Women’s Medical Education

Sources

True Womanhood. In the 1830s and 1840s prevailing cultural attitudes defined the “true woman” as inherently moral, sympathetic, and naturally attuned to the needs of children. Some women who wanted to pursue medical careers emphasized those characteristics as making them uniquely qualified to be physicians, particularly physicians for women and children. Women had long served as lay practitioners and midwives; now sectarians began to accept them into their ranks. Harriot Kezia Hunt was a leading sectarian practitioner in the 1830s and 1840s, and the Boston Female Medical School was established in 1847 as a sectarian (homeopathic) medical school. Orthodox physicians, however, continued to exclude women from the profession, claiming that delicate sensibilities and an inherent inability to comprehend the rational, scientific basis of medicine disqualified females from practicing traditional medicine.

Midwifery Controversy. In the 1840s proponents of women’s medical education used the issue of midwifery to garner support for their cause. Until the mid eighteenth century midwifery had been primarily the domain of women, but after the invention of forceps male physicians had gradually incorporated obstetrics into their normal practice of medicine. Nineteenth-century physicians used the promise of safer and easier childbirth to establish lucrative obstetrical practices. The orthodox medical community argued that only those who had acquired advanced medical training in female anatomy and the mechanics of childbirth (that is, university-trained physicians) possessed the necessary skill to use forceps. In their efforts to develop a reputation for safe and easy deliveries, however, physicians often interfered far more than was necessary, sometimes injuring the mother or child (or both) and often causing infection. By the 1840s a backlash had grown against “meddlesome man-midwifery.” Proponents of women’s medical education used the ideal of women’s virtue to their advantage to argue that it was immoral for men to be involved in gynecological and obstetric practice.

Elizabeth Blackwell. Elizabeth Blackwell embraced the idea of women’s medical education on the grounds of egalitarianism and women’s rights. On 23 January 1849 she graduated from the orthodox Geneva Medical College, becoming the first woman anywhere to receive a medical degree. Blackwell was born in Bristol, England, in 1821. Her family had immigrated to the United States in 1832. After her father’s death she taught school to help support her family. She pursued a medical education at the behest of a female friend who suffered from a painful gynecological problem for which she was embarrassed to seek medical treatment. She began to read medical works on her own and studied privately with a physician in Charleston, South Carolina, before applying to medical schools. She applied to all and was rejected by all except Geneva Medical College in New York. There, the trustees and faculty decided to put it to a vote of the students, expecting a unanimous negative response that would send a clear message to the presumptuous Blackwell. The students, although no great advocates of women’s rights, conspired to play a joke and turn the tables on their teachers. They voted unanimously to accept Blackwell in 1847. Blackwell’s graduation in 1849 gave further impetus to the movement to establish an orthodox women’s medical college. The Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania became the first such institution when it opened in Philadelphia in 1850.

Sources

Jane B. Donegan, Women and Men Midwives: Medicine, Morality, and Misogyny in Early America (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978);

Nancy Sahli, Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. (1821–1910): A Biography (New York: Arno, 1982).