Women in DCMS Membership

Toward the end of the 19th century, the United States had 17 medical schools for women. In 1899, women represented 6 percent of the national physician population.

That "boom" for women physicians slowed considerably in the ensuing years. By 1910, only three medical schools for women remained open and more than half of the medical schools in America excluded women.

This disparity existed until World War II, when the physician shortage became acute. That crisis helped women in medical schools surge to 10 percent. Today it's closer to 50 percent.

Early female physicians in Dallas included Grace Danforth, MD, a native of Granger, Texas, who left her teaching job to attend Woman's Medical College of Chicago. After graduating in 1886, she moved to Dallas and became the first woman accepted into DCMS.

Minnie C. O'Brien, MD, a 1906 graduate of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, practiced in Dallas before moving to San Antonio in 1910. She delivered more than 10,000 babies in her lifetime.

Florence Widney Austin, MD, graduated from Southwestern Medical College in 1908, completed a residency in Dallas, and later moved her practice to Oklahoma for a few years. Dr Austin returned to Texas in 1913.

Minnie L. Maffett, MD, came to Dallas in 1915. Her career took off with great momentum and was speckled with achievements, among them, organizing the Health Center at SMU. She wouldn't have made her mark in medicine had she not secretly left graduate school in Austin to enroll at the Medical Branch in Galveston. Until she was two weeks into medical school, she sent postcards to her family via her roommate in Austin who saw they received an Austin postmark.

May Agness Hopkins, MD, graduated from the University of Texas medical school as the only woman in her class in 1911. When Dr Hopkins moved to Dallas, she didn't have much time to establish her practice. After the start of World War I in 1914, she volunteered with the Red Cross. Soon she found herself in France, treating nearly 1000 men a day on the front lines in the battle of Chateau-Thierry-a rare place to be for female physicians at the time.

Now female physicians are anything but rare. In 1976, DCMS elected its first female president, Gladys J. Fashena, MD. And currently a woman holds the office, Carolyn Evans, MD. There are 1000 women physicians practicing in Dallas.

May Agness Hopkins, MD
1883-1972

In 1912, when pediatrician May Agness Hopkins, MD, opened her practice in the old Southwestern Life Insurance Building at the corner of Main and Akard, she was the only female physician in Dallas. She was one of the first doctors to inspect milk for the city and after her service as a physician in World War I, she established a thriving pediatric endocrinology practice, taught at Baylor Medical School, and helped organize the children's clinic at Baylor Hospital.

Gladys J. Fashena, MD
1910-2000

Gladys J. Fashena, MD, earned a master's degree in philosophy from Columbia University before earning her medical degree at Cornell Medical College in 1934. She was a charter faculty member of UT Southwestern and became the first female president of DCMS in 1976, but is most remembered for her ground-breaking work in pediatric cardiology and help in establishing Children's Medical Center.