The Boston Hunters and the Doctor Who Applied to Harvard in 1847
The newly launched Women's Pro Baseball League (WPBL) has named its four inaugural teams after influential American women, and one of them carries a distinctly medical legacy. Boston's franchise, the Hunters, honors Harriot Kezia Hunt, a 19th-century physician who in 1847 became the first woman to apply to what is now Harvard Medical School — 179 years before the league's first season.
The other teams follow the same naming theme: the New York Heights honor civil rights leader Dorothy Irene Height, the Los Angeles Queens are named for baseball pioneer Lizzie “Queen of the Diamond” Murphy, and the San Francisco Firebells pay tribute to Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a volunteer firefighter advocate known as Firebelle. All league games are being played in Springfield, Illinois, with the season running through September. On opening weekend, the Queens beat the Heights and the Firebells defeated the Hunters.
Hunt was born in Massachusetts in 1805 and turned to medicine after her sister's severe illness. She practiced without a formal license at a time when medical education and licensing were far less standardized than today. She first applied to Massachusetts Medical College — now Harvard Medical School — after Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to Geneva Medical College. Her second application won provisional acceptance, but a protest by the all-male student body blocked her from attending. Harvard did not admit women until 1945. Hunt later received an honorary medical degree from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1853.
Why Harriot Hunt's Legacy Matters Beyond the Diamond
Why Harriot Hunt's Story Still Resonates
Historians and physicians quoted in the article see Hunt's rejection as an early chapter in a much longer struggle. Miriam Rich, a historian at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, notes that Hunt was one of thousands of women practicing medicine in the 1800s without formal licenses, in an era when licensing was weakly standardized and professional medical societies could enforce the status quo by excluding women and people of color. Hunt herself wrote that her rejection from Harvard sharpened her determination that women were needed in medicine.
A Protest That Delayed Progress for Nearly a Century
Hunt's provisional acceptance was undone by an all-male, all-white class that told faculty its members would revolt at being educated alongside a woman. The same class also protested the presence of Black men admitted to lectures. The episode shows how institutional resistance, not lack of capability, kept medicine closed: Harvard Medical School did not admit women until 1945, almost a century after Hunt first applied.
What the Team Name Adds
WPBL chief marketing officer Kelly Gianopoulos said the league wanted inaugural team identities that honor women whose stories, spirit, and connection to their city could authentically inspire each club. Alison Christy, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Child Neurology, said a sports team bearing Hunt's name brings her legacy to people who might otherwise never hear it. Rich adds that Hunt was ahead of her time in other ways — she was an outspoken abolitionist, treated patients as whole people by considering their social environment, and saw patient education as part of a doctor's responsibility.
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