Anna Heer

Anna Heer was a Swiss physician, born in Olten in 1863 and dead in Zurich in 1918, who specialised in obstetrics, surgical gynecology and social medicine. Her doctoral dissertation, on skull fractures, was published in 1893 in the journal Bruns Beitrage zur Klinischen Chirurgie. Having seen that the quality of nursing varied, and being interested in the education and social emancipation of women, she worked with Ida Schneider and Marie Vögtlin to found one of the first women's hospitals in Zurich, the Swiss School of Nursing and Hospital for Women, which was Switzerland's first professional nursing school. In 1897 she became chief physician of the hospital and held that post for the rest of her life, and she led the nursing school from 1901, serving as its medical superintendent for seventeen years. She also founded the Zurich Association of Nurses in 1909 and, with Walter Sahli, the first secretary of the Swiss Red Cross, the Swiss nurses alliance in 1910, which she presided over until 1916. She died of sepsis on 9 December 1918. A street in Zurich bears her name and a postage stamp carried her image in 1963.