wished to study at Harvard Medical School, but the medical programme did not accept women (this was the case until 1945, though the first woman had applied nearly 100 years earlier, in 1847). The program actually did accept women in theory but would not give them a degree. When Taussig was told this by the dean of the medical school, she asked why anyone would want to attend without any hope of getting a degree, to which the dean replied, "That is what we are hoping." Taussig responded, "Well, I shall not be the first to disappoint you," and left. Instead she considered applying to study public health, partially because her father thought it a more suitable field for women, but learned that as a woman she could attend the programme but would not be recognised with a degree. She later reported asking the dean "Who wants to study for four years and get no degree for all that work?", and his replying "Nobody, I hope." Taussig ended up taking classes at Boston University in histology, bacteriology, and anatomy, without expecting to receive a degree. She had to sit apart from her male colleagues at the back of lecture theatres and was not supposed to speak to them. As an anatomy student at Boston University in 1925, she published her first scientific paper on studies of ox heart muscles with Alexander Begg. With the encouragement of her professor Alexander Begg, Taussig applied to transfer to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, one of the few medical schools to admit women at the time, and was accepted as a full-degree candidate. After completing her MD degree in 1927 at Johns Hopkins, Taussig remained for one year as a cardiology fellow and for two years as a pediatrics intern, and received two Archibald Fellowships, spanning 1927–1930. Taussig wanted to specialise in Internal Medicine, but there was only one position available for a woman in that field, and it was already taken; she therefore decided to specialise in pediatrics, and ended up working in pediatric cardiology, a field that was still in its infancy. Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt Concept Taussig's early career in pediatric cardiology at Johns Hopkins consisted of studying babies with congenital heart defects and rheumatic fever, an inflammation of the heart and other organs resulting from bacterial infection, which was at the time a major source of child mortality. In the