Blackwell, Elizabeth

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BLACKWELL, Elizabeth

Born 3 February 1821, Counterslip, England; died 31 May 1910, Hastings, England

Daughter of Samuel and Hannah Lane Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell's independence of thought, pioneer spirit, and reform interests were promoted in her parents' home. She was the third daughter among nine children. When Blackwell was eleven, her father's sugar refinery was lost by fire and the family sailed from England to settle first in New York City and later in New Jersey and Cincinnati, Ohio. Blackwell's father was an active dissenter and lay preacher in the "Independent" church and was vitally concerned with social reform, the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and temperance. Reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison were visitors to the Blackwell home and Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were counted as friends in Ohio. In this liberal family atmosphere, the Blackwell daughters and sons received their education at home from private tutors.

In 1847 Blackwell was refused admission to Harvard, Yale, Bowdoin, and medical schools in Philadelphia and New York City. Jefferson Medical College suggested she might attend classes disguised as a man, but Blackwell believed her moral crusade "must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end." Finally, Geneva Medical College, an undistinguished rural school in New York, admitted Blackwell to study in November 1847. The 150 male students at Geneva had unanimously treated her application as a "joke" and Blackwell faced ridicule and discrimination in her classes. In the summer of 1848, however, she was given the opportunity to do work with patients at the Philadelphia Hospital of the Blockley Almshouse. There she treated typhus among Irish immigrants and became convinced of the need for sanitation and personal hygiene. Her convictions were recorded in her thesis, published in 1849 in the Buffalo Medical Journal and Monthly. In 1849, graduating at the head of her class, Blackwell became the first woman in America to earn a degree from a medical college.

Eager to increase her medical knowledge, Blackwell set out for study in Europe after becoming a naturalized American citizen. In Paris she enrolled as a student midwife in La Maternité. There she contracted purulent ophthalmia and lost sight in one eye; all hopes of becoming a surgeon were dashed. During work in England, she began a lifelong friendship with Florence Nightingale and shared interests in sanitation and hygiene.

In 1851 Blackwell returned to New York but faced serious difficulties in establishing a private practice. She turned to lectures and writing on good hygiene. "The Laws of Life, with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls," published in 1852, drew a favorable response from Quakers. By 1853 Blackwell had a one-room dispensary in the tenement district of New York and in 1857 was renamed the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Blackwell's plans for a medical college for women were delayed by the Civil War, but in 1868 the Women's Medical College was opened and Blackwell was appointed to the first chair of hygiene.

Blackwell returned to England in 1869, leaving management of the infirmary and college to her sister. She resided there for the rest of her life with her adopted daughter. She established a successful practice in London and in 1871 helped found the National Health Society with the motto "Prevention is better than cure." In 1875 she was awarded the chair of gynecology at the New Hospital and London School of Medicine for Women.

Blackwell continued to write and lecture on moral reform. Her "Counsel to Parents on the Moral Education of Their Children" (1879) was rejected by 12 publishers as too controversial and had to be printed privately. In a plain and direct manner Blackwell argued that there was no physiological necessity for a double standard of morality, but Victorian England and America were shocked by her position.

Blackwells' attention focused on economic and social reform in her pamphlet Christian Socialism (1882). In this document she called for a more just distribution of income, improved efficiency in government, workers' insurance, and the establishment of agrarian communities where women could play major roles.

Blackwell's autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (1895), provides a vivid picture of the challenges she faced in her moral crusade. In the closing chapter she wrote of her "hope for the future: the study of human nature by women as well as men commences that new and hopeful era of the intelligent co-operation of the sexes through which alone real progress can be attained and secured."

Other Works:

Essays in Medical Sociology (2 vols. 1892-1902).

The Blackwell family papers are in the Library of Congress and the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Letters from Elizabeth Blackwell to her friend Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon are in the Columbia University Library. Other letters and documents may be found in Fawcett Library, London; Sophia Smith Research Room, Smith College; Library of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York; Boston Public Library; New York Infirmary; Medical Library, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London; Royal Free Medical School Library, London.

Bibliography:

Fancourt, M., They Dared to Be Doctors: Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1965). Felder, D. G., The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time: A Ranking Past and Present (1996). Flexner, E., Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the U.S. (1975). Hays, E. R., Those Extraordinary Blackwells (1967). Lovejoy, E. P., Women Doctors of the World (1957). Morantz-Sanchez, R. "Feminist Theory and Historical Practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell" in Feminists Revision History (1994). Robinson, V., Pathfinders in Medicine (1929). Ross, I., Child of Destiny; The Life Story of the First Woman Doctor (1949). Sahli, N. A., Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., 1821-1910: A Biography (1982). Shearer, B. F. and Shearer, B. S., ed., Notable Women in the Life Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary (1996). Walsh, M. R., Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975 (1977). Weprin, J. G., "The Young Elizabeth Blackwell: Why She Became the First Woman to Graduate from an American Medical School" (thesis, 1992). Wilson, D. C., Lone Woman (1970). Wright, M., Elizabeth Blackwell of Bristol: The First Woman Doctor (1995).