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For the English botanical illustrator, see Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator).
Elizabeth Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell
Born February 3, 1821
Bristol, England
Died May 31, 1910
Hastings

Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910) the first woman doctor in the United States. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school (M.D.), a pioneer in educating women in medicine, and was prominent in the emerging women's rights movement.

Contents

Life

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Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821 in Bristol, England, the third of nine children born to sugar refiner Samuel Blackwell and his wife Hannah née Lane.1 Blackwell could afford to give his numerous sons an education and also believed that his daughters should get the same education as boys, so had them tutored by the house servants. In 1832, the family immigrated to the United States, and set up a refinery in New York City. The Blackwells were very religious Quakers. They believed that all men and women were equal in the eyes of God. Due to their Quaker beliefs, the Blackwell family was anti-slavery. An opportunity was presented to Mr. Blackwell that allowed him to open a refinery in Ohio, where slaves wouldn't be needed to harvest the sugar. So, the family moved to Cincinnati. Three months after they moved her father got very sick with biliary fever and died. After the death of her father, she took up a career in teaching in Kentucky, to make money to pay for medical school. Desiring to apply herself to the practice of medicine, she took up residence in a physician's household, using her time there to study from the family's medical library. She became active in the anti-slavery movement (as did her brother Henry Brown Blackwell who married Lucy Stone, a suffragette). Another brother, Samuel Charles Blackwell, married another important figure in women's rights, Antoinette Brown. In 1845 she went to North Carolina where she read medicine in the home of Dr. John Dickson. Afterwards she read with his brother Dr. Samuel Henry Dickson in Charleston, South Carolina.

She attended Geneva College in New York. She was accepted there — anecdotally, because the faculty put it to a student vote, and the students thought her application was a hoax — and braved the prejudice of some of the professors and students to complete her training. Blackwell is said to have replied that if the instructor was upset by the fact that Student No. 156 wore a bonnet, she would be pleased to remove her conspicuous headgear and take a seat at the rear of the classroom, but that she would not voluntarily absent herself from a lecture. However, most of the faculty and students were very polite to her. Elizabeth's male peers treated her as an older sister. On January 11, 1849, she became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.

Banned from practice in most hospitals she was advised to go to Paris, France and train at La Maternité, but while she was there her training was cut short when she caught a terrible eye infection, purulent opthalmia, from a baby she was treating. She had her eye removed and replaced with a glass eye. In 1857 Elizabeth along with her sister Emily and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, founded their own infirmary, named the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. During the American Civil War, Elizabeth trained many women to be nurses and sent them to the Union Army. Many women were interested and received training at this time. After the war, Elizabeth had time, in 1868, to establish a Women's Medical College at the Infirmary to train women, physicians, and doctors.

In 1869 she left her sister Emily in charge of the College and returned to England. There, with Florence Nightingale, she opened the Women's Medical College. Blackwell taught at the newly created London School of Medicine for Women and accepted a chair in gynecology. She was also the first female physician and doctor in the UK Medical Register. She retired a year later.

During her retirement, Elizabeth still maintained her interest in the Women's Rights Movement by writing lectures on the importance of education. She also published books about diseases and proper hygiene.

She was an early outspoken opponent of circumcision and in 1894 said that "Parents, should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral health."2

Her female education guide was published in Spain, as was her autobiography.

In 1856 she adopted Katherine "Kitty" Barry, an orphan of Irish origin who was her companion for the rest of her life.3

In 1907 Blackwell was injured in a fall from which she never fully recovered — she died on 31 May 1910 at her home in Hastings after a stroke. She was buried in June 1910 in the churchyard at Kilmun on Holy Loch in the west of Scotland.4

Blackwell was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp in 1974.

Bibliography

  • The Causes and Treatment of Typhus, or Shipfever (thesis)
  • The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls (brochure, complation of lecture series) pub. by George Putnam
  • The Religion of Health (complation of lecture series)
  • Counsel for Parents (republished as Moral Education for the Young)
  • Pioneer Work for Women (autobiography)

See also

Resources

References

  1. ^ M. A. Elston, "Blackwell, Elizabeth (1821–1910)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 29 Dec 2008
  2. ^ History of Circumcision
  3. ^ M. A. Elston, "Blackwell, Elizabeth (1821–1910)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 29 Dec 2008
  4. ^ M. A. Elston, "Blackwell, Elizabeth (1821–1910)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 29 Dec 2008
  • Mesnard, E.M., Miss Elizabeth Blackwell and the Women of Medicine (Paris, 1889)
  • Baker, Rachel (1944) The first woman doctor: the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. J. Messner, Inc., New York, OCLC 848388
  • Wilson, Dorothy Clarke (1970 Lone woman: the story of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor Little Brown, Boston, OCLC 56257
  • Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (New York: Schocken Books, 1977)

External links


Persondata
NAME Blackwell, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION abolitionist, women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Bristol
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1910
PLACE OF DEATH Hastings
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