Elizabeth Blackwell

1821-1910

Elizabeth Blackwell was the third of five daughters who comprised a remarkable family. Her niece was Alice Stone Blackwell, daughter of Lucy Stone. Born in Bristol, England, she immigrated with her sisters and parents to the US, where they were very engaged in the abolition movement.

In 1849, Blackwell became the first woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree, graduating from Geneva Medical College in New York, an established medical school. After her graduation she went to Europe for clinical experience at La Maternite, a women's lying-in clinic, where she developed the cornerstones of her medical practice and philosophy: the importance of hygiene and sanitation as well as a concern for sexual vulnerability of women. While there she contracted ophthalmia, which left her blind in one eye, and destroyed her hope of a surgical career.

In 1851, Blackwell returned to New York and due to prejudice against women doctors by hospitals and male doctors and landlords unwilling to rent office space found it difficult to establish herself in her profession. Persistence paid off when she purchased a house for her practice and while she waited for patients to call on her, Blackwell wrote a series of lectures to women that emphasized the importance of physical education. These lectures were later published in 1852 as The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls, and Blackwell emerged as an advocate of moral reform and women's rights. Her medical practice was devoted to serving poor women; in 1857 she founded New York Infirmary for Women and Children whose directors and physicians were all women. She lectured extensively on the importance of hygiene and on the necessity of women having a thorough knowledge of physiology. Her efforts to open the medical profession to women saw fruit in the 1868 opening of the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary.

Source: Biographies Plus, American Reformers (1985)