Harriet Lawrence (1883-1974) was physician and among the earliest pathologists in the United States, being the first woman known to practicce pathology in Oregon.[1]
Harriet Jane Lawrence was born on September 13, 1883, in Kingsbury, Maine.[2]
While paying her tuition by teaching, Lawrence attended college and medical school. She was one of six women graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1912. She later received the 1963 Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University in acknowledgment of her contributions to medicine and work to advance women in the field.[3]
Census records from 1920, 1930, and 1940 show Lawrence by her birth name and those records indicate that she had a daughter named Elizabeth.[4]
She moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1912 and began to work with Ralph Matson, who was a tuberculosis specialist. The next year, Lawrence opened her own laboratory in the Selling Building, where she worked for the next 50 years as a “microbe hunter". Lawrence lived on Peacock Lane in Portland, Oregon, where at one point she kept more than 200 guinea pigs for use in experimentation with serums.[5]
Lawrence became a fellow with the newly formed American Society of Clinical Pathologists in 1927. The goal of the organization was to advance the field of clinical pathology and to ensure it was on equal ground with other specialized areas of medicine.[6] She was a member of the Medical Club of Portland and the Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.) Sisterhood, which was an international organization that worked to provide educational opportunities for women. She helped Dr. Alan L. Hart in his 1917 transition to male and provided a professional recommendation for him for a position as a physician at the Albuquerque Sanatorium.[7]
She successfully created a serum therapy to treat those infected with the 1918 Flu Pandemic and helped distribute it.[8] She used an influenza culture provided by the Oregon State Board of Health that had been obtained from a navy yard in Bremerton, Washington. It wasn't known at the time that influenza was caused by a virus. Lawrence's serum targeted the secondary bacterial infection instead. President Woodrow Wilson honored Lawrence for her work.
She retired in 1967 and died in Portland on February 28, 1974.[9]