LGBTQ+ History Month - Healthcare Figures

Written By Fatma Shami

LGBTQIA HISTORICAL HEALTHCARE FIGURES

In honour of LGBTQIA+ History Month, we’re taking a look at some LGBT historical healthcare figures who have made significant contributions to the field of healthcare and medicine.

Dr Sara Josephine Baker  (1873-1945) was an American physician, who made notable contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York. She focused on reducing infant mortality rates in a New York slum called ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, by developing a comprehensive approach to preventive health care for children. By educating young mothers on hygiene measures and preventing the spread of germs, she successfully  reduced infant mortality rates from dysentery.

She also developed methods for preventing infant blindness from gonorrhoea by administering silver nitrate and helped track down “ Typhoid Mary '' - a cook that caused a typhoid epidemic - twice. “Dr Jo” as she was called, was openly gay and lived with her partner Ida Wylie from 1920 until her death in 1945.

Sophia Jex Blake (1840-1912) was a Scottish physician, writer and suffragette, who became the first woman in Great Britain to practise medicine. She and six other women - known as the Edinburgh Seven - led a decade-long campaign to allow women to attend medical schools and study medicine, which led to the Medical Act law being passed in 1876, allowing medical institutions in Britain to licence qualified applicants as Medical Doctors regardless of their gender.

Dr Jex Blake continued to champion for women’s rights to practise medicine throughout her life, establishing medicine schools in Edinburgh and London for women when others refused to admit them. She never married and lived with her long term partner Dr Margaret Todd till her death.

Margarethe Cammermeyer (1942-present) is a Norwegian-American military nurse and LGBTQ+ rights activist. Upon joining the army when she was 19, she worked on an intensive care ward during the Vietnam War from 1967-1968. Upon her return, she served as head of a veteran’s hospital and eventually became colonel and Chief Nurse of the Washington National Guard. When she came out in 1989 during a routine security interview and disclosed her sexuality, she was honourably discharged.

Her case resulted in the implementation of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy which prohibited U.S. military soldiers from disclosing their sexuality while in service. Cammermeyer publicly opposed this and fought for its repeal, while continuing to serve in the military as an openly lesbian woman until her retirement in 1997. Her efforts to repeal DADT were successful when it was revoked in 2011 and LGBTQ+ soldiers were publicly allowed to serve in the U.S. military. She currently lives with her wife Diane in Whidbey Island.

Bruce Voeller (1934-1994) was an American biologist, HIV/AIDS researcher and gay rights activist. Upon completing his PhD at the Rockefeller Institute in developmental biology and genetics, he became a research associate and associate professor. In 1973, he created the National Gay Task Force (now the National LGBTQ task force) which became the first gay rights group to meet at the White House to discuss policies related to LGBTQ Americans .

He was also a pioneer in HIV/AIDS research, studying the effects of condoms and spermicide in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and fought to change the initial name - Gay Related Immune Disease (GRID) - to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) instead. On top of his research, he wrote and co-edited many research papers on AIDS. He also founded the Mariposa Research and Education Foundation, which focused on research into human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr Voeller died in 1994 from AIDS related complications in his home, with his partner Richard Lucik and family by his side.

Dr Alan Hart (1890-1962) was an American transgender radiologist. Although he was born a female,he strongly identified as male growing up. After confiding in his professor, he underwent gender transformation surgery in 1917, becoming the first trans man in the United States to undergo a hysterectomy. After his transition, Hart faced personal and career challenges as he was outed as transgender wherever he worked and was forced to resign and move from place to place until he was unrecognised.

After spending some time working as a physician, he turned his attention to research, focusing on tubercular radiology and pioneered the use of chest X-rays to detect tuberculosis (TB), discovering that X-rays could detect the early stages of infection before symptoms could develop. His discovery led to many people being able to test early for TB and seek necessary medical treatment before it was too late. Hart lived with his wife Edna Ruddick and died from heart failure at the age of 71.

Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was a British-American neurologist and writer. After getting his medical degree from Oxford, he moved to the United States to complete his residency. He worked in a New York hospital where he encountered patients in a frozen, statue-like state, and discovered that they were survivors of a deadly form of sleeping sickness called encephalitis lethargica. Sacks treated these patients with L-dopa and studied how it helped revive these patients from their catatonic state. He documented his findings and experiences in a book titled Awakenings which was adapted into a film starring Robin Williams. 

He wrote books about case studies of his patients who suffered from mental and neurological disorders such as The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain. He was extremely private about his personal life and publicly came out in his 2015 autobiography, after being celibate for over 30 years. He lived with his partner Bill Hayes until he died from terminal cancer at 82.

Reshme Subramaniam

Publications Officer - mandate 2022/23

Fatma Shami
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