Black American Physicians who changed Healthcare

James McCune Smith was an American physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author who was born into slavery in 1813 in Manhattan and was set free on July 4, 1827, at the age of 14, by the Emancipation Act of New York. Manhattan. He was the first African American to hold a medical degree and graduated at the top in his class at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. After his return to the United States, he became the first African American to run a pharmacy in the nation.

Both Smith and his wife were of mixed-race African and European ancestry. As he became economically successful, Smith built a house in a mostly white neighborhood; in the 1860 census he and his family were classified as white, along with their neighbors. In 1850 they were classified as mulatto, when living in a predominately African-American neighborhood.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born Rebecca Davis, (February 8, 1831 – March 9, 1895), was an American physician, nurse and author. After studying at the New England Female Medical College, in 1864 she became the first African-American woman to become a doctor of medicine in the United States. Crumpler was one of the first female physician authors in the nineteenth century. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings.

Patricia Era Bath (November 4, 1942 – May 30, 2019) was an American ophthalmologist, inventor, humanitarian, and academic. She was the inventor of laser cataract surgery. Her invention was called Laserphaco Probe. She also became the first woman member of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, first woman to lead a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, and first woman elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African-American person to serve as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University. She was also the first African American woman to serve on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath was the first African American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. A holder of five patents, she also founded the non-profit American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.

Alexander Thomas Augusta (March 8, 1825 – December 21, 1890) was a surgeon, veteran of the American Civil War, and the first black professor of medicine in the United States. After gaining his medical education in Toronto in the Province of Ontario, from 1850 to 1856, he set up a practice there. He returned to the United States shortly before the start of the American Civil War.

Augusta offered his services to the United States Army and in 1863, he was commissioned as major and the Army’s first African-American physician; he became the first black hospital administrator in U.S. history while serving in the army. He left the army in 1866 at the rank of brevet lieutenant colonel.

In 1868 Augusta was the first African American to be appointed to the faculty of Howard University and the first to any medical college in the United States.