Career
In 1862, she accompanied the army of Ulysses South. Grant during the Battle of Shiloh, where she comforted and ministered to the wounded. Later, she served aboard a pair of military hospital ships on the Mississippi, the City of Memphis and the Hazel Dell. When the war ended in 1865, Safford studied medicine, graduating from the Medical College for Women in New York City four years later.
She also studied at the University of Breslaw in Germany, where she performed the first ovariotomy ever done by a woman.
In 1872, Safford opened a private practice in Chicago. She developed a plan for mass housing centered on a common service area for cooperative housekeeping to reduce drudgery for women.
Later, she became Professor of Women"s Diseases at the Boston University School of Medicine and a staff doctor at the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. Among her publications was Health and Strength Papers for Girls.
She died on December 8, 1891.