ⁿPreston, Ann1813╨1872physician and educatorBorn in West Grove, Pennsylvania, on December 1, 1813, Ann Preston was educated in Quaker schools there and in Chester, Pennsylvania. While caring for her younger brothers and sisters, she became active in the abolitionist and temperance movements. Later, relieved of home responsibilities, she taught school. In 1849 she published a volume of Cousin Ann╒s Stories in rhyme. Her temperance work had helped arouse an interest in physiology and hygiene. She studied those subjects as well as Latin on her own for a time, eventually began to teach classes in them to other interested women, and in 1847 became a medical apprentice in the office of a physician friend in Philadelphia. Two years later, having completed her apprenticeship, she was refused admission to all four Philadelphia medical colleges on grounds of sex. In October 1850, however, she entered the newly established Female (later Woman╒s) Medical College of Pennsylvania with the first class, which also included Hannah Longshore, and she graduated in December 1851. After a year of further study she was appointed professor of physiology and hygiene at the college in 1853. A crisis was precipitated in 1858 by the action of the Board of Censors of the Philadelphia Medical Society, which effectively banned women physicians from the public teaching clinics of the city. In order to provide vital clinical experience to the college╒s students Dr. Preston began raising funds for a women╒s hospital to be affiliated with the college. A board of women managers, of which she was a member, was appointed to direct the planning and operation of the hospital. The college closed on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, but the Woman╒s Hospital opened later that year. The Woman╒s Medical College, operating under a new charter, opened in 1862. In 1863 Preston worked with Dr. Emeline H. Cleveland, chief resident of Woman╒s Hospital, to establish a training school for nurses. In 1866 she was chosen first woman dean of the Woman╒s Medical College. She continued in that post as well as in her professorship for the rest of her life. In 1867 she was elected to the college╒s Board of Corporators. She served also as consulting physician at Woman╒s Hospital, while her uncertain health forced her to restrict her private practice to office consultation. Under her leadership the students of the Woman╒s Medical College were at last admitted to the leading general clinics in Philadelphia in 1868 and 1869. In the latter year, in response to a remonstrance by the other local medical colleges and hospitals and numerous individual doctors, she published in the Philadelphia newspapers a classic argument in support of women physicians. She died in Philadelphia on April 18, 1872. ■styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ / !I è !I ₧ !I !I ▐ !I « 5¬ » !I k !I ▐ â !I .link ` HYPR HYPR k â
