Reference
- ELIZABETH BLACKWELL(born Feb. 3, 1821, Counterslip, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England–died May 31, 1910, Hastings, Sussex)
Elizabeth Blackwell was an Anglo-American physician who is considered the first woman doctor of medicine in modern times. Blackwell was from a large, prosperous, and cultured family and was well educated by private tutors. Financial reverses and the family’s liberal social and religious views prompted them to immigrate to the United States in the summer of 1832. Soon after taking up residence in New York, her father, Samuel Blackwell, became active in abolitionist activities. The Blackwells moved to Jersey City, N.J., in 1835 and to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1838. Soon afterward Samuel Blackwell’s death left the family in poverty, and Elizabeth and two sisters opened a private school. Later Elizabeth taught school in Henderson, Ky,. and in 1845–47 in North and South Carolina.
During the latter period Elizabeth Blackwell undertook the study of medicine privately with sympathetic physicians, and in 1847 she began seeking admission to a medical school. All the leading schools rejected her application, but she was at length admitted, almost by fluke, to Geneva Medical College (a forerunner of Hobart College) in Geneva, New York. Her months there were extremely difficult. Townspeople and much of the male student body ostracized and harassed her, and she was at first even barred from classroom demonstration. She persevered, however, and in January 1849, ranked first in her class, she became the first woman in the United States to graduate from medical school and the first modern-day woman doctor of medicine.
In April, having become a naturalized U.S. citizen, Blackwell traveled to England to seek further training, and in May she went on to Paris, where in June she entered the midwives’ course at La Maternité. While there she contracted an infectious eye disease that left her blind in one eye and forced her to abandon hope of becoming a surgeon. In October 1850 she returned to England and worked at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital under Dr. (later Sir) James Paget. In the summer of 1851 she returned to New York, where she was refused posts in the city’s hospitals and dispensaries and was even unable to rent private consulting quarters. Her private practice was very slow to develop, and in the meantime she wrote a series of lectures, published in 1852 as The Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls...
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Streaming Media
- Daring Women DoctorsAt this crucial time when women physicians and nurses are contributing significantly to our community’s health, this documentary provides a look at the challenging and illuminating history of 19th century women doctors. Hidden in American history, all-women’s medical schools began to appear in the mid-19th century long before women had the right to vote or own property. Distributed by PBS Distribution.
Online Resources
- Elizabeth Blackwell's Heirs.Sociologists and historians of medicine have documented the under representation of women as physicians in the United States during the critical period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and have speculated on the barriers to women`s greater access to the profession. To date, however there has been no quantitative analysis of factors that may have hindered or facilitated women's efforts to become physicians. Using data on 48 U.S. states from 1880 to /920, this article explores the relative effects on women`s share of physicians of conservative gender culture, male physicians `opposition to women as colleagues, and nursing as an alternative occupation. These analyses demonstrate that women were less common in states with conservative gender cultures, male physicians `actions in opposition to women had little impact (net of other factors), and nursing was not an alternative occupation that attracted women who might otherwise have considered medicine as a career.
- Elizabeth Blackwell: first woman of American medicineFor the first time, the number of women enrolled in U.S. medical schools has surpassed that of men, making this a fitting time to recall the first woman in the States to graduate from medical school [[1]]. When an acquaintance developed cancer, she confided to Blackwell that she wished Blackwell would study medicine, saying that a great deal of her suffering could have been spared her had she only been cared for by a female physician. Eventually, however, Blackwell's clinic began to grow and attracted additional staff, including a woman physician from Poland and Blackwell's own younger sister.
- Feminist theory and historical practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell.This essay assesses the value of social constructivist theories of science to the history of medicine. It highlights particularly the ways in which feminist theorists have turned their attention to gender as a category of analysis in scientific thinking, producing an approach to modern science that asks how it became identified with "male" objectivity, reason, and mind, set in opposition to "female" subjectivity, feeling, and nature.
In the history of medicine this new work has allowed a group of scholars to better explain not only how women were marginalized in the profession but also the manner in which politics, male anxiety about shifts in power relations between the sexes, social and political upheaval, professional concerns, and changes in the family all had an impact on the production of knowledge regarding the female body, including the "discovery," definition, and treatment of a wide range of female ailments, from anorexia nervosa to fibroid tumors.
Perspectives
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women
Elizabeth Blackwell's autobiographic history of the brave accomplishments of those who made the USA's medical profession accessible to women is illuminating and uplifting.Writing toward the end of the 19th century, Blackwell strikes a dignified and resolute tone throughout this memoir. Prior to Victorian times, women had only a diminished role in the medical profession, which - like most other professional trades at the time - was closed to female participation. Elizabeth Blackwell however was adamant that she could serve as a medic; her persistence led her to become the first woman ever taught in medical school, studying in the USA.Blackwell discusses famous figures in English medicine, such as Florence Nightingale, as well as several more obscure - but nevertheless important and influential - contributors to the progress of women in the medical profession. Towards the end of the book, set in 1858, Elizabeth Blackwell revisits England to behold the hospitals and medical community of that nation.
Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Woman Doctor
A biography of the first woman doctor in the United States who worked in England and the U.S. to open the field of medicine to women.