HISTORY: Folks often look back with fondness on their school teachers. We found some history of a Smethport High School teacher in the late 1800s who would have been memorable.
Cora Belle Brewster, 1859 — 1937, became a physician, surgeon, medical writer, and editor. She worked as a gynecological surgeon and co-founded two medical journals with her sister, Dr. Flora Alzora Brewster.
Cora Belle was born in Almond, N.Y., to Ephraim J. Brewster (d. 1868) and Mary Burdick Brewster. She was a lineal descendent of Elder William Brewster, chief of the Pilgrim Fathers — the English settlers who traveled to America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony.
She studied at Alfred University before working as a teacher for several years, including at Smethport. After that she went to Chicago for further education, and then to Baltimore where she began to study medicine, moving to Boston and then to Paris to finish her studies.
In 1886, she returned to Baltimore and began the practice of her profession in the treatment of “female diseases,” establishing a sanatorium at 1027 Madison Ave. It was fully equipped and staffed.
She and her sister Dr. Flora Brewster created hospital journals called The Baltimore Family Health Journal and The Homeopathic Advocate and Health Journal.
In 1890, she became a gynecological surgeon at the new Maryland Homeopathic Hospital and Free Dispensary. In 1900, she presented a paper about “Reflex Ovarian Pain” at the annual conference of The American Institute of Homeopathy. Cora Belle was prominent in her field, and a 1907 New York Tribune article called her “one of the foremost women physicians in the country.”
The Homeopathic Advocate and Health Journal is available for purchase online.
