Rosalie Slaughter Morton

Rosalie Slaughter Morton (born Blanche Rosalie Slaughter; October 16, 1872 – May 5, 1968) was an American physician, surgeon, and author. In addition to running her own medical practices, she became the first woman appointed as Attending Surgeon at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1916, and became the first chairperson of the American Women's Hospitals Service the following year. Morton served as a medic during the First World War, and was the first chair of the Public Health Education Committee. She was also one of the first women to join the faculty, and to later become a professor, at the Polyclinic Hospital of New York.

Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, Morton studied at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania despite her family's expectation that she would aim to find a husband who could provide for her. She went on to conduct further study and research across Europe and Asia before returning to the United States to open her own medical practices.

In 1937 Morton published an autobiography – A Woman Surgeon: The Life and Work of Rosalie Slaughter Morton, and released a second book titled A Doctor's Holiday in Iran in 1940, both to positive reviews. She received a number of awards during her career, including the Conspicuous Service Cross. Rosalie Morton Park in Belgrade is named in her honor.

Personal life

Early life and education Blanche Rosalie Slaughter was born in 1872 in Lynchburg, Virginia to Mary Harker and John Flavel Slaughter, in a family with a strong tradition of careers in surgery. Following the death of her father, who had strongly opposed her desire to become a doctor, she enrolled at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1893, using money saved from her childhood allowance.

Slaughter graduated from college in Pennsylvania in 1897 with two of the three honors available to her, along with prizes for the best invention of surgical equipment and the best clinical case report. She subsequently interned at the Philadelphia City Hospital and was appointed as resident physician at the Alumnae Hospital and Dispensary, where she worked until 1899. She then began further studies in Europe for three years, traveling to locations including Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London.

During this time, Slaughter took courses, observed surgeries, and wrote a number of scientific papers including several comparing the health of women and men. Her thesis on the bubonic plague was published by the Johns Hopkins Medical Society and then republished and distributed to quarantine ports around the United States by the Surgeon General of the United States.

Later life

In 1905, Slaughter married George Baxter Morton Jr., an attorney who had previously studied medicine, at St. Paul's Church, Lynchburg. The pair moved to New York, but in 1910, it was reported that they were living apart and she was filing for divorce. He died in 1912 of an aneurysm. After her husband's death, Morton was reportedly overcome with sadness; she later wrote "If my parents had been living, if we had had children, if there had been domestic duties, I would have found palliative comfort in them; but with [my husband's] going my domestic life was ... absolutely demolished". Morton never remarried after her husband's death. and was a member of the Equal Suffrage League of both New York city and New York state.

In 1942, Morton commissioned a statue by a sculptor based in New York, which she donated to Spring Hill Cemetery in Lynchburg, dedicating it to the youth of the city. Morton died on May 5, 1968, while still living in Winter Park.

Between 1911 and 1912 Morton was the vice president of the American Medical Association, the first woman to hold the position. and later became a professor of gynecology. During this time, she lectured on eugenics, hygiene, and physiology at a number of other universities, including New York University, Adelphi College, and Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, and spent one summer at the University of Vermont. Morton traveled to inspect and report on the conditions of hospitals and educational institutions, including a four-month trip around South America. After moving to Florida in the early 1930s, Morton established a small clinical practice where she conducted research into arthritis and endocrinology. and both a street and park in Belgrade are named after her. A historical marker was placed at the location of Morton's childhood home in Lynchburg in 2019.

Literary works In 1897, Morton wrote a short story titled One Short Hour. It was published in a compilation titled Daughters of Aesculapius alongside other fiction and non-fiction works written by alumni and students at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. In her 13-page story, a woman is forced to choose between a career in medicine and marriage to her fiancé, ultimately choosing the former. The Pittsburgh Press described Morton's autobiography as an "excellent book on a woman's accomplishments" commending both the descriptions of medical topics as well as political ones. The Indiana Gazette rated the book as one of the best medical autobiographies of recent times.

After finishing her autobiography, Morton traveled to Iran, and in 1940 published a book on the country and her time there titled A Doctor's Holiday in Iran. Writing in the journal The Moslem World, S. M. Jordan described the book as "good reading" and a "worthy successor" to Morton's previous publication.