Emily Barringer

Emily Dunning Barringer (1876 to 1961) was the first female ambulance surgeon in the world and the first woman to secure a surgical residency. Born Emily Dunning in Scarsdale, New York, she was prepared for medicine at Cornell University and earned her medical degree in 1901 at the Cornell University School of Medicine. Gouverneur Hospital in New York City refused her an internship at first, then accepted her the following year with political and religious support, making her the first woman admitted to postgraduate surgical training in a hospital. Fellow residents gave her difficult on-call schedules and harassed her, which she later described in her autobiography. She married the physician Benjamin Barringer in 1904, and during the First World War she helped lead fundraising for ambulances sent to Europe as vice-chair of a committee of the American Women's Hospitals.