Women’s History Month - Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell, that is Dr Elizabeth Blackwell seems to be a woman of integrity, grit and a voice for woman.

Elizabeth’s interest in medicine stemmed from a friend who sadly died from uterine cancer.  The friend had told her that she may have had less pain and suffering if she had a female doctor. This statement set Elizabeth on to becoming the first female doctor in the United States.  Elizabeth went to Geneva Medical College but had to sit apart from the male students.  Elizabeth was even asked to leave a lecture about reproduction because the male teachers were embarrassed.  You have only read a few sentences but you can probably guess that she was not having that and she stayed in the lecture. Elizabeth graduated first in her class in 1849 and was the first woman in America to receive a medical degree.  I am sure that would have had quite an impact on the male students.

Whilst working one summer at a hospital in Philadelphia, the condition there led Elizabeth to write a these on how good hygiene could avoid the spread of typhus.

On 1857, together with her sister who also became a doctor and another doctor, Dr Marie Zakrewska, they opened the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.  As well as treating the poor, they trained female medical students and nurses. Elizabeth also founded the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary in 1868 and the London School of Medicine for Women, possibly in 1874.

I love Elizabeth for her determination. The seed of one comment form her friend, must have lit a fire in her to understand more about medicine and the care that women needed.

The information here is from the book ‘Women in Science – 50 fearless pioneers who change the world’ by Rachel Ignotofsky.

“If the present arrangements of society will not admit of women’s free development, then society must be remodelled.”  Elizabeth Blackwell