Curating History in the COVID19 Era: Philadelphia Epidemics and Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Medical Education

Abstract

Physician and educator Henry Hartshorne’s manuscript medical school lecture notes serve as a remarkable record of the response by faculty and women students in Philadelphia to transitions from post-bellum education to scientific, laboratory-based curriculum. These archives document the tensions felt throughout the medical system due to extended classroom hours and competition for limited clinical rotation assignments experienced by those treating patients in urban Philadelphia during the 1870s. Hartshorne was not the only physician who trained female attendees at area institutions including Women’s Medical College during this point of transition in both the education and practice of medicine.