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Ann Preston (December 1, 1813 – April 18, 1872) was an American doctor and educator.

Biography
Born in West Grove, Pennsylvania, as one of eight siblings, she was raised as a Quaker by a Quaker minister Amos and his wife Margaret (née Smith) Preston. Three of their children were girls, but Ann was the only girl to survive to adulthood. She was educated in a local school and later attended a boarding school in Chester, Pennsylvania. Ann left boarding school to return home and care for her terminally-ill mother.

She then became active in the abolition and temperance movements and Ann became a member of the Clarkson Anti-Slavery Society. Her temperance work aroused her interest in physiology and hygiene. Studied Latin on her own time along with those subjects. After educating herself in the subjects of physiology and hygiene she taught other interested women. In 1847, became a medical apprentice in the office of a physician friend in PA. 2 years after apprenticeship, refused admission to all 4 PA medical colleges. The four medical colleges were College of Philadelphia, Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, Medical Dept. of Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia College of Medicine. After her younger brothers were old enough to care for themselves, she worked as a schoolteacher. Later, in 1849, Ann published a book of nursery rhymes, Cousin Ann's Stories. By the 1840s, she started to educate other women about their bodies and taught all-female classes on hygiene and physiology.

Preston was privately educated in medicine by Nathaniel Moseley from 1847-1849. Unable to gain admittance to male medical schools because of biases against women, she entered the Quaker-run Female Medical College of Pennsylvania when it first opened, where she was one of eight women awarded an MD in the first graduating class of 1852. Five out of the eight women were Quakers. After graduating, Preston remained at the college for one additional year to further her education and in 1853, Preston was named the Professor of Hygiene and Physiology.

Preston's dream was to establish a Women's Hospital and in 1858, she found an acceptable establishment and began raising money to fund the hospital. During the American Civil War, the college closed due to lack of financial support. Preston began to suffer from rheumatic fever and exhaustion at this time. She was confined to Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane for three months to recuperate.

Files of Ann Preston

 * Preston Family Bible (includes family register in center), 1838
 * Poem, "The Child's Playhouse", 1842
 * Poem, "To a Departed Sister", 1843
 * Cousin Ann's Stories for Children (Philadelphia, J.M. McKim; 36 pages), 1849
 * System of Human Anatomy, general and special, by Wilson Erasmus, M.D. (Philadelphia), 1850. Owned, signed and annotated.
 * Address on the Occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital, by George B. Wood, M.D., 1851. Owned, signed and annotated.
 * Addresses and lectures (including an introductory lecture, 2 valedictory addresses, and "Women as Physicians", 1855, 1858, 1867, 1870.
 * Letter to the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital, 1856.
 * Letters to Sarah Coates, 1831 March 21, undated.
 * Poem, "It's Good to Live. A Thanksgiving Hymn", undated.
 * Poem, "Remember me when far away...", undated.
 * Letters to Sarah Coates, 1831, 1846, undated.
 * Letters to unknown recipients, 1831, 1854.
 * Letters to Hannah M. Darlington, 1833-1851, undated.
 * Letters to Lavinia M. Passmore, 1843, 1860, 1868.
 * Letters from William Darlington, 1860.
 * "Address in Memory of Ann Preston, M.D.," by Elizabeth E. Judson, M.D., 1873 March 11.
 * Letter to Dr. Alsop, undated.
 * Information regarding the collected copies and locations of originals, 1968-1969.

Quotes
'No lordly Turk, smoking on his ottoman, could better depict the depravation which public manners would suffer, if Turkish women, should openly walk, side by side with fathers, husbands, and brothers, to the solemn Mosque, than some among us have portrayed the perversion our society must undergo if woman shares with man the office of Physician.'
 * “In Ann Preston’s 1858 valedictory address, she speculated that:

“A Mother,” letter to the Herald Tribune, Mar. 5, 1870. WMC, College Scrapbooks, #3, 1868, 1869, Jan. 1870- Aug. 1871, 86."	'Wherever it is proper to introduce women as patients, there also it is in accordance with the instinct of truest womanhood for women to appear as physicians and students.'
 * "Ann Preston (1813-1872):

Quoted in The Liberated Woman’s Appointment Calendar, Lynn Sherr and Jurate Kazickas, eds. 1975"

Achievements

 * First woman dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania