunteered at the New York City Department of Health's diagnostic laboratory, the first municipal laboratory in the United States, which opened in 1893. She worked closely with the director, William H. Park, M.D., on his projects to develop an antitoxin for diphtheria. Early on in her first year of work she was able to isolate a strain of the diphtheria bacillus from a case of tonsillar diphtheria. The isolated strain was a crucial discovery in the development of an antitoxin for the disease, and by the autumn of that year physicians in New York were being issued with diphtheria antitoxin free of charge to help eradicate the disease amongst the poor. Williams and Park shared the credit for the discovery, named the Park-Williams strain, and Williams was appointed to a full-time staff position as assistant bacteriologist. Although Williams had made the discovery while Park was away on holiday, she recognized the collaborative nature of laboratory research and concluded in her retirement "I am happy to have the honor of having my name thus associated with Dr. Park."

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