Catherine Chisholm

Catherine Chisholm CBE (2 January 1878 – 21 July 1952) was a British physician and the first female medical graduate of the University of Manchester. She was instrumental in founding the Manchester Babies Hospital, which was opened on 4 August 1914, contributing to her reputation as one of the founders of modern neonatology practice. She was appointed a CBE in 1935 and became the first female Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1949.

Chisholm was born in Radcliffe, Lancashire, a small town near Manchester. She was the eldest daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie Chisholm, himself a graduate of medicine from the University of Edinburgh, and general practitioner in the area. He was supportive of the idea that women should practice medicine at a time when few women were admitted to university to study medicine; and he encouraged Catherine by taking her on his rounds as a GP.

Chisholm entered Owens College, Manchester, in 1895, graduating with a BA in Classics in 1898. She was also awarded the Bishop Lee Greek Testament Prize. She entered the then Owens College Medical School in the university the following year as the first female student to do so – eventually graduating in medicine (MB ChB) from the Victoria University of Manchester, with a first-class degree in forensic medicine, obstetrics, surgery, and pathology.

Following graduation her first year of residency was as a medical officer at Clapham Maternity Hospital, one of the few hospitals in the county that employed only women doctors. She then undertook a further six-month placement at Eldwick Children's Sanatorium in Bingley, Yorkshire.

In 1906 she returned to Manchester to set up General Practice, serving female students at the university and in the local area. In 1908 she became Honorary Physician for children at the Northern Hospital in Manchester, a post she held to 1919 and overlapping with her roles as consultant for Hope Hospital in Salford (1914–36), and consultant to the Babies' Hospital (1914–50).

Her work to establish and then act as consultant to the Manchester Babies Hospital in many ways defined the rest of her career. The hospital was initially created as a small facility with just 12 beds, aimed at providing specialist care for the "more effective treatment of babies and very young children suffering from diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders". It was based on the model of the London Infants Hospital, but, like the Clapham Maternity Hospital, all the doctors were female.

Chisholm travelled to visit the Boston Children's Hospital in 1920, which informed her understanding of rickets in child health and led to the further addition of a special ward for rickets, a human breast milk bank, laboratory, and teaching facilities at the hospital. In 1935 the hospital was renamed the Duchess of York Hospital for Babies to coincide with the opening of a new surgical block by the Duchess of York.

Concurrent to her clinical work she held an academic lectureship at the University of Manchester for over 20 years (1923–1949) on vaccination and the diseases of children.