Carolyn Conant Van Blarcom

Trained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses, she entered in 1898 and went on to build a career focused on safer childbirth, better infant care, and stronger preparation for nurses and midwives. Johns Hopkins credits her with pioneering efforts to prevent childhood blindness through improved hygiene and maternal and infant care.

Her work took her from obstetrics leadership at Johns Hopkins to senior roles at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis and the Maryland State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis. She also served as executive secretary of the New York Association for the Prevention of Blindness, became the first trained nurse registered as a midwife with New York City’s Department of Public Health, and later directed the Atlantic Division of the American Red Cross, helping equip nurses for overseas service during World War I.

She is also remembered as an important writer and teacher. In 1922 she published Obstetrical Nursing, a widely used textbook, and later wrote books including Getting Ready to be a Mother and Building the Baby. Johns Hopkins also notes that she helped organize the curriculum for the first midwifery school in the United States.