Women of Bloomsbury: Louisa Aldreth Blake

Question 1 of 9
Painting of Louisa Aldreth Blake
Image of Painting of Louisa Aldreth Blake from 1926 licenced under CC-by-4.0 from Wellcome Images.

Louisa Aldrich-Blake was a trailblazer: the first female surgical registrar, the first female anaesthetist and the first female lecturer on anaesthetics.

At the start of World War I, qualified female doctors who offered to help at the front were rejected, but Louisa went to france anyway to work at Red-Cross hospital field hospital where her patients gave her the nickname “Madame Generale”.

Later, when the army finally requested her assistance, she wrote to all 125 female doctors on the General Medical Register asking them to join. 80 subsequently joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. Despite this, the women were not given the rank, uniforms - or even the rations - that the male doctors received.

Head down to the eastern corner to find a bust of Louisa Brandeth Aldrich-Blake, the first British woman to obtain a Master of Surgery degree.

If you're really stuck, you can skip onto the next question instead.

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