Anna Elizabeth Broomall

Anna Elizabeth Broomall (March 4, 1847 – April 4, 1931) was an American obstetrician, surgeon, and educator who taught obstetrics at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. She established the first maternal health and prenatal care clinic in the United States, located at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, and used surgical innovations to reduce maternal mortality.

Early life and education Born in 1847, Broomall was raised in Upper Chichester Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Her parents were John Martin Broomall, a lawyer, state representative, and future United States Congressman, and Elizabeth (Booth) Broomall. Her mother died when she was one year old, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle until her father remarried in 1853.

Broomall enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania at the age of 19 and graduated with her doctor of medicine degree in 1871, choosing to repeat the two-year medical course. She worked at the college to cover the costs of her education, doing household labor such as scrubbing floors, building fires, and carrying coal.

Broomall completed the hospital lecture series followed by a one-year internship at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia. She then traveled to Europe to study obstetrics under Carl Braun in Vienna and train with leading French obstetricians in Paris. She returned to Philadelphia in 1874 and accepted a position as a physician at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia.

In her thirty years as a physician and professor, Broomall implemented rigorous European-style standards for nurses' training and patient care. She implemented highly antiseptic clinical environments and utilized and improved on state-of-the-art surgical procedures such as episiotomies, cesarean sections, and symphysiotomies. Her efforts reduced mortality rates to less than one-tenth of one percent of the two thousand expectant mothers whom she treated.

Broomall was proposed for membership in 1878 and admitted to the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society in 1892. Previously, male doctors had repeatedly vetoed her membership, despite permitting a male colleague to read one of her papers at a society meeting and publishing in the society's journal, Transactions. She also published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children. Her students founded the Anna Broomall Society as a social and educational student club, at which medical papers were read. The club held its 27th meeting in 1927.

Personal life and death In retirement, Broomall volunteered to manage the Delaware County Historical Society's library and museum from 1923 until her death. She wrote pamphlets and collected photographs, manuscripts, and clippings that documented Delaware County's history. She donated her scrapbooks to the historical society, and they remain in the society's collections. She also joined the Delaware County Institute of Science and the Delaware County Botanical Society. She played an important role in raising community support for renovation of the historic 1724 Chester Courthouse.

Broomall died on April 4, 1931, at her home in Chester, Pennsylvania, from sepsis induced by a chronic urinary tract infection. She was 84 years old. Her remains were cremated and the ashes interred in her family plot at Media Cemetery in Upper Providence Township, Pennsylvania. Broomall had never married and left no children.

Legacy The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission dedicated a state historical marker in Broomall's honor on March 26, 2019. The marker is located near the house where Broomall lived in retirement, at the corner of East 13th Street and Chestnut Street in Chester, on the present-day campus of Widener University.

Historian and physician Steven Jay Peitzman described Broomall as "unquestionably among the most able of the College's nineteenth-century faculty."