The first female surgeon was likely Queen Shubad of Ur, 3500BCE. However, from the Dark Ages onwards women were ejected from medicine, until the 19th century. Dr James Barry, a celebrated military surgeon (served 1813-1859), was revealed in death to be female, having adopted a male identity to join medical school. Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, the first openly female physician, trained and practiced in New York from 1849. She inspired Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who in 1865 became the first woman in Britain to join the medical register via a loophole, working as a physician, surgeon and Dean. In 1876 she successfully campaigned for any qualified applicant to be licenced by the British medical board regardless of gender, enabling her daughter, Louisa Garrett Anderson, to earn an MD in 1900 in London by more straightforward means. When WWI began, aware Britain would reject her help as a female surgeon, Louisa and her anaesthetic colleague Dr Flora Murray instead gave aid by opening 2 military hospitals in France. In 1915, they were invited back to London to open Endel Street Military Hospital, where Dr Garret Anderson was chief surgeon. In 1979, both were honoured as commanders of the British Empire. In the US Civil War, Dr Mary Edwards Walker, who graduated in NY 6 years after Blackwell, joined the army in 1862 as a military surgeon, though she was listed in official records as a nurse until her requests for recognition including letters to President Lincoln finally led to correct use of her title of surgeon. She remains the only female recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honour. It is important we acknowledge the barriers women before us overcame, and recognise their key achievements towards gender equality in surgery today.