History of Women
in Medicine
BLACKWELL
BLACKWELL
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Lillian Farrar was the most accomplished female Obstetrician-Gynecologist of her time.
After completing her medical training at Cornell University in 1900, she interned at the New York Infirmary for Women
and Children, and followed that with two years of training in Paris and Vienna.
Her career was marked by many "firsts": 1st woman to join the staff of the Woman's Hospital in the State of New York(1917);
1st woman to be elected a Fellow of the American Gynecological Society(1921);1st woman to serve as a Governor of the American
College of Surgeons(1925-1937); 1st (and only) woman to be a "founding Diplomate" of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology
in 1930.
Although listed in the 1914 Who's Who in America, she remains little-known today. Her publications between 1917-1937 confirm that she was an
accomplished gynecological surgeon. During the 1920s, she collaborated with Dr. George Gray Ward on perfecting
irradiation techniques for treating gynecological cancer.
She was proud of her American "blue-blood" ancestry, but supported the Woman's Suffrage movement and promoted
the acceptance of women as interns at the Bellevue Hospital in New York in 1914 and at the Woman's Hospital in 1920.
