Women's medical schools emerged in the U.S. in the mid-19th century, beginning with the New England Female Medical College and the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. In 1848, the Boston Female Medical College was founded as a school of midwifery whose graduates received certificates in midwifery, rather than M.D. degrees. In 1850, the Female Medical Education Society assumed control of the College and offered Boston's first full medical course for women in 1852. The course, however, was taught by the faculty of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, which was chartered in 1850 and was the first woman's medical college empowered to confer the M.D., a power neither explicitly granted nor denied in the charter of the Boston society. Assuming that it had the power to do so, the Boston Female Medical College awarded its first M.D.'s in 1854. In 1856, a revised charter changed the name of the school to the New England Female Medical College and explicitly entitled it to confer the M.D.

The success of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and the New England Female Medical College inspired the establishment of similar schools throughout the northeast and the midwest. Between 1850 and 1895, at least nineteen medical colleges for women were established. By 1910 only two survived: the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (formerly the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania) and the New York Woman's Medical College, a homeopathic institute. Access for women to co-educational medical schools, financial difficulties, and the impact of the Flexner Report on the accreditation of professional schools in the early 20th century contributed to the decline and closing of the women's medical schools. The Medical College and Hospital of Pennsylvania is the only remaining medical college which was originally established for the medical education of women.

Researchers seeking further information on women's medical colleges might wish to consult the following sources:

For published articles, Women in Medicine: A Bibliography of the Literature on Women Physicians, Sandra L. Chaff, ed. (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1977).

For material in the MCP Archives and Special Collections on Women in Medicine, see Guide to collections in the Archives & Special Collections on Women in Medicine.