Woman of the Day pioneering surgeon and author Louisa Martindale, born OTD in 1872 in Leytonstone, had to fight her way through a thicket of male resistance to become Brighton’s first female GP in 1906, and fifteen years later, to found a women’s hospital in Brighton, but she did it for very good reasons. The local hospital refused to employ women doctors. That meant they couldn’t gain experience, and women patients were denied the option of being treated by female doctors who actually understood their female ailments and needs. It’s so obvious that it really shouldn’t need spelling out, should it? Sometimes, women prefer to be treated by women. Since the age of 21, Louisa had already ploughed a hard and lonely road from the time she was admitted to the London School of Medicine for Women, the only medical school that accepted women. Pioneering women doctors including Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Sophia Jex-Blake of the Edinburgh Seven, and Elizabeth Blackwell set it up because they’d had their own experience of male resistance. Once she graduated, Louisa moved north to Hull to set up practice in 1900 with Dr Mary Murdoch. What they found were huge unmet needs in working-class women and children, exacerbated by poor housing, poor or insufficient nutrition, and the lack of any kind of health care. They ran the practice from their shared home on Beverley Road, working long hours, carrying out home visits in harsh conditions, and doing voluntary work, with no financial stability (their fees were modest or waived altogether for the poor). However, when they tried to gain hospital appointments for their patients or obtain second opinions from their male colleagues, they ran into a wall of resistance, outright skepticism that women doctors even had the first clue about medical care, plus a political backlash. Wealthy landlords, factory owners and their pet politicians threatened them with "spectacular scandal" if they didn’t stop highlighting the dire impacts of poverty in the city. Louisa refused to let her patients down but said it took “strong nerves" to keep going. “Everything was wanting except the patients, and they were always there with their insistent demand to get a 'lady' to look at them because she would 'understand'." Six years later and armed with her new doctorate, Louisa returned to Brighton as the city’s first woman GP. Would you like to guess what she found there? Oh yes. More of the same. The difference was that her mother - also Louisa, a committed suffragist and women’s activist - was ready to open up the Lady Chichester Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children with her daughter as volunteer medical officer. The Dispensary treated around 8,000 patients annually but only as out-patients. It couldn’t handle serious medical or surgical cases requiring inpatient care. They had to be referred to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, which employed only male doctors as a matter of policy. In 1911, mother and daughter and other Brighton suffragists added a small 12-bed ward to the Dispensary but faced fierce opposition yet again from the male-dominated medical profession which simultaneously cast doubt on the expertise of women AND treated them as a threat. Seriously, doesn’t it make you feel tired at times knowing so many pioneering women constantly had to battle second-rate men with fragile egos? Louisa built up her skills in gynaecology and obstetrics and ensured that the inpatient ward emphasised holistic recovery - rest, sea-bathing, music, and massage - with marked success. That left her mother, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and a woman with formidable organisational skills, free to get on with fundraising. Let’s be clear: every women-only facility or service ever set up in this country owes its existence to an unpaid army of women who lobbied, raised money, sold their own jewellery or made and sold a lot of cakes, scrubbed, cleaned, worked unpaid shifts or offered their professional services pro bono to get it off the ground. The New Sussex Hospital for Women, one of only five women-officered general hospitals in Britain at the time, was no different. Louisa served as senior surgeon and physician until 1937, later installing an X-ray unit for pioneering cancer treatments, and filling a critical gap in women's healthcare. In fact, as a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, she pioneered the use of deep X-ray therapy in Britain for treating uterine fibroids, breast cancer, and cervical cancer after training in Germany in 1913. She lectured extensively in the UK, US, and Europe on radiotherapy and wrote influential books - The Woman Doctor and Her Future (1922) and her autobiography A Woman Surgeon (1951) - promoting medicine as a viable career for women. Louisa, who volunteered her surgical and medical services during both World Wars, died in 1966 at the age of 93, but in her busy career, did have any time for herself? I’m pleased to tell you that she met her lifelong partner, Ismay FitzGerald - "A broadminded and tolerant Irish Roman Catholic, keen on horse racing, with a legal mind, lovable, real Irish character, full of contradiction and charm” - in 1910. “And we laughed because we were both attired in cream lace dresses…With her, I had found my full share of love and friendship."