On the Fiftieth Anniversary of Dr. Tjomsland's Death

A year ago I could never have imagined that I would become so deeply entwined in the story of a woman born more than a century before I was and whose life was so remarkable and completely forgotten that I was probably the first person since her death to bring her story back into the light of day. Dr. Anna Tjomsland came to my attention early this year because I knew that a number of women physicians had served in the US Army in World War 1 and she was the lucky one whose papers were preserved to enough of a degree that such research as I would require for a public display and presentation would be possible. Through more than ten months of research and teaching I have brought her story to the public, and through that and my writing I hope that more and more people will know the great progress she and her colleagues made for women and for medicine. When Dr. Tjomsland died, her obituary appeared in only a single periodical that I have thus far been able to find, The Journal of the History of Medicine, almost ten months after her death. Otherwise her passing was completely unremarked and it does not seem right to allow that to happen again now on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, so this is my quick and inadequate tribute to her in between studying for finals and preparing my master's thesis for submission.

Dr. Anna Tjomsland, early 1920s

Courtesy of the Cornell University Archives and Special Collections

Anne Tjomsland Papers Box 4 Folder 8

Scan (C) DaughtersOfAesclepius.blogspot.com

Dr. Tjomsland was born in Sogne, Kristiansand, Norway, on 23 September 1880, to a middle class family. Although her mother died young, her father always provided for her academic enrichment, which led to her love of art and literature and desire to study medicine. In 1899 she after the death of her father she followed her sisters west to the United States with the intent of becoming a physician, which she did after learning English, graduating top of her class in high school, and working her way through both a bachelor's (1909) and medical (1914) degree at Cornell University. She was not the only female medical student at Cornell at the time, and it was with her fellow students that she worked so hard to become the first group of female internes to be accepted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This was where I first met her, in a photo that showed her with her stony expression posing in her Bellevue Ambulance uniform. She was thirty-four years old. Soon afterwards she was appointed resident surgeon on the children's ward at Bellevue Hospital.

Dr. Anna Tjomsland serving on the Bellevue Ambulance, 1916

Collier's Weekly Volume 50 no.15, 23 December 1916, page 13

Scan from hathitrust.org

When the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, the US Army Medical Corps began recruiting personnel and in July 1917 Bellevue Hospital chose to form their own hospital unit for war service. A large portion of the staff enlisted in this capacity, but Dr. Tjomsland, being female, was turned away from service as a physician, so she enlisted instead as a secretary and it was in this capacity that she sailed with the Bellevue unit in February 1918. The Bellevue unit became Base Hospital Number 1 and was established at Vichy, France, where over the course of the next year they treated over 60,000 wounded Allied soldiers. Physicians were needed far more than secretaries, so Dr. Tjomsland was pulled from that duty and given charge of her own ward, taking care of serious surgical cases. During this early part of her service was twice recommended for full commission and twice refused on the grounds that there was no known procedure for commissioning women in the Medical Corps. Irrespective of the fact that women physicians were contracted beginning in May 1918, it took the Medical Corps until December 1918 to contract Dr. Tjomsland. She was honorably discharged in March 1919 when Base Hospital Number 1 closed and served six more months in France with the Red Cross. Her war service totaled two and a half years and in 1941 she published a book about the service of the Bellevue Hospital unit in France.

 Dr. Tjomsland in uniform

Cornell University Archives and Special Collections

Anne Tjomsland Papers Box 3 Folder 38

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Upon her return to the United States, Dr. Tjomsland continued to work as a physician an anesthetist. She was for several years instructor of anesthesia at St. Luke's Hospital, now Mount Sinai Hospital and the Icahn School of Medicine. She was also deeply interested in medical history; later in life she was a dedicated member of the American Association for the History of Medicine and served as a translator for many scandinavian medical texts and histories. A broken shoulder ended Dr. Tjomsland's medical career in 1958 and she retired with her sisters to dedicate her time to the history of medicine. She died on 19 December 1968 at the age of 88. She was survived by her sisters Mina and Inga Chumsland and nephew Olav Tjomsland and preceded in death by her brother. Her gravesite location is unknown, but her papers are all kept in the Cornell University Archives and Special Collections and it is thanks to that generous donation that any of this was possible.

Dr. Tjomsland (far right) with her sisters Mina and Inga Chumsland (the two women standing beside Anna, right to left)

Courtesy of the Cornell University Archives and Special Collections

Anne Tjomsland Papers Box 4 Folder 1

Scan (C) DaughtersOfAesclepius.blogspot.com

I expect that I will be posting more specifics about Dr. Tjomsland as I continue to read through her papers, so remain around for those. There are specific documents that I will be highlighting, and of course her story will soon be published as an academic paper and, later, a full-length book. Today she is remembered.