Lecture to feature first female doctors in West Virginia

Morgantown, WV, November 15 2006:  Dr. Barb Howe, director of the Center for Women’s Studies, will present a lecture about two pioneering West Virginia women doctors as part of the “Changing the Face of Medicine” series of events.

“Changing the Face of Medicine: The Stories of Wheeling Physicians Eliza Hughes and Harriet Jones” will be held Monday, Nov. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Health Sciences Center Auditorium. A reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Eliza Hughes was the first woman in what is now West Virginia to get an M.D. degree and one of the very few in Virginia before the Civil War to have this distinction. She studied at the Cleveland Homeopathic College and graduated from the Penn Medical University of Philadelphia in 1860. She returned to Wheeling and began to practice medicine with her brother, Alfred. After Alfred was arrested for being a Confederate in 1862, Eliza continued to practice medicine by herself until her death in 1882.

Dr. Harriet B. Jones was the first licensed woman physician in West Virginia, as West Virginia did not require licensing until 1881. Jones was raised in Terra Alta, W.Va. She graduated from the Wheeling Female College and from the Women’s Medical College of Baltimore. She practiced medicine in Wheeling at the Weston State Hospital, and in, 1892, opened her own women’s hospital. She was active in many women’s rights organizations, and in 1924 was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates, where she served two terms.

The Center for Women’s Studies is housed in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University.

For more information, please contact Barb Howe at barbara.howe@mail.wvu.edu or at 304-293-2339, ext. 1155.

W-V-U