Anna Bowie, MD (1890-1980)

Dr. Bowie was a Nashville native who graduated from Peabody College and earned a B.S. degree from Vanderbilt University. In September 1915, she enrolled in the University of Texas medical school as one of five women in a class of over 60 men and earned her medical degree in 1920.

When working as an instructor in Pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, while completing an autopsy on a victim of bubonic plague, Dr. Bowie was accidentally infected by the bacteria Yersinia pestis following a needle-stick injury to her gloved left hand. After receiving anti-plague serum and Haffkine’s vaccine, she returned to work in the pathology laboratory four weeks later.

In 1922, she became the first woman named to the faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and served as an assistant in gynecology from 1922-1943. She was the first physician to treat students on the Peabody campus. In 1932, she helped open the Tennessee Birth Control Bureau in Nashville. Dr. Bowie set up a private medical practice from her home in Nashville. Her mother, Eugenia, was the receptionist, and her sisters Van and Byrd (a Vanderbilt School of Medicine graduate), assisted with laboratory work.

Even after her death, she continued her mission of teaching: Dr. Bowie donated her body to Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine.