Dr. Fanny Berlin (1852-1921) traveled from her home in Ukraine (then part of the “Pale of Settlement” where all Jews were forced to live in the Russian Empire) where she was born, to medical school in Switzerland, one of the few medical schools that would accept women at the time. She emigrated to the United States right after graduating. In Boston she worked at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, one of the few hospitals who treated immigrant women, under the leadership of the renowned Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. She published articles in the medical journals of her time and helped to organize the New England Women’s Medical Society in 1878, since the all-male Massachusetts Medical Society would not accept women. She was one of the first Jewish women to practice surgery.
