Adelaide Brown: An Online Exhibit of a Stanford Medicine Pioneer

Beginnings

Beginnings

Adelaide Brown MD (1868 - 1939) was a physician and public health advocate for California women and children. She followed in the footsteps of her mother, Charlotte Blake Brown MD (1846 - 1904), one of the first female physicians in California.

In her early work as a physician, Charlotte Blake Brown served the immigrant Chinese women of San Francisco Chinatown. Along with Martha Bucknell MD and Sara Brown MD, she founded the Pacific Dispensary in San Francisco in 1875, a hospital in which all attending staff, interns, and residents were women. Initially barred from the San Francisco Medical Society because of her gender, Dr. Brown later gained membership in 1878.

Charlotte Blake Brown’s daughter Adelaide received her MD from Cooper Medical College (the predecessor to Stanford University School of Medicine) in 1892. Upon completing her degree, Brown studied in gynecological clinics in Europe. She then returned to San Francisco where she joined her mother’s medical practice and later accepted a position at San Francisco Children’s Hospital in 1910.