"G" is for Guignard, Jane Bruce (1876-1963)

"G" is for Guignard, Jane Bruce (1876-1963). Physician. Guignard attended the College for Women in Columbia and received teacher training at the Peabody Teachers College in Nashville. After teaching in Columbia for several years, her family supported her desire to become a physician. Guignard graduated from the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in 1904 and returned to Columbia as one of the city’s first female physicians. Obstetrics and gynecology became the cornerstone of her fifty-year medical practice. She established a small nursing home of her own in the 1920s that operated as a successful maternity hospital for more than a decade. She then became instrumental in obstetrical facilities at Columbia Hospital and established a training program for black midwives. During her career, Jane Bruce Guignard delivered more than one thousand babies in Richland County.