Caroline Nompozola | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1908 |
| Education | Healdtown High School School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges |
| Occupation | Physician |
Caroline Nompozolo (born 1908) was the first native South African woman to qualify as a physician. She studied medicine at the School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges and was later house surgeon at St Charles' Hospital. [1] [2]
She was educated at Healdtown High School in Eastern Cape Province, where Nelson Mandela was also a pupil from 1937. She went on to study science at South African Native College, Fort Hare in Alice in the Eastern Cape. The South African Native College, later the University of Fort Hare, was founded in 1916 on the site of a former British military garrison. The College offered European style higher education and alumni include Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Robert Mugabe. [3] Nompozola's ambition, however, had always been to study medicine. In 1937, after completing the first year of science course, she applied to the University of St Andrews to study medicine but was rejected on the grounds that the university did not recognise the South African Native College. [4] Her examination passes were however recognised by the School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges, to which she successfully applied to study medicine. As the first black women to do this her story was reported in the press.“Before she sailed for Europe she was met at nearly every railway station by teachers, journalists and clergymen who wished her Godspeed”. (The Daily Colonist, July 1938)
The Principal of the School of Medicine, Professor John Orr accepted her application and arranged for her to be admitted as a medical student to Anderson’s College, Glasgow, where she studied anatomy and physiology, with further classes then being taken at St Mungo’s College, Glasgow, both part of the extramural school. Her clinical training was carried out at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Western Infirmary, the two main Glasgow teaching hospitals.
She qualified as a doctor with the Triple Qualification in 1942. [5]
She received funding to travel to Dublin for postgraduate courses in midwifery and paediatrics.
In 1953 she was a house surgeon at the St Charles Hospital in West London. [1]
The London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW) established in 1874 was the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors. The patrons, vice-presidents, and members of the committee that supported and helped found the London School of Medicine for Women wanted to provide educated women with the necessary facilities for learning and practicing midwifery and other branches of medicine while also promoting their future employment in the fields of midwifery and other fields of treatment for women and children.
The Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) is a large teaching hospital. With a capacity of around 1,000 beds, the hospital campus covers an area of around 8 hectares, and straddles the Townhead and Dennistoun districts on the north-eastern fringe of the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland. It is managed by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. It was originally opened in 1794, with the present main building dating from 1914.
The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women was founded by Sophia Jex-Blake in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 1886, with support from the National Association for Promoting the Medical Education of Women. Sophia Jex-Blake was appointed as both the Director and the Dean of the School. The first class of women to study at the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women consisted of eight students, the youngest of whom was nineteen years of age. Throughout its twelve years in operation, the school struggled to find financial funding to remain open. A rival institution, the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, set up by Elsie Inglis with the help of her father John Inglis, attracted several students of Jex-Blake, including Martha Cadell and Grace Cadell. St Mungo's College and Queen Margaret College in Glasgow also accepted women medical students and when the Scottish universities began to do so the Edinburgh School of Medicine could no longer compete. The school closed in 1898. Over the twelve years of its operation, the Edinburgh School of Medicine provided education to approximately eighty female students. Of those eighty students, thirty-three completed the full course of medical training at the Edinburgh School while many others chose to finish their education at outside institutions.
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) was established in 1729, and is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. The new buildings of 1879 were claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later on, the Empire. The hospital moved to a new 900 bed site in 2003 in Little France. It is the site of clinical medicine teaching as well as a teaching hospital for the University of Edinburgh Medical School. In 1960 the first successful kidney transplant performed in the UK was at this hospital. In 1964 the world's first coronary care unit was established at the hospital. It is the only site for liver, pancreas, and pancreatic islet cell transplantation in Scotland, and one of the country's two sites for kidney transplantation. In 2012, the Emergency Department had 113,000 patient attendances, the highest number in Scotland. It is managed by NHS Lothian.
The University of Glasgow School of Medicine, Dentistry & Nursing is the medical school of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and is one of the largest in Europe, offering a 5-year MBChB degree course. It is ranked 2nd in the UK for medicine by The Times Good University Guide 2018 and joint 1st in the UK by the Complete University Guide 2021. The School of Medicine uses lecture-based learning, problem-based learning and Glasgow's case-based learning.
Dame Anne Louise McIlroy, known as Louise McIlroy, was a distinguished and honoured Irish-born British physician, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology. She was both the first woman to be awarded a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree and to register as a research student at the University of Glasgow. She was also the first woman medical professor in the United Kingdom.
The University of Edinburgh Medical School is the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the United Kingdom and part of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. It was established in 1726, during the Scottish Enlightenment, making it the oldest medical school in the United Kingdom and the oldest medical school in the English-speaking world.
Honoria Somerville Keer was a British surgeon during World War I, where she served as a medical officer with the Girton and Newnham Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, which offered volunteer opportunities for medical women who were prohibited at the time from serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps. She was honoured by France and Serbia for her services.
Marion Gilchrist was the first female graduate of the University of Glasgow, one of the first two women to qualify in medicine from a Scottish university; and a leading activist in the Women's suffrage Movement in Scotland. In recognition of her achievements she has been honoured in a number of ways.
Margaret Fairlie FRCOG FRCSE (1891–1963) was a Scottish academic and gynaecologist. Fairlie spent most of her career working at Dundee Royal Infirmary and teaching at the medical school at University College, Dundee. In 1940 she became the first woman to hold a professorial chair in Scotland.
Charles Frederick William Illingworth was a British surgeon who specialised in gastroenterology. Along with a range of teaching and research interests, he wrote several surgical textbooks, and played a leading role in university and medical administration.
Douglas James Guthrie FRSE FRCS FRCP FRCSEd FRCPE was a Scottish medical doctor, otolaryngologist and historian of medicine.
Rebecca Strong was an English nurse who pioneered preliminary training for nurses.
The Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women was established by Elsie Inglis and her father John Inglis. Elsie Inglis went on to become a leader in the suffrage movement and found the Scottish Women's Hospital organisation in World War I, but when she jointly founded the college she was still a medical student. Her father, John Inglis, had been a senior civil servant in India, where he had championed the cause of education for women. On his return to Edinburgh he became a supporter of medical education for women and used his influence to help establish the college. The college was founded in 1889 at a time when women were not admitted to university medical schools in the UK.
Margaret Williamson Menzies Campbell FDS FRCSE was a Scottish surgeon and general practitioner, who is known for her work as an historian of women's medical education and practice and dentistry.
Prof George Ritchie Thomson CMG FRSE LLD was a 19th/20th century Scottish military surgeon and expert on tropical medicine who served in the Second Boer War and First World War and advanced public health in South Africa.
Caroline Doig was a paediatric surgeon and the first woman to be elected to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh council.
Alice Lilian Louise Robson was a Scottish medical doctor and one of the first two women to be awarded a medical degree in Scotland.
Extramural medical education in Edinburgh began over 200 years before the university medical faculty was founded in 1726 and extramural teaching continued thereafter for a further 200 years. Extramural is academic education which is conducted outside a university. In the early 16th century it was under the auspices of the Incorporation of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) and continued after the Faculty of Medicine was established by the University of Edinburgh in 1726. Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries the demand for extramural medical teaching increased as Edinburgh's reputation as a centre for medical education grew. Instruction was carried out by individual teachers, by groups of teachers and, by the end of the 19th century, by private medical schools in the city. Together these comprised the Edinburgh Extramural School of Medicine. From 1896 many of the schools were incorporated into the Medical School of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh under the aegis of the RCSEd and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and based at Surgeons' Hall. Extramural undergraduate medical education in Edinburgh stopped in 1948 with the closure of the Royal Colleges' Medical School following the Goodenough Report which recommended that all undergraduate medical education in the UK should be carried out by universities.