“An Eventful Epoch in the History of Your Lives”

first school established to train women in medicine and to offer them the MD degree.1 At the school’s first graduation cere-mony in 1851, one of the founders, the professor of obstet-rics, Joseph S. Longshore, told the 8 graduating students that “this day forms an eventful epoch in the history of your lives, in the history of woman, in the history of the race.”2 Like many Quakers, Longshore opposed slavery and championed women’s rights as well as other radical causes. His sister-in-law, Hannah Longshore, a graduate of the first class, served as “demonstrator in anatomy.” Partly to provide clinical experience for the women medical students, a group of Quaker women founded the Woman’s Hospital of Philadel-phia in 1861. Access to a hospi-tal was essential for women faculty and graduates wanting to develop careers in surgery, and, of course, they were refused access to most forms of hospital training. The first resident physi-cian of the Woman’s Hospital, Emeline Horton Cleveland, would be one of the first women surgeons in the United States to perform major gynecologic procedures. The local medical societies