Marie Elisabeth Zakrzewska (6 September 1829 – 12 May 1902) was a Polish-American physician who made her name as a pioneering female doctor in the United States.

[1] As a Berlin native, she found great interest in medicine after assisting her mother, who worked as a midwife.

During the final partition of Poland, Ludwig Martin Zakrzewski and his wife, Caroline Fredericke Wilhelmina Urban, fled to Berlin, Germany, after losing much of his land to Russia.

[4] Dr. Schmidt was so impressed with Zakrzewska's success that he attempted to appoint her a chief midwife with the rank as a professor at the college.

Without Dr. Schmidt supporting her role as chief midwife, protests led to her early dismissal after only six months in the position.

[4][5] It was here that she was introduced to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to obtain her degree in medicine from a college established solely for men.

[4] Blackwell arranged for Zakrzewska's entry into the Western Reserve University's medical program that was unique in accepting female students.

[5] Two of the other women, Dr. Cordelia A. Greene, of Castile, New York and Dr. Elizabeth Griselle, of Salem, Ohio, would become life-long friends.

[6] No one wanted to share an apartment with a female doctor, so Blackwell arranged for temporary housing at the home of Caroline Severance.

Eventually, Elizabeth Blackwell used the back parlor of her house as a doctor's office where Zakrzewska hung her physician's shingle for the first time.

[5] The tiresome rejections and repeated obstacles to practicing medicine that Blackwell and Zakrzewska encountered sparked the idea of creating their own infirmary to meet the medical demands of women and children.

She fell in love with the city and was offered an appointment as Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children[5] as well as to serve as head of a new clinical program at the Boston Female Medical College.

When the founder of the college, Samuel Gregory, insisted that graduating female physicians would be addressed as "doctresses" instead of doctor, Zakrzewska resigned from her position in 1861.

[4] Reflecting on the many obstacles she encountered in her life, Zakrzewska decided that she wanted to aid aspiring female doctors in some way.

However, many females were denied the opportunity to practice medicine from a hands-on perspective, which to Zakrzewska, is key to becoming an extraordinary physician.

Her staff grew over the years and included such notable physicians as Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Lucy E. Sewall, Dr. Anita Tyng, and Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch.

Admittance into a medical society was a vital way to achieve this because it would signal their social acceptance amongst their male colleagues, and thus the public.

[3] After many hard-fought years practicing medicine and establishing accessible medical education for women, Zakrzewska retired in 1890.

"[3] Marie Zakrzewska died a few years later on May 12, 1902 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts due to what was thought to be a heart attack.

[3] During her service, her colleagues and friends gathered to pay their respects, reading farewell letters that Zakrzewska had written for the occasion.