Innovation by Female Surgeons in the 1880s-Charlotte Blake Brown, MD

Abstract

In the late 1800s, several women physicians began to challenge the sociopolitical forces that had prevented women from breaking into the male dominated field of medicine. Charlotte Blake Brown, MD was one of these early women physicians. Beyond providing exceptional clinical care to her patients, she had an outsized impact on her surrounding community. She co-founded a hospital, helped pioneer advancements in surgical technique, established safe and accessible infant nutrition, advocated for incubator technology, organized grassroots programs for women and children, and created a cancer registry. Specifically, her cancer registry was ahead of its time in scope and assessment of outcomes in each of her patient's clinical course after discharged from the hospital. This model of systematic patient data collection was later emulated by well-known registries such as the Codman bone sarcoma and Yale-New Haven databases that went on to inspire the Nationwide Cancer Database through the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In this review, we will highlight the incredible work she was able to accomplish as a pioneer female physician with a specific focus on the novelty of her cancer registry.

Keywords: history; resident education; surgical oncology; surgical quality.