Emeline Horton Cleveland

Emeline Horton Cleveland (September 22, 1829 – December 8, 1878) was an American medical doctor and one of the first women to perform major abdominal or gynecological surgery in the United States. She became one of the first woman physicians associated with a large public hospital in the United States, and she established one of the first nursing assistant training programs in the country.

A graduate of Oberlin College and the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, Cleveland received postgraduate training in obstetrics and gynecology and hospital administration in Philadelphia, Paris, and London. By 1872, she was the dean of the Woman's Medical College. Cleveland suffered from tuberculosis for the last several years of her life.

Early life Cleveland was born Emeline Horton in Ashford, Connecticut, to Chauncey Horton and Amanda Chaffee Horton. Her paternal ancestors had been Puritans who emigrated to the United States in the 1630s. Cleveland was the second of eight siblings. When Cleveland was two years old, her family moved to a farm in Madison County, New York, where she was educated by tutors. Cleveland earned a medical degree after two years at the Female Medical College.

Career In Philadelphia, Giles Cleveland found work as a teacher. A little over a year after their arrival, he became seriously ill again, and he was left partially paralyzed and unable to work. Cleveland stayed at the Female Medical College until 1860, when her colleague Ann Preston and several local Quaker women paid for Cleveland to go to Paris and London to continue her studies in obstetrics, gynecological surgery and hospital administration. Her health was tenuous, which led to her resignation as dean in 1874. One of Cleveland's students wrote the journal article, making a concluding point that Cleveland's work was evidence that women could make good surgeons.

Death In 1878, Cleveland was named a gynecologist for the Pennsylvania Hospital Department for the Insane, marking one of the first times that a woman had become a physician for a large public hospital. She died of tuberculosis later that year. Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi, an influential physician who attended the Female Medical College in the 1860s, said that Cleveland was "a woman of real ability... personal beauty, and grace of manner."