Doctor and writer, born in Poughkeepsie, New York. She graduated at New York Infirmary Medical College in 1898.

Physician, healthcare reformer, and public health administrator, she was the president of several child health professional societies, and organized the first child hygiene department in New York City, achieving unprecedented breakthroughs in preventive medicine and child hygiene (New York City had the lowest infant death rate of any American or European city during the 1910s).

After her retirement in 1923 she continued her activism as a consultant to national and international organizations for many years. She had a relationship with Australian lesbian writer I.A.R. Wylie.