Hannah Longshore

Hannah E. Longshore ( Myers; May 30, 1819 – October 19, 1901) was an American physician and the first woman to be appointed to the faculty of an American medical college, at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she was part of the first graduating class. She then taught at the college and later at Pennsylvania Medical University before opening a private practice.

Personal life Hannah E. Myers was born to Quaker parents Samuel Myers and Paulina Oden Myers in Sandy Spring, Maryland, on May 30, 1819. When the couple's two children were young, Longshore suspended her medical studies for six years, but resumed them when her youngest child was four years old.

Two of her sisters, Jane Myers and Mary Frame Myers Thomas, were also physicians having both graduated from Pennsylvania Medical University. Longshore's daughter Lucretia, later Lucretia Longshore Blankenburg, went on to become a proponent of public health measures in Philadelphia. She taught for a year at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, and then taught anatomy at the Pennsylvania Medical University from 1853 to 1857. and, according to her husband, saw approximately 40 patients a day at her clinical practice. At first she found difficulty after opening her practice; other doctors mocked her and pharmacists refused to fulfill her prescriptions - a hardship that she countered by carrying her own medications, thus "pleasing her patients." She eventually stopped teaching and lecturing in favor of focusing on her practice, where she worked for a further 40 years and retired with a "modest fortune."