Isabella Macdonald Macdonald

Dr. Isabella Macdonald Macdonald (1856-1947) was one of the first women to graduate as a doctor after training in the United Kingdom; she was awarded a Bachelor of Medicine and a Licence of the Society of Apothecaries in 1888, from the London School of Medicine for Women. She went on to have a long career, including as a consultant at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

Biography

Isabella Macdonald Macdonald was born in 1856, daughter of John Brown, the town-clerk of Arbroath. She was an early student of the London School of Medicine for Women, established to provide a route by which women could acquire the credentials necessary to become a registered physician in the UK.

She graduated in 1888 as a doctor of medicine and pharmacist. She practiced initially, for three years, as the resident physician at Cama Hospital, Mumbai, returning to the UK with ill-health. Thereafter she worked for many years at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, rising to the level of consultant physician and retiring in 1925. She maintained a private practice operating from her house in Seymour Street, Portman Square until 1940, when the property was destroyed as the result of a wartime bombing.

She died, aged 91, in 1947.