Cornelia Jacoba Elisabeth Backer (Physician)
A Young Woman Facing Mortality with Knowledge: The Life and Symbolism Behind the Ex Libris of C.J.E. Backer In the interior of three well ‑ used psychiatric textbooks lies a story far larger than the volumes themselves: the story of Cornelia Jacoba Elisabeth Backer, born in 1907 in the Dutch East Indies, who would become one of the early generations of academically trained female physicians in the Netherlands. Her presence appears in the form of a striking ex libris, dated February 1926, pasted neatly onto the endpapers of her books; a visual manifesto of a young woman preparing to enter a profession still dominated by men. A Pioneer in a Changing Medical Landscape Backer studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam, completing her medical degree in 1933. At that time, female physicians were still rare; the first Dutch woman to qualify as a doctor had done so only a few decades earlier. Backer belonged to the first wave of women who entered medicine not as e...
