Laura Ewing Reading

Dr. Reading was born in Queen Anne’s County on April 5, 1850, attended the Chestnut Hill School in Pennsylvania and the State Normal School in Baltimore. She received a degree in medicine from the Woman’s Medical College in Baltimore in 1885 and did post-graduate work at the Women’s Medical College and Johns Hopkins Hospital. In 1902, she was spending time near Tampa, Florida and was the Physician-in-Charge at Oglethorpe-by-the-Sea Sanitarium.

There is a brief article in October of 1910 about the opening of the Queen Anne’s County Hospital, “which was largely the creation of Dr. Laura E. Reading” a member of the County Medical Society. 

She practiced medicine in the Tampa area from 1895 to 1915 when she retired. Before moving to Tampa, she also practiced in Indianan and Georgia. Laura Ewing Reading was a pioneer physician in Florida, and a resident of Tampa, where she had lived for 45 years.

Dr. Ewing-Reading (sometimes it’s hyphenated, other times not) was a life member of the Women’s Medical Society of Baltimore, a member of the Medical & Chirurgical Society of Maryland and the American Medical Association. She was the third woman to pass the State Board Medical Association examination in Florida. Her specialty was obstetrics and gynecology.

Dr. Laura Ewing-Reading died in Tampa, Florida at age 90 in December of 1940.