Smith began her medical career at the
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London. She then moved to
Oxford, where she worked for
Herbert Seddon's
peripheral nerve injury unit. She was a reader in medicine at
Oxford University from 1954 to 1961, and also became an honorary fellow of
St Hugh's College, Oxford. In 1959, she travelled to Morocco at the request of the
World Health Organization to investigate an outbreak of paralysis that was discovered to be caused by contamination of cooking oil with
orthocresyl phosphate. She was appointed
OBE in 1962 for her work on the treatment of tuberculous meningitis and was elected
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1965. ==Later life==