Elizabeth D. A. Cohen (1820-1921)

 

Elizabeth Magnus was born in 1820 in New York City. She met and married Aaron Cohen, a doctor, in New York, and together they had five children. Her commitment to medicine began when one of her young sons died of measles. In 1853, her husband moved to New Orleans to study surgery and she moved to Philadelphia to study medicine at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. The school was the first women’s medical school in the nation, and the second in the world, founded in 1850.

After Cohen graduated from medical school in 1857, she joined her husband in New Orleans. She was the first woman to practice medicine in Louisiana. However, she was recognized only as a midwife or “doctress” until 1876, when she was finally recognized as a physician. Throughout her career as a doctor, she primarily treated women and children. She retired in 1887 and widowed, she took up residence at the Julius Weis Home for the Aged. The Home (named for Weis in 1898) was originally established in 1862 when Touro Infirmary was converted into a “home for the Jewish Aged” to prevent it from being overtaken by the Union Army.

Until the end of her life, she was a strong supporter of women’s suffrage. In an interview in the Times Picayune published in 1920, she stated “I’m glad to see the girls of today getting an education. In my youth you had to fight for it. And I believe in suffrage, too—things will be better when women can vote and protect their own property and their own children. Even if I am a hundred, I’m for votes for women.” She died in 1921 and was buried at Gates of Prayer Cemetery on Canal Street.