Agnes Blackadder was born on December 4, 1875 in Dundee, Scotland. She was a spectacular student, earning her MA degree when she was 20 and continuing on to become a medical doctor. She won first prizes in six different subjects along the way.
Once she earned her medical degree, Blackadder moved to London in 1901, where she specialized in dermatology, electrotherapy, and was a very early practitioner of radiography. During World War I she traveled to France where she pioneered understanding of the effects and treatment of injuries caused by poison gas. While she was in France she borrowed a piano, installed it in the hospital where she worked, and studied the effects her playing had on patients. She published that research in the 1923 book Music, Health, and Character.
She returned to London after the war and resumed her medical practice, while at the same time editing the textbook Savill’s System of Clinical Medicine and embarking on her own study of ancient history — which she also published, in 1955, in Alexander the Great and his Times.
She was the first female physician to be appointed to a hospital that didn’t exclusively serve women. She was also one of the first (possibly the very first) to begin using portable x-ray machines during diagnosis. and if you happen to visit the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, you can tour Agnes Blackadder Hall, the first building at that school to be named after a women. It might not be a particularly interesting tour, though; Agnes Blackadder Hall is a dormitory.
