Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to graduate from medical school, becoming the first female doctor in the US. She pioneered in educating and training women in medicine.
Early Life of Elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821 in Bristol, England, to Samuel Blackwell, a prosperous sugar refiner, and Hannah Blackwell. She was the third daughter in a family of 5 girls and 4 boys. The Blackwell children were privately tutored. The family emigrated to the US when Elizabeth was 11. There, Samuel Blackwell established a sugar refinery.
Samuel Blackwell contracted malaria and died 6 years later. To survive poverty, the family ran a boarding school. Elizabeth further taught music and got a teaching job in Kentucky for a term.
Blackwell's Inspiration to Study Medicine
One day Blackwell visited her friend Mary Donaldson, who was dying of cancer. Both friends believed that Mary wouldn't be in that situation had she been treated earlier. Blackwell was inspired more than ever to pursue studies in medicine. She applied to numerous medical schools, and taught in the Carolinas while reading medical books in private.
Medical Student and Internship
She was eventually accepted by Geneva College in New York in 1847. Following her first term at Geneva, Blackwell worked in the women’s syphilis ward at Blockley Almshouse, a Philadelphia charity hospital. She was the only woman on staff and resented by the young resident doctors but Blackwell valued her work there, instilling in her a compassion for women suffering from the disease. Two years later, she graduated at the top of her class, the first American woman to get a medical degree.
She went to Europe and served an internship in midwifery at La Maternité hospital in Paris, the only hospital that accepted a woman doctor. There she contracted an eye disease that resulted in the loss of her left eye and ending her hopes of becoming a surgeon. In 1850, Blackwell began another year of internship at London's St. Bartholomew's Hospital where she and Florence Nightingale met and became friends.
Elizabeth Blackwell the Lady Doctor
Upon her return to the US, she was refused work by hospitals on account that she was a woman. She set up her private medical practice in New York City and provided lectures on female health. Later, she opened a clinic in lower Manhattan, New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children, where the poor could avail medicines and treatment with little or no cost. She was helped by her sister Emily and Marie Zakrzewska, as medical students. She expanded her clinic through fundraising.
In 1857, she opened the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, now New York Infirmary – Beekman Downtown Hospital, in Greenwich Village. With her adopted daughter, Kitty, she also traveled to England to give lectures on women's health and fitness. She also revised her book The Laws of Life, for a British audience.
More New Frontiers for Elizabeth Blackwell
Blackwell organized a Civil War nursing service and established the first visiting nurse program in New York, and began a health-inspection program. In the late 1860s, she realized her dream – the Women’s Medical College, the first such institution that opened in New York City.
In 1869, Blackwell returned to England. She lectured on sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and controversial topics of family planning and sex education for children. She helped found the British National Health Society, taught gynecology at the newly established London School of Medicine for Women, which she helped to establish. She published The Moral Education of the Young, a guide to sex education.
Last Years of Elizabeth Blackwell
She retired from medical practice in 1894, but continued to lecture and write pamphlets on social and medical issues. Her autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, was published in 1895.
Blackwell died of a stroke in May 31, 1910. Her obituary in the London Times stated: “She was in the fullest sense of the word a pioneer.”
Readers may also want to check out: Early Women Scientists and Melanie Klein, Pioneer of Child Psychoanalysis
Sources:
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Magnus Magnusson, Edinburgh, 1990.
The Giant Book of Influential Women by Deborah G. Felder, The Book Company, Sydney, produced by Magpie Books, an imprint of Robinson Publishing Ltd, London, 1997.
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