Love Gantt

Love Rosa Hirschmann was born in Camden, South Carolina, the daughter of Solomon Hirschmann and Lena Nachman Hirschmann. Her family was Jewish; her father was an immigrant from central Europe.[1]

Educated in the Charleston, South Carolina public schools, she was one of the first two women to graduate from the Medical College of South Carolina when she finished her medical degree there in 1901.[2] She then trained at the New York Ophthalmic and Aural Institute under the supervision of Jacob Hermann Knapp, and at the New York University Eye and Ear Clinic.[3]

Upon her return to South Carolina, Hirschmann briefly became the staff physician at Winthrop College before leaving to marry Robert Joseph Gantt. She set up a private practice in 1905 in ophthalmology and otolaryngology[4] and began a second career of public service.[3] She was the second woman physician in the United States to become board-certified.[5]

As president of the American Medical Women's Association, Gantt persuaded their associated American Women's Hospitals Service to start a mobile public health service in the southern Appalachians, working with Hilla Sheriff[6] to bring vaccinations, nutritional education, prenatal care, dental examinations, and preventive health screenings to remote places in the South.[2][7] Gantt served on the South Carolina Board of Public Welfare for five years and was legislative chairman of the South Carolina Equal Suffrage League.[1]

Gantt "organized and headed the Spartanburg Health League, the Spartanburg Anti-Tuberculosis Association, and the public health and legislation committees of the South Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs."[3] During World War I, she organized Liberty Loan drives, served on a draft board, directed recreation at Camp Wadsworth, and was commissioned as a medical examiner for Air Force pilots.[1][2][8] She founded the Sisterhood of Temple B'nai Israel, and was president of the South Carolina Federation of Temple Sisterhoods.[1][9]

In 1905, Hirschmann married Robert Joseph Gantt, an attorney.[2] In 1935, she died at the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia from an embolism after surgery for uterine cancer, at the age of 59.[3][10] There is a historic marker about Rosa H. Gantt located near the site of her medical office in Spartanburg's Morgan Square.[4]

• Ogilvie, Marilyn & Harvey, Joy, eds. (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: Pioneering Lives From Ancient Times to the mid-20th Century. Vol. 1: A-K. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-92039-6.

• Christopher T. Leffler (2022), "Love Rosa Hirschmann Gantt (1875-1935), a Eugenics Advocate: School Eye Exams, Pellagra Panic, Baby Contests, and Hereditary Cataracts in South Carolina" ; a medical historian's study, finding eugenic aspects in Gantt's public health work