Eliza Maria Mosher

Eliza Maria Mosher (2 October 1846 – 16 October 1928) was a United States physician and educator whose wide-ranging medical career included an educational focus on physical fitness and health maintenance.

Mosher was born in Cayuga County, New York in 1846 to a Quaker family. She graduated from Friends' Academy in Union Springs, New York in 1862. In 1869, over the objections of friends and family, she entered the New England Hospital for Women and Children as an intern apprentice. After a year she was forced to suspend her education to nurse her mother, who had breast cancer. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1875, with an M.D., and opened a practice in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Mosher was resident physician at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women 1877-79 and 1880–81, taking time off in between to study at the School of Medicine in Paris. She was director of the Reformatory 1881-1883. In 1883 she went to Vassar College as professor of physiology and resident physician. She was engaged in general medical practice in Brooklyn, New York, from 1886 to 1896, and then became professor of hygiene in the department of literature, science and arts, and women's dean at the University of Michigan. Holding this position until 1902, when she returned to her practice in Brooklyn.

Mosher was lecturer at the Chautauqua Summer School of Physical Education beginning in 1888, and a founder of the American Posture League. She studied posture and designed streetcar and kindergarten chairs. She wrote Health and Happiness (1911).