Dr. Henrietta Banting promoted women in medicine
Henrietta Ball was born in Rock Island on March 4, 1912, and graduated in 1932 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. Following that, she continued her education at the Banting Institute, and she earned her master’s in medical research from the University of Toronto in 1937. The following year she married Sir Frederick Banting, who had co-discovered insulin.
He died two years later in a plane crash while he was in the military.
Lady Banting then entered medical school at the University of Toronto, joining the wartime class of 1945. According to information on the Women’s College Hospital website, she was automatically enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. After the war, Dr. Henrietta Banting enrolled in a post-graduate course in obstetrics and gynecology in London, England. She then taught at a medical school in Hong Kong from 1949 to 1950.
Banting returned to Canada the next year and opened a private practice in Toronto she operated until 1957 when she joined the staff at Women’s College Hospital. A year later she was appointed director of the Cancer Detection Clinic at WCH, a post she held until she retired in 1971.
Before long, however, Banting was diagnosed with cancer and she became a patient of the clinic she directed. She died at the hospital on July 26, 1976 at 64. After her death Women’s College Hospital established the Henrietta Banting Breast Care Centre and the Henrietta Banting Memorial Fund.
The hospital’s website says Banting was a lifelong advocate for women in the field of medicine, but she urged women to consider careers as doctors rather than nurses.