Elizabeth Blackwell

American physician

• Born: February 3, 1821
• Birthplace: Counterslip, England
• Died: May 31, 1910
• Place of death: Hastings, England

As the first woman to receive a degree from an American medical school, Elizabeth Blackwell became a leading figure in the drive to open the field of medicine to women.

Early Life

Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821, in a small town near Bristol, England. The third of nine surviving children of Samuel and Hannah Blackwell, Elizabeth joined a family heavily influenced by the progressive and reformist values held by her father. In addition to being a successful sugar refiner, Samuel Blackwell was an outspoken member of his community, having wedded the practice of his Puritan faith with the support of various liberal causes, such as women’s rights, temperance, and the abolition of slavery.

The destruction of his refinery by fire in 1832 led Samuel Blackwell to move his family to America. After a few years spent in New York and New Jersey, the Blackwells came to settle in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May, 1838. Pursued to the end by his monetary troubles, Samuel Blackwell died in August of that year, leaving Hannah, her two eldest daughters, and Elizabeth responsible for providing for the family. They were able to do so by opening what would become a successful boarding school, where Elizabeth spent the first four of her seven years as a teacher.

It was during these seven years, which also included one year in Kentucky and two more in North and South Carolina, that Elizabeth Blackwell began to grow frustrated at the limits of the teaching profession, both in its poor remuneration and its low social status. She also became aware of her growing aversion to the idea of marriage, an institution which, at the time, imposed even greater restrictions than did teaching on the women who entered into it. These realizations became important factors in Blackwell’s decision to pursue a career in the highly respected field of medicine, a field so utterly dominated by men that no woman had ever before received a diploma from an American medical school.

Life’s Work

It was during her final two years teaching in the Carolinas that Elizabeth Blackwell, within the personal libraries of the distinguished physicians John and Samuel Dickson, began her study of medicine. These years of self-education served to prepare Blackwell for her move, in May of 1847, to Philadelphia, the home of several well-respected medical schools to which she would subsequently apply. This application process forced Blackwell to confront the institutional prejudices of the day. Although they were often supported by sympathetic faculty members, her applications were rejected by every medical school in Philadelphia and New York as well as by several rural colleges of much less stellar reputations. It was only when the administration of Geneva Medical College in upstate New York put her application up for review by the all-male student body that Blackwell’s determination won her a chance for a legitimate education. Presented with a woman’s name, the students had thought the submission was a joke and passed it unanimously.

Immediately upon beginning her studies, Blackwell experienced the scorn of both townspeople and fellow students alike. Even the women within the community were taken aback by what they perceived as brash and unfeminine behavior by Blackwell in her pursuit of medical training, and she was often made aware that the idea of a woman physician upset many of those who would one day benefit from the course of action she was endeavoring to take. Gradually, however, Blackwell’s intelligence and doggedness won her great measures of respect from important faculty members and the other students with whom she worked.

After completing an internship in 1848 at the Philadelphia Hospital and writing a thesis based on her experiences there, Blackwell emerged from her course work with a focus that would last throughout her professional career: the importance of preventative care in the form of improved personal hygiene. With this focus established and her studies complete, Blackwell received her medical degree from Geneva Medical College on January 23, 1849. She became the first woman in the United States to ever earn such an honor and was ranked first in her graduating class.

Before she was to begin her career in earnest in New York in August of 1851, Blackwell spent a year and a half abroad, in both England and France, with the intention of enhancing her education. Though received graciously by the medical community in England and invited by prominent staff members of several hospitals to tour their grounds, Blackwell found that in France the only kind of advanced training available to her was as a midwife.

This period in Blackwell’s life is most notable for the eye disease she contracted from a patient during her midwives’ course at La Maternité in Paris, the resulting loss of sight in one eye dashed her hopes of ever becoming a surgeon. Through these trials, Blackwell’s strength of character enabled her to overcome adversity. Toward the end of her stay in Europe, she returned to England and gained valuable clinical experience under the supervision of Dr. James Paget at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. In retrospect, the setbacks she experienced in this interlude abroad helped steel Blackwell for the resistance she encountered in her attempts to establish herself as a practicing physician in New York.

For a woman doctor during the 1850’s, merely finding a place in which to practice proved a near impossibility. Blackwell’s applications to city dispensaries for positions in the pediatric wards were flatly rejected, as were her requests to visit the female wards of a city hospital. These rejections were handed down despite her rather impressive array of degrees and recommendations. Even more indicative of this era’s prejudice was Blackwell’s inability even to rent a space of her own for private practice. No landlord would lease a space for such a disreputable practice, knowing that every other tenant who might be sharing a building with a “female physician” (the contemporary euphemism for “abortionist”) would be forced to move or be shamed.

While overcoming these obstacles and patiently awaiting the growth of her practice, Blackwell succeeded in publishing a series of lectures on hygiene in 1852. Later, in 1853, Blackwell opened a dispensary for the poor, supported by funds she raised herself. Four years later, her dispensary became the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the first hospital completely organized and operated by women. Outside her professional life, Blackwell in 1853 took on the responsibility of adopting a seven-year-old orphan named Katherine Barry who would remain her closest relation for the rest of her days.

In her battle to open the infirmary in 1857, Elizabeth Blackwell was joined by two other women doctors: her younger sister, Emily, who had followed Elizabeth into the profession, and Marie Zakrzewska, a Polish émigré who had been educated at Western Reserve College (later Case Western Reserve University) and who would become the resident physician at the infirmary until 1859. Once this hospital was established, Blackwell’s next major goal was to create a medical college for women with a commitment to rigorous preparation and to the cause of good hygiene. Before this goal was to materialize, however, Blackwell departed in August of 1858 for a one-year stay in Great Britain, where she both practiced medicine and lectured, and also made the acquaintance of such admirers as Dr. Elizabeth Garrett and Florence Nightingale.

Upon Blackwell’s return to the United States, her plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War, during which she became involved in a committee concerned with the status of care for soldiers and also helped to select and train nurses going out into the field. Finally, in 1868, Blackwell brought her quest to fruition as she founded the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary and served as the first chair of hygiene at the college. (The college eventually became part of Cornell’s medical school in 1899, after the university decided to grant admission to women.)

In 1869, Elizabeth Blackwell left the United States to live and work in Great Britain. At first, she took up residence in London, where she practiced privately until she accepted a position at the New Hospital and London School of Medicine for Women in 1875. As a result of her ill health, Blackwell was forced to retire after just one year. Leaving London, she moved with Katherine Barry to Hastings, where Blackwell spent most of her last thirty years. Never one to remain idle for long, Blackwell spent these days writing books, essays, and articles addressing a wide variety of topics, but especially focusing on the issues of medicine and morality. She also visited the continent and traveled to the United States in 1906. In 1907, she suffered injuries as a result of falling down some stairs at her summer house in the Scottish highlands. Blackwell died at her seaside home in Hastings in 1910 and was buried in Scotland.

Significance

It would not be difficult to present Elizabeth Blackwell’s achievements as a list of breakthroughs in the process of opening the field of medicine to women. As the first woman to ever receive a degree from an American medical school, the founder of the first hospital run solely by women, and the founder of one of the earliest medical colleges for women, Blackwell stands as a distinguished pioneer in the fight for a woman’s right to become a practicing physician.

To focus on her breakthroughs alone, however, would unfairly limit the scope of Blackwell’s contribution. From the moment she decided to pursue her degree, Blackwell committed herself to more than mere medicine. Desiring a greater status than was afforded by traditional feminine pursuits and seeking a level of freedom that she could find nowhere else, Blackwell chose to challenge the various obstacles that hindered women from pursuing professional careers. Medicine was the avenue she selected in order to accomplish her ultimate goal of advancing the opportunities available to women. Immersed in her era’s atmosphere of social activism, Blackwell dedicated her work and her writings to causes of morality and equality. The breadth of Elizabeth Blackwell’s influence is amply illustrated by the names of those individuals—people as various as Herbert Spencer and Florence Nightingale, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Eliot—who came to admire and respect Blackwell’s ideas and accomplishments.

Bibliography

Abram, Ruth J., ed.“Send Us a Lady Physician”: Women Doctors in America, 1835-1920. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. Compiled to accompany a museum exhibit, this collection of essays celebrates the pioneering spirit of early women physicians and describes the experience of women in the health professions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Blackwell, Elizabeth. Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women. Reprint. Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2004. Originally published in 1895, this work consists of autobiographical sketches that delineate the enormous struggle Blackwell had to endure in order to enter and graduate from medical school. It is clear that she was fully conscious of her historical role.

Brown, Jordan. Elizabeth Blackwell. New York: Chelsea House, 1989. This biography is part of the publisher’s American Women of Achievement series. Although primarily intended for young adult readers, the book provides an excellent introduction to Blackwell’s life and examines the various issues that confronted her in her quest to provide opportunities for women in the medical profession.

Buckmaster, Henrietta. Women Who Shaped History. New York: Collier Books, 1966. Six remarkable women of the nineteenth century are the subject of this group biography. Elizabeth Blackwell’s life is included with those of Prudence Crandall, Dorothea Dix, Mary Baker Eddy, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman.

Hume, Ruth Fox. Great Women of Medicine. New York: Random House, 1964. Hume devotes her first chapter to Blackwell and offers the reader a compact biography that emphasizes Blackwell’s early life and career in the United States until her retirement in England.

Morantz-Sanchez, Regina. “Feminist Theory and Historical Practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell.” History and Theory 31 (December, 1992): 51-69. A scholar analyzes Blackwell’s writings to demonstrate how the discussion of scientific topics in these works reflected Blackwell’s feminist concerns. Morantz-Sanchez also notes that the growing predominance of laboratory-based treatment of disease and the rigorous application of scientific methodology moved the practice of medicine away from many of the nurturing, feminine aspects of health care championed by Blackwell and her colleagues.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Originally published in 1985, this book is a history of women physicians from colonial times to the present. Chapter 7 focuses on Blackwell. The 2000 edition includes a preface by the author, surveying recent scholarship and describing women’s changing role in medicine during the 1980’s and 1990’s.

More, Ellen S. Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Blackwell’s career is included in this history examining how women physicians work to balance the demands of their profession with society’s expectations for women.

Ross, Ishbel. Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the First Woman Doctor. New York: Harper & Row, 1949. Ross wrote a full-length biography of Blackwell with the aid of interviews with family members. Full of fascinating detail, the book chronicles Blackwell’s work as well as her personal life and her many associations with major figures of the nineteenth century. It places her within the reform movement of the era.

Wilson, Dorothy Clarke. Lone Woman: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the First Woman Doctor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. Novelist, dramatist, and biographer, Dorothy Clarke Wilson brings her dramatic skills to enliven this solid biography that is based on family reminiscences and papers as well as extensive research in primary sources.