Background
Hedda Andersson was the daughter of a male laborer named Andersson and the cunning woman Johanna Andersson. On her mother"s side, she descended from a line of medicine women, known to have practiced traditional folk medicine since at least seven generations, dating back to the 17th-century.
Career
She was the second female student at Lund University and the second university-educated woman physician in Sweden. Her grandmother was famous in all Scandinavia as the Lundakvinnan ("Lund-Woman"), and had educated herself to a barber surgeon to avoid being accused of quackery. Hedda Andersson was educated at the school of Maria Stenkula, and was admitted to Lund University in 1880.
She has been referred to as the first female student there, though actually this was Hildegard Björck only shortly before.
She was the only female there until 1882, but she was reportedly treated with respect by her male fellow students. She took her bachelor"s degree in 1887 and her medical license in 1892.
She thereby became the second female physician to have graduated from a Swedish university after Karolina Widerström. She was active as a doctor in Ronneby 1892-1895, in Malmö in 1893-1895 and in Stockholm 1895-1925, after which she settled in Lund.
She also studied in Copenhagen in 1892 and 1895 and under Max Sänger in Leipzig in 1893.