Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead

Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead (April 6, 1867 – January 1, 1941) was a pioneering feminist and obstetrician who promoted the role of women in medicine. She wrote A History of Women in Medicine: From the Earliest of Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century in 1938. She was born in Danville, Quebec, Canada, and died in Haddam, Connecticut, United States.

Hurd-Mead was the eldest of three children born to Edward Payson Hurd, a practicing physician, and Sarah Elizabeth (Campbell) Hurd. In 1870, the family moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where she attended public schools. She decided to study medicine out of respect for her father's career as a doctor, and on the advice of the well-respected physician, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. She became a student at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1885, where in 1888 she graduated as an M.D. She became an intern at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston where she studied with Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. She did post-doctoral work in Paris, , and London.

On her return to America in 1890 she became the medical director for the Bryn Mawr School for Girls in Baltimore where she instituted the school's innovative preventive health program, which included physical education and periodic medical examinations. Together with Dr. Alice Hall she founded the Evening Dispensary for Working Women and Girls of Baltimore City, the first institution in Baltimore to employ women physicians. She was a strong proponent of the then new maternal hygiene and infant welfare models.

In 1893, Dr. Hurd married William Edward Mead, Ph.D., who was professor of early English at Wesleyan University and they moved to Middletown, Connecticut to be close to his university.

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