Rebecca Lee Dorsey

Rebecca Lee Dorsey (born August 30, 1859, Maryland, U.S.—died March 29, 1954, Los Angeles, California) was a U.S. physician who was a pioneer in the field of endocrinology and the study of hormones. She was one of the first female doctors to practice medicine in Los Angeles. According to her unpublished memoirs (which are thought to contain significant embellishments), Dorsey was self-sufficient from a young age; she nursed her mother through tuberculosis and worked to earn money for her siblings’ care. She later moved from her childhood home in Maryland to Philadelphia and became a servant, using the money to put herself through grammar school. She attended Wellesley College and supported herself by doing menial jobs for other students. Similarly, while earning her medical degree at Boston University, she cared for sick people in order to provide herself with an income. During that time she developed symptoms of tuberculosis. She graduated and the following year traveled to Europe, where she spent the next few years studying and pursuing treatment for her illness. Dorsey underwent an experimental treatment for the disease, and her health improved. After returning to the United States, she settled in Los Angeles in 1886.

Dorsey began her own medical practice and worked out of St. Vincent’s Medical Center. She drove a horse and buggy to the various homes and ranches that required her services. Her practice concentrated on obstetrics, pediatrics, and, later, endocrinology, and she was said to have been the attending physician at over 4,000 births during her lifetime. Perhaps her most famous delivery was Earl Warren, who grew up to become a governor of California and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Dorsey said that she never lost a baby or mother during delivery and attributed that accomplishment to her adherence to four rules: (1) she had a perfect understanding of the measurement of a mother’s pelvis as well as the size and weight of the child; (2) she advocated good prenatal care; (3) she had a strictly aseptic technique; and (4) she made sure that the afterbirth was completely delivered. She also claimed that she never had a single case of puerperal, or childbed, fever among her patients, owing to her knowledge of sterilization, which she learned from Joseph Lister during her time in Europe. Dorsey was also skilled in the use of forceps and caused no serious injury to any of the babies she delivered.

Dorsey claimed to have performed the first three successful appendectomies in Los Angeles county and to have administered the first diphtheria inoculation in Los Angeles about 1893. She also helped establish the first training school for nurses in the city. During World War I she consulted for the U.S. secretary of war regarding the number of women nurses available in the United States and offered suggestions for a rapid multiplication of trained women available in a time of emergency. After 60 years of practice, she retired to her ranch near Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley, where she became a pioneer in date farming.