What was rebecca cole famous for?

Answer 1

Rebecca Cole

Rebecca Cole was born on March 16th 1846 in Philadelphia. As a kid she was a part of a big family the second of 5 kids. There are no records of her parents. Cole had a very big education she graduated an all black school named institution of colored youth, in 1863 she completed a big curriculum that includes Latin, Greek, and math at this institution. In 1867 Cole became the first black graduate of the women’s medical college of Pennsylvania and the second formally trained African American woman physician in the United States.

After completion of collage, Cole was became a resident physician at the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, a New York City hospital founded in 1857 by America’s first woman physician, Elizabeth Blackwell, her sister, the surgeon Emily Blackwell, and Marie Zakrzewska, a German- and American-trained doctor. Cole worked as a “sanitary visitor,” making house calls to families in slum neighborhoods and giving practical advice about prenatal and infant care and basic hygiene.

In the early 1870s Cole practiced medicine for a short time in Columbia, South Carolina, before taking a position as superintendent of the Government House for Children and Old Women in Washington, D.C. She then returned to Philadelphia, serving a shelter for the homeless until 1873, when she co-founded the Women’s Directory Center. An interesting fact about Rebecca Cole is that she studied medicine for more than 50 years before she died. Another fact about Cole is that in Blackwell (on of Coles friends who made it in medicine) autobiography, Blackwell commented on Rebecca Cole's valuable clinical skills: "In addition to the usual departments of hospital and dispensary practice, which included the visiting of poor patients at their own homes, we established a sanitary visitor. This post was filled by one of our assistant physicians, whose special duty it was to give simple, practical instruction to poor mothers on the management of infants and the preservation of the health of their families. An intelligent young colored physician, Dr. Cole, who was one of our resident assistants, carried on this work with tact and care. Experience of its results serves to show that the establishment of such a department would be a valuable addition to every hospital."