Dorothy Reed Mendenhall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Reed_Mendenhall

Dorothy Mabel Reed Mendenhall (1874-1964) a prominent pediatric physician specializing in cellular pathology. In 1901 she proved that Hodgkin's disease was not a form of tuberculosis, and discovered the blood cell disorder characteristic of the disease. A pioneer in her field, she was one of the first professionally trained female physicians of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Biography

Born in 1874 in Columbus, Ohio Dorothy Mabel Reed graduated from Smith College in 1895. She later attended MIT became one of the first women to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She graduated "fourth in her class in 1900, she was awarded a prestigious internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, serving under Dr. William Osler. The next year she became a Pathology fellow there under the direction of Dr. William Welch. During this period Mendenhall taught bacteriology, assisted at autopsies and undertook research on Hodgkin's disease. She made her best recognized contribution to medical science when she discovered the cell that is a primary characteristic of Hodgkin's lymphoma and effectively disproved the common belief that the disease was a form of tuberculosis. Mendenhall's findings, published in 1902, brought her international acclaim and the cell became known as the Reed cell (also called the Sternberg-Reed and Reed-Sternberg cell). "

Next she accepted the first internship in pediatrics at the Babies Hospital in New York (now the Babies & Children's Hospital - part of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center). She worked under the direction or L.E. Holt, MD. He was a pioneer of pediatrics, author of the first major textbook on the subject and author of "The care and feeding of children".

She left to marry Charles Mendenhall who had been hired as a member of the Physics faculty at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW). He became the Chairman of that department. They had four children—the first (a daughter) died one day after birth; the second (a son) died at age 1 in an accident. Another son, John "Blackjack" Mendenhall, became a renowned physician in his own right, and was also a faculty member at UW Medical school. He had first done a residency in pathology, as had his mother, but, following service in World War II, became a thoracic surgeon after he acquired tuberculosis himself. The youngest son of Dorothy Mendenhall, Thomas C. Mendenhall, was a professor of History at Yale University, and served as the sixth President of Smith College.

Dorothy Reed Mendenhall died of heart disease on July 31, 1964, at the age of 89.