DOLLEY
DONALDSON
devoted a winter to its study and became
fired with ambition to be a doctor. Her
uncle, Dr. Hiram Corson of Plymouth,
Pennsylvania, discouraged her, saying
she could never hope to be recognized
as a physician, but when she was accepted
as a student by another physician, he
reconsidered her proposition and took
her as a student. Her uncle's influence
secured her entrance to the Rochester
Medical College — now passed out of ex-
istence — from which she graduated in
1851, the second woman in America to
receive a medical diploma.
In 1851 Dr. Isaac A. Pennypacker and Dr. Hiram Corson, sent a communication to the Board of Guardians of the Poor of Philadelphia recommending that Miss Sarah Adamson be appointed to "such a situation in the Blockley Hospital as will afford her the opportunity of seeing it practice." The request was granted as the committee believed that opportunity for the study of obstetrics and the dis- eases of women and children should be extended to well-educated female phy- sicians, but she was to have no salary and to help where required. She entered upon her work May 12, 1851.
In 1853 Miss Adamson returned to Rochester and married Dr. Lester S. Dolley. The story of her work is written into nearly sixty years of the history of Rochester where she had her long and useful career.
Dr. Sarah Dolley and her husband practised together until his death in the early seventies.
Dr. Dolley was ever a potent factor in all work for the advancement of women in medicine. In 1886 she helped or- ganize the first free dispensary in Rochester for women and children, and in 1S87 organized and was the first presi- dent of the Blackwell Medical Society of Rochester, the first incorporated society of women physicians entirely for scien- tific purposes, and for several years was the honorary president of the woman's Medical Society of the State of New York. Dr. Dolley was a member of the Rochester Academy of medicine, and in
1907 was made a life member of the
Rochester Academy of Science, the only
woman upon whom this honor has ever
been conferred. She occasionally ad-
dressed Medical Societies, one paper on
"The value of Paquelin Cautery," Trans-
actions Monroe Medical Society, 1879,
and her address as president to the
Woman's Medical Society of New York
State in " The Woman's Medical Journal,"
April, 1908.
Dr. Dolley died in Rochester, December 27, 1909, after an illness of several weeks.
One of her two sons, Charles, became a doctor in the city of Mexico.
A. B. W.
Rochester Union and Advertiser, Deo. 27,
1909.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Dec.
2S, 1909.
Minutes of the " Board of Guardians of the
Poor," Phila, April 28, 1851, May 12, 1851,
June 14, 1S52.
Putnam, Mary Jacobi. Women in Medicine,
in Woman's Work in America.
Personal Information.
Donaldson, Francis (1823-1891).
Francis Donaldson was born in Balti- more, July 23, 1823, the fifth and young- est son of John Johnston Donaldson, president of the Franklin Bank. He was educated at Dr. Prentiss' school near Baltimore, but his father was un- able to give him the advantages of a college training. Just after becoming nineteen he studied under Prof. Samuel Chew, and later spent a year or more as interne at the Baltimore Almshouse. Having graduated M. D. at the University of Maryland in 1846, he spent two years in Europe, and in the hospitals of Paris listened to the greatest teachers. He warmly embraced the new rational medi- cine, then displacing the old empiricism and blood-letting. On his return to Balti- more, in 1S48, he was appointed resident physician to the Marine Hospital and after two years service began to prac- tise, the remainder of his busy life being devoted to this and teaching. From 1852 to 1855 he was attending physician to the Baltimore Almshouse,
