 Bliss was born in Jamestown, Rhode Island on December 16, 1899.She received her BA from Bryn Mawr College, before going on to work at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a Doctorate of Science.As a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1939, and alongside her colleague Perrin Long, Bliss tested sulfa drugs on animal and then humans before the first case of streptococcus was cured in 1936.