Anne Penland
Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Anne Penland 1885 1976. Nurse anesthetist. Her WWI service influenced British medical corps to train female anesthetists, 1918. Home was here.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Anne Penland was a pioneering nurse anesthetist whose service during World War I proved that women could safely administer anesthesia at the front. Her work so impressed observers that in 1918 the British medical corps began training female anesthetists of their own. Her home stood at this site in Asheville.
Why it matters
Penland helped establish nurse anesthesia as a profession open to women, an advance born of wartime necessity that reshaped medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Related people
- · Anne Penland
Related events
- · World War I
Themes & tags
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Anne Penland
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In 1918, as the Great War ground on and the demand for skilled medical care overwhelmed the Western Front, American nurse anesthetist Anne Penland crossed the Atlantic to serve. Anesthesia was a young specialty, and in Britain the delicate work of putting patients under was still reserved for physicians. Penland's steady, expert practice at the front proved so persuasive that the British medical corps changed course and began training its own women as anesthetists — a first for that service. She later returned to Asheville, where this marker notes her home once stood.
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