Gisela von Poswik

Gisela von Poswik was born in 1875, in Naumburg, Germany, the daughter of Count Jacobus Napoleon von Poswik and Maria Johanna Lieskau von Poswik.[1] She earned a nursing certificate from the Lankenau Hospital of Philadelphia in 1903.[2] In 1911, she earned a medical degree at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.[3][4]

Von Poswik served in administrative roles at hospitals in Harrisburg and Philadelphia. She was superintendent of a sanitarium in White Haven, Pennsylvania.[5] In a 1907 article for the American Journal of Nursing, she dispensed advice to nurses, including "Never share a bed with your patient."[6] Other scholarly publications by von Poswik included "The Value of the Roentgen Diagnosis, for the General Practitioner, in Gastro-Intestinal Diseases" (1916).[7] She presented a paper titled "The Value of X-Ray Treatment in Cases of Pyorrhea" at a meeting of the Scranton Dental Association in 1922.[8]

She was the first woman member of the American Roentgen Ray Society, read a paper at the Third International Congress of Radiology in Paris in 1931,[9] and was a member of the American Medical Association of Vienna.[10] From 1916 to 1918, she was chief "roentgenologist" (radiologist) at Hahnemann Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania.[11] Her obituary in The New York Times noted that "she was the first woman physician in the United States to have her own x-ray equipment."[3] She was the founding president of the Lankenau Hospital School of Nursing Alumnae Association.[2]

Gisela von Poswik became a United States citizen in 1919.[12] She died in 1940, in Scranton, aged 65 years.[2][3] A scrapbook of von Poswik's creation, including clippings, notes and photographs, is in the collection of Drexel University College of Medicine Archives and Special Collections.[13]