[2] Atherton was educated by private tutors, and also at Georgeville Academy and McGill Normal School in Montreal.

She therefore decided to educate herself, serving for two years as principal of Mansonville Academy in Quebec, and tutoring during her whole college course.

Her first course of lectures was at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she studied alongside male students.

Much friction resulted, leading to the founding of the Woman's Medical College, affiliated with Queen's University, Kingston.

At the women's college, Atherton attended three courses of lectures, and earned diplomas in medicine and surgery from Queen's University in 1887.

Atherton was the first woman in the province of Quebec,[1] and the eighth in Canada, to earn a diploma in medicine from a Canadian institution.

Her experience is of interest from the fact that three years later, 1890, the census gave 3,555 women physicians in the United States.

Atherton focused her work on diseases affecting women and children, and performed all the minor and some of the capital gynecological operations.