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| Elizabeth Blackwell | |
|---|---|
 Elizabeth Blackwell | |
| Born | February 3, 1821 Bristol |
| Died | May 31, 1910 (age 89) Rock House |
Elizabeth Blackwell (February 3, 1821 – May 31, 1910) was an abolitionist, women's rights activist, and the first female doctor in the United States. She was the first woman to graduate from medical school (M.D.) and a pioneer in educating women in medicine.
Blackwell was born in Bristol,England, the third of nine children born to a sugar refiner, named Samuel Blackwell, who could afford to give his numerous sons, and also daughters, an education. Samuel Blackwell believed that his daughters should get the same education as boys so he had his daughters tutored. In 1832, the family immigrated to the United States, and set up a refinery in New York City. Blackwell's family then moved to Cincinnati, three months after they moved there her father got very sick 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 C. 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 a hoax — and braved the prejudice of some of the professors and students to complete her training. Blackwell overcame taunts and prejudice from the faculty as well as from her fellow students while at medical school. 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. On January 11, 1849, she became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating at the top of her class.
Banned from practice in most hospitals she decided to go to Paris, France and train at La Maternitè, but while she was there her training was cut short when she caught a terrible eye infection from a baby she was working on. She got the eye removed and replaced with a glass eye. In 1857 Elizabeth founded her own infirmary, which was the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, in When the American Civil War had started or was about to start, she trained the nurses how to be prepared for an emergency, and in 1868 she founded a Women's Medical College at the Infirmary to train women, physicians, and doctors. American hospitals didnt want to hire her,so she opened a clinic in New York City where she was joined by her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell and Dr. Maria Zakrzewska.
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 became the first female physician and doctor in the UK Medical Register. She retired at the age of 86.
Elizabeth Blackwell had adopted a daughter (an Irish immigrant) in England, her name was Katherine Barry. Elizabeth had called her Kitty. She was eight years old when she was first adopted and stayed with Elizabeth for the rest of her life. Her female education guide, was published in Spain as was her autobiography. Upon her death on May 31, 1910, she was buried in a remote part of Scotland.
Resources
- An online history at the National Institutes of Health, including copies of historical documents
- An online biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, with links to more articles on Blackwell and others in her famous family, plus links to many resources on the Net
- Biography from the National Institute of Health
- Elizabeth Blackwell at the Hobart and William Smith Colleges Archives.
- Elizabeth Blackwell Resources Available in Hobart and William Smith Colleges Archives.
- Chronological Bibliography of Selected Scholarly Works by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.
- Cyclopedia of Female Biography edited by H.G. Adams London,Broombridge and Sons.1857, p 109 (Google Books)
she was a dumb asss she sucked dick ghe is goin to hell dat dumb ass nigga
References
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
See also
- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, first woman to gain a medical qualification in Britain as a woman
- James Barry (surgeon), first known woman doctor in Britain (disguised as a man)
- State University of New York Upstate Medical University is what the Geneva College Medical School eventually became.
- Some places and memories related to Elizabeth Blackwell
- 1821 births
- 1910 deaths
- American abolitionists
- American feminists
- American physicians
- American women's rights activists
- People from Bristol
- Sex educators
- Women of the Victorian era
- Women in the American Civil War
- Women physicians
- Blackwell family
- Hobart and William Smith Colleges alumni
- Alumni of Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry