1. Anna Elizabeth Broomall was an American obstetrician, surgeon, and educator who taught obstetrics at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.
26 Facts About Anna Broomall
1. 2.
Anna Broomall 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.
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Anna Broomall's parents were John Martin Broomall, a lawyer, state representative, and future United States Congressman, and Elizabeth Broomall.
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Anna Broomall's mother died when she was one year old, and she was raised by her aunt and uncle until her father remarried in 1853.
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Anna 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.
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Anna Broomall worked at the college to cover the costs of her education, doing household labor such as scrubbing floors, building fires, and carrying coal.
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Anna Broomall completed the hospital lecture series followed by a one-year internship at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia.
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Anna Broomall then traveled to Europe to study obstetrics under Carl Braun in Vienna and train with leading French obstetricians in Paris.
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Anna Broomall returned to Philadelphia in 1874 and accepted a position as a physician at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia.
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From 1874 to 1883, Anna Broomall was chief resident physician of the Woman's Hospital and taught concurrently at the Woman's Medical College, having been appointed an instructor of obstetrics in 1875.
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Anna Broomall became a full professor and chair of obstetrics after her mentor, Dr Emeline Horton Cleveland, died in 1879.
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Anna Broomall caused a stir in the spring of 1892, when she arranged mock trials of a hypothetical infanticide case, requiring students to practice presenting medical evidence to juries.
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Anna Broomall implemented highly antiseptic clinical environments and utilized and improved on state-of-the-art surgical procedures such as episiotomies, cesarean sections, and symphysiotomies.
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Anna Broomall's efforts reduced mortality rates to less than one-tenth of one percent of the two thousand expectant mothers whom she treated.
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Anna Broomall was proposed for membership in 1878 and admitted to the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society in 1892.
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Anna Broomall published in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children.
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Anna Broomall's students founded the Anna Broomall Society as a social and educational student club, at which medical papers were read.
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In retirement, Anna Broomall volunteered to manage the Delaware County Historical Society's library and museum from 1923 until her death.
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Anna Broomall wrote pamphlets and collected photographs, manuscripts, and clippings that documented Delaware County's history.
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Anna Broomall donated her scrapbooks to the historical society, and they remain in the society's collections.
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Anna Broomall joined the Delaware County Institute of Science and the Delaware County Botanical Society.
22.
Anna Broomall played an important role in raising community support for renovation of the historic 1724 Chester Courthouse.
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Anna Broomall was working on an unpublished manuscript on Pennsylvania witches when she died.
24.
Anna Broomall died on April 4,1931, at her home in Chester, Pennsylvania, from sepsis induced by a chronic urinary tract infection.
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Anna Broomall's remains were cremated and the ashes interred in her family plot at Media Cemetery in Upper Providence Township, Pennsylvania.
26.
The marker is located near the house where Anna Broomall lived in retirement, at the corner of East 13th Street and Chestnut Street in Chester, on the present-day campus of Widener University.