Google Doodle honors first Native American physician

Happy 152nd birthday, Dr. Sue.
 By 
Emma Hinchliffe
 on 

Google honored a deserving figure in American history on Saturday: Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American to earn a medical degree.

Picotte was illustrated as the Google homepage's Google Doodle on Saturday in honor of what would have been her 152nd birthday.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Picotte was a doctor and an activist. The Omaha Native American physician advocated for land, and money for the sale of land to be paid to members of the Omaha tribe. As a reformer for public health, she was a leader in the temperance movement and fought tuberculosis on the reservation where she worked as a physician.

She also advocated for the elimination of communal drinking cups and the installation of screen doors to keep out disease-carrying insects, Google said in their description.

The Google Doodle features the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, where Picotte earned her medical degree, and the hospital she built on her hometown reservation in 1913.

Happy birthday, Dr. Sue!

Topics Activism

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Emma Hinchliffe

Emma Hinchliffe is a business reporter at Mashable. Before joining Mashable, she covered business and metro news at the Houston Chronicle.

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