Lydia Pinkham had company in pioneering improvements in women’s health

A New York state physician who had practiced medicine quietly with her father and, after his death, on her own, saw a way of making an enduring impact on women’s health. Having never set foot on the U-M campus, Elizabeth Bates, upon her death in 1898, left a bequest to the Medical School to create a professorship in the diseases of women and children, a decision based solely upon Michigan’s leadership nearly 30 years earlier in opening medical education to women.

Bates’ foresight in establishing the endowment has strengthened women’s medicine at Michigan for more than a century. Timothy R.B. Johnson, M.D., chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is the current Bates Professor of Diseases of Women and Children.

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Lydia Pinkham had company in pioneering improvements in women’s health

The Women’s Health Registry