The Real Marie Zakrzewska

I have kind of a thing for 19th century American women doctors.

I've written before about Lydia Strowbridge in Cortland and Mary Dixon Jones in Brooklyn, and Mary Walker, whose Civil War medal was revoked.

In the last couple of days I learned about Marie Zakrzewska, 1829–1902.

Zakrzewska was born in Berlin to Polish parents. Her father refused to send her to school beyond age 13, so as a teenager she worked with her mother, who was a midwife. She went to the Berlin midwifery school as its youngest student, age 20. She was a stellar student was appointed professor at age 22, but the mentor who advocated for her died soon after. She left after 6 months and moved to New York City with her younger sister.

She met Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman to graduate from a U.S. medical school) in the mid-1850s, who got her into Western Reserve University's medical school, where she graduated in 1856. With Blackwell, she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children in 1857.

She moved to Boston a few years later for a job at the Boston Female Medical College. But when the "founder of the college...insisted that graduating female physicians would be addressed as 'doctresses' instead of doctor, Zakrzewska resigned from her position in 1861."

She opened the New England Hospital for Women and Children on July 1, 1862. It began the first nurse training program in the U.S. in 1872. She worked through the early 1890s.

For me, the bizarre thing about Marie Zakrzewska is that I found out about her from a Facebook post that's completely fabricated. It was one of those "history" pages, shared by a friend, and it gave an elaborate story about how someone with her name started what became the first ambulance crew in the U.S. in New York City in 1869.

By that year, though, Zakrzewska was well-established in Boston, running the New England Hospital for Women and Children, so I doubt she was hanging around New York looking for people to rescue on its streets and organizing volunteers, as described in the Facebook post. Here's that post, if you're on Facebook.

There are multiple links to the post if you search her name and the word ambulance. At first I didn't see any comments on the post, but the second link I checked does have several comments pointing out that the story is not true, and that the photos included are AI-generated.

Note that even the year given would have to be wrong, since it claims Zakrzewska was 43 in 1869, when she would have been just 40.

Crazy times!