Sara Josephine Baker

From Philosopedia

Baker, (Sara) Josephine (1873-1945)

A Unitarian, Baker was a physician, a health administrator, and a health reformer.

Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, to a wealthy Quaker family, she decided at the age of 16 to become a physician after her brother and father died of typhoid.

Baker]'s companion was Ida Alexa Ross Wylie, an Australian-born essayist and novelist who wrote The Daughter of Brahma and Life with George, an autobiography.

According to Women Life Scientists: Past, Present, and Future by Marsha Lakes Matyas and Ann E. Haley-Oliphant, Editors (Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society, (1997), Baker faced discouraging discrimination by male students who could not accept a female's working at the Department of Health in New York.

Nevertheless, she became Assistant Surgeon General, a professional woman representative to the League of Nations.