Elizabeth Reifsnyder, M.D.

Elizabeth Reifsnyder, M.D., born in 1858 and died in 1922, was celebrated as an outstanding woman of Perry County's first century. After graduating from the Women's Medical College at Philadelphia in 1881 and completing an internship, she went to China in 1883, where she opened the first hospital in the Chinese Empire known as the Margaret Williamson Hospital, built from her own sketched plans. From funds she received for her services and left for that purpose when she returned to Liverpool, Pennsylvania, in 1914, broken in health after thirty-one years of faithful medical and humanitarian service, the Elizabeth Reifsnyder Maternity Hospital, the first in the Chinese Empire, was built. During the Chinese Rebellion, as she sat at her hospital desk in China between two opposing battle lines, a bullet struck the wall above her head, piercing a favorite motto: "Trust ye in the Lord forever."

Liverpool, Pennsylvania · United States