Lilian Heath (December 29, 1865 – August 5, 1962) was the first woman physician in the state of Wyoming and one of the first to practice medicine west of the Mississippi River.
She is notorious for having used the top of the skull of outlaw Big Nose George Parrott as a doorstop and pen jar.
Early life
Heath was born in Burnett, Wisconsin, then known as Burnett Junction on December 29, 1865. Her family moved to Aplington, Iowa, and later to Laramie, Wyoming, before moving to Rawlins, Wyoming, where her father got a job as a locomotive painter for the Union Pacific Railroad. Heath arrived in the Wyoming territory when she was eight years old. She observed the solar eclipse of July 29, 1878, along with scientist Henry Draper and inventor Thomas Edison, who had come to Wyoming to conduct experiments and had stayed in the Rawlins House, where the Heaths were living at the time.
Heath graduated from Rawlins High School in 1888.
Nursing
In the early 1880s, Heath's father obtained a job for her as an assistant to Thomas Maghee, a physician employed by the Union Pacific Railroad. Heath would wear men's clothing and carried a gun as protection when she went on her house calls at night. She used the skull cap as a doorstop. She kept the skull cap for decades and it was positively identified as an exact match in the 1950s after the remainder of Parrott's body was exhumed and examined. The skull cap was put on display at the Union Pacific Railroad Historical Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, while the remainder of the skull is on display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins.
Medical career
She enrolled in the University of Colorado at Boulder for a year, and then transferred to the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Keokuk, Iowa, where she was one of three women in the entering class of 22 students. Their school year ran from October to March in order to ensure that the cadavers were fresh for students. She graduated from medical school in 1893
In 1895, she was the only woman to attend the American Medical Association's conference in Denver, Colorado.
Retirement and death
Heath retired from practicing medicine about 1909. She practiced medicine for 15 years, but kept her license up to date her entire life.