Louisa Aldrich-Blake belongs to the medical record as a figure whose work changed what could be treated.
The record lists Louisa Aldrich-Blake as British surgeon and medical school dean.
Louisa Aldrich-Blake was born at Chingford in 1865. Her recorded nationality is United Kingdom. She trained at London School of Medicine for Women and Cheltenham Ladies' College.
Anaesthesia, antisepsis and germ theory arrived within fifty years and made modern surgery possible for the first time.
Her posts were held at London School of Medicine for Women, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital and Royal Free Hospital.
The recorded fields of work are medicine.
Medicine advances against a moving target, and its successes are counted in lives rather than papers.
Recognition followed: Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1925) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.
That the work was done from United Kingdom matters: hospitals, training and research funding are unevenly distributed, and they decide which questions can be asked.
Louisa Aldrich-Blake died in 1925, aged 60. What survives is the change in practice, which is how a medical life is actually measured.
Achievements
- Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire — 1925
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine
- Held posts at London School of Medicine for Women, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital and Royal Free Hospital
- Fields: medicine
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