Then she worked at a mental hospital in Philadelphia and the great city obstetric hospital in Paris, gaining huge clinical experience in medicine, obstetrics, and surgery.

She had a predictably lonely time among them, and, also predictably, graduated at the top of the class. Then the irresolute faculty of little Geneva Medical College in upstate New York turned the big decision over to its student body, and those boys knew an excellent joke when they saw one. I know that I am one of the Elect.”Įlizabeth was firmly rejected from every medical school she approached. Was it the plaintive wish of a dying friend for a female physician that finally made Blackwell take the plunge? Nimura wonders about veracity of this story - Elizabeth was seldom quite so cuddly - and highlights instead Elizabeth’s grandiose notions that she was simply intended for great things: “I have a most perfect conviction, that holy influence surrounds me. The study of medicine appealed to her mostly for the “great moral struggle” of getting admitted. The early death of Elizabeth’s father forced her to teach for a living, a job she loathed. She, in turn, had fairly limited affection for those she once termed the “country boobies and boobyesses” of her adopted home. Americans tended to find her stiff and standoffish in an off-putting British kind of a way.

Although she spent time in the Midwest and practiced in New York City, Elizabeth always felt most at home in England, and would ultimately head back to retire there. She emigrated from Britain in 1832, at age 11, with her large family of fervent abolitionists and religious dissenters. The first American female physician was actually not American at all. Nimura makes clear in “The Doctors Blackwell,” her impeccably researched and beautifully articulated retelling, Blackwell was neither iconic feminist nor iconic physician, but both less and perhaps more of each than generally advertised.īOOK REVIEW - “The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women - and Women to Medicine,” by Janice P. And, most problematic of all, Blackwell was a real piece of work. This truth strips any concept of “first doctor” of a certain amount of its sheen. For another, during much of recorded history uncredentialed women functioned as society’s primary healers. For one thing, some doors barring women from male-dominated medical spheres are even now not yet open. Needless to say, this hoary version of events contains some inaccuracies. She unlocked the doors of the male medical world and propped them wide open for the rest of us. She completed rigorous postgraduate training and led a busy professional life. In 1849, Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from an American medical school. E lizabeth Blackwell’s life has long figured prominently in the standard inspirational liturgy for little girls.

The doctors blackwell