Doc Susie's Colorado Contemporaries

Post by Doris McCraw

writing as Angela Raines

I've spent time looking at the women doctors who received their license to practice medicine around the same time as Susan, 'Doc Susie', Anderson, who started her practice in Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1897. She did not move to Fraser, Colorado until 1907 where she earned her 'fame'.

While the list is fairly long, I thought I would share some additional names and their contributions to Colorado and medicine.

Dr. Josepha Williams and Dr. Madeline Marquette opened a private hospital and sanatorium in Denver in 1889. In 1892 they added a nursing school to the hospital – Sanatorium. Dr. Williams was the superintendent of the facility. On a side note, Dr. Williams married Canon Charles Winfred Douglas a musician and Episcopal priest in 1896.

Dr.Genevieve M Tucker wrote "Mother, Baby, and Nursery: A Manuel for Mothers" published by Roberts Brothers, copyright 1896. She practiced in Pueblo, Colorado. Around 1898 she was elected president of the Colorado Homeopathic Medical Society.

Dr. Ida Putnam began her practice in Chicago, but in 1898 she received her Colorado license and began a practice in Telluride, Colorado.

Dr. Florence Sabin was a research doctor who did much to advance the area of medical research. Her accomplishments are too numerous to list here. 

Dr. Rose Kidd Beere was written up in the “History of Colorado” edited by Wilber Fiske Stone. She participated in the Philippine War of 1898-99 and WWI. She was unable to travel to the Philippine’s as a doctor so she gathered women to go there as nurses.

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Bates, I've written of before. As you know she was the first woman intern at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. From the book “A History of Surgery at Cook County Hospital” by Patrick D. Guinan, Kenneth J. Printen, James L. Stone, James S.T. Yao, we find in the nineteen months she worked as an intern she worked in the morgue, took part in fourteen amputations. Of her time there she later said: “ the first six months were hell, the second six months were purgatory, the next six months were heaven; when it came time for me to leave, I wept bitter tears.”

So there you have just a few of Doc Susie's contemporaries.

Researching the stories of these pioneering women has led me to heroines in my writing who were doctors. The first was Josie Forrester in "Josie's Dream" 

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Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books