It must be a proud moment for any woman who is the first licensed female doctor in their respective countries. Anandibai Joshi of India, Keiko Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambouli of Syria are shown in this remarkable 1885 image as students at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania.
This institute was one of the few schools in the world at the time when women could study medicine. These three women went on to become the first licensed female doctors in the nations they hail from. This photograph was taken on October 10, 1885. Anandibai Joshee graduated in 1886, Kei Okami graduated in 1889, and Sabat Islambooly graduated in 1890.
Moreover, Anandibai gave birth to a boy at the age of fourteen, but because she did not receive proper medical attention, the boy lived barely 10 days in total. Anandi’s life took a significant change after this, which encouraged her to pursue a career in medicine.
Given this, how did three women from around the world end up learning how to become doctors? According to Christopher Woolf of PRI’s The World, the credit goes to the Quakers, who “thought in the equality of women to set up the WMCP way back in 1850 in Germantown.” Mallika Rao writes in HuffPost, “If the timing appears to be quite right, that is comprehensible. In 1885, women in the United States still could not vote, nor were they inspired to learn very much.
Christopher Woolf continued, “As the world’s first women’s medical college, it drew in foreign students from all over the world, first from other parts of North America and Europe and eventually from even farther away, who were unable to pursue medical studies in their native countries. First, they came from elsewhere in North America and Europe, and then from further afield. Women, like Anandibai Joshi in India and Keiko Okami in Japan, heard about WMCP and defied expectations set by society and family to travel independently to America to apply, then figure out how to pay for their tuition and board.
In addition to the foreign students, it produced the first Native American woman doctor in the country, Susan La Flesche, and there were also many African Americans there, some of whom, like Eliza Grier, had previously been slaves.” Therefore, these women made history by becoming the first licensed female doctor in their respective countries.
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