Surgical Nuggets

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 11: The First Who Was Allowed. Episode 11 tells the story of Ogino Ginko (1851–1913), the first woman licensed to practise Western medicine in Japan. The episode opens with the catalysing event: at sixteen, Ginko was infected with gonorrhoea by her new husband, treated by male doctors who regarded her with contempt, and resolved in that hospital be...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 10: The First Fellow. The first female Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The first female Fellow of any surgical Royal College in Britain and Ireland.  Trinity College turned her away. The odds were stacked against her from the start. She walked into the RCSI in 1887 as the only woman in her class — and left having won m...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 09: The Woman Who Did Not Need Permission. In 1622, in Üsküdar, a woman named Küpeli Saliha Hatun walked into a Sharia court, registered as a surgeon, and began taking patients. She did not hide. She did not disguise herself. She did not petition anybody for permission. She had trained under her husband. He had died. She was the surgeon now. Discla...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 09: The Woman Who Did Not Need Permission. Helen Taussig invented paediatric cardiology after Harvard told her she could attend lectures but wouldn’t be given a degree. She identified the cause of blue baby syndrome, designed the surgical fix, and had to hand it to a male surgeon to perform because she wasn’t permitted to operate herself. The Blalo...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 7: Always Raising The Bar. Kadambini Ganguly was the first woman to graduate from an Indian university, the first Indian woman to qualify in Western medicine, and the first South Asian woman on the British Medical Register, all achieved in colonial Bengal, against a society that called her a whore for graduating. She practised medicine for nearly f...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 06: The Hands That Delivered A Nation. Lin Qiaozhi was born in 1901 on Gulangyu Island, China, and went on to become the founder of modern Chinese gynaecology and obstetrics. She trained at the Peking Union Medical College, pausing her entrance exam to treat a collapsed candidate, and being admitted partly on that basis. Through war, occupation, an...

Surgical Nuggets presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 5: Seven Women, One Riot. Sophia Jex-Blake recruited 6 women via a newspaper advert and stormed Edinburgh Medical School alongside them. When the university threw them out, she built her own school for women and spent a decade fighting the legal system until the law changed. , survived a riot, got expelled then built her own school and changed...

Surgical Nuggets presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 4: Buried With Her Medal They Wanted Back. Mary Edwards Walker was the first female surgeon in the US Army. She crossed enemy lines during the Civil War to treat wounded civilians, was captured as a spy, and held as a prisoner of war for four months. In 1865, President Andrew Johnson awarded her the Medal of Honor. In 1917, the Army took it ba...

Surgical Nuggets Presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 3: What Could You Do In 900 Days? In 1883 Anandi Gopal Joshi sailed from Calcutta to America. Already ill, with no institutional backing, in a country she had never seen, to become the first Indian woman ever to qualify in Western medicine. She was 21 when she graduated. She was dead within a year. This is the story of 900 days and what one woman d...

Surgical Nuggets presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 2: Opening The Door. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school in the United States, but the door didn't open easily. In this episode, we explore how she fought her way into a profession that didn't want her, and what her story means for every woman who has picked up a scalpel since. Disclaimer: Women Who C...

Surgical Nuggets presents: WOMEN WHO CUT. Episode 1: The Surgeon Before Time Allowed. In 1812, a woman enrolled at Edinburgh Medical School, graduated as a doctor, and joined the British Army, as a man. For fifty years, James Barry was one of the finest military surgeons of the 19th century. Nobody knew. This is her story. Disclaimer: Women Who Cut is a Surgical Nuggets production. Our presenting...