Anna Honzáková

Anna Honzáková was a Czech physician, born in 1875 and dead in 1940, who became the first woman to graduate in medicine from the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, taking her degree on 17 March 1902. She was the third Czech woman to qualify as a doctor, after Bohuslava Kecková and Anna Bayerová, who had both studied at Swiss universities and had to practise abroad because their degrees were not recognised at home. At first she was allowed only to attend lectures and not to sit examinations, and after about five years she was allowed to take the examinations for everything she had studied. After graduating she worked without pay as a trainee under Charles Maydl, the founder of Czech surgery and anaesthesiology, but lost the place when he died and could not obtain a post in the civil hospital. She then ran a private gynecological practice in Na Moráni street in Prague for thirty-five years, until her death, and also served as school doctor for the Minerva Grammar School. She wrote a biography of Anna Bayerová, co-wrote a publication on protecting children from tuberculosis with Klementina Hanušová, and created a fund to support sick and poor women.