I’ve been reading a few books on the history of inventions and the everyday objects that we now largely take for granted. One of these, The First of Everything: A Celebration of Human Invention by Steward Ross (London, Michael O’Mara 2019, has a little subsection of women’s firsts, which also includes those for Black and Asian ladies. This include:
The graduation of Rebecca Lee Crumpler in 1864 to become the first Black American women physcian;
Kadambini Ganguly, who became the first woman to be awarded a medical degree in India in 1886;
The opening of the first medical school for women in China, Hackett Medical College for Women in Guangzhou in 1902;
Safiye Ali, who was the first woman to practise medicine in Turkey, who did so from 1922 onwards.
And the graduation of Agnes Savage from Edinburgh University in 1929, who was the first West African woman to qualify as a doctor.
And way back in seventh century al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, Rufaida al-Aslamia became the first Muslim nurse.
Reading the list of female firsts, which includes the first woman to teach medicine way back in the 14th/15th century in Italy reminded me of the TV series about the struggle of the first women to gain a medical education in Britain, Storming the Citadel. This was, I think, put on by the Beeb in the late ’70s early 1980s, round about the same time as their dramatized biography of the life of Lloyd George.
Not all of the firsts are quite so elevated. Among them there’s the first exercise machine, Lownde’s Gymnasticon of 1797, shown in the illustration with a late 18th century Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the spacehopper with this photo of a city gent riding it. Which is almost as strange and bizarre as Monty Python’s ‘Ministry of Silly Walks’.
I don’t where and when this photo was taken, but wherever it was the bus and public transport services must be terrible.
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