The First Woman Physician

Elizabeth Blackwell is a very interesting and successful woman. Like my last post on the discussion board, I did not know much about the person I am writing about. I enjoy writing about people and things I don't know. It challenges me.

Elizabeth Blackwell was born in 1821 where woman did not have many rights. Blackwell was the first woman to get into a medical school. She applied to many places, but only received one acceptance, to Geneva Medical College in Geneva, NY. As she stated in her book "The idea of winning a doctor's degree gradually assumed the aspect of a great moral struggle, and the moral fight possessed immense attraction for me" (Blackwell, 1895). She faced many hurdles in her quest to becoming a doctor. When she finally got accepted into medical school, she was ignored by students, and the neighborhood in which she was living. They even thought of her to be crazy. However by the end of her schooling there she got the acceptance of her classmates, teachers, and the town. After graduation she moved to England and Paris where she studied and worked in a lying-in hospital. She also studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Elizabeth returned to the states in 1851. She settled in New York where the Woman's College of the New York Infirmary opened in 1868. The college consisted of fifteen students and nine staff members. Elizabeth was the Professor of Hygiene. After a year there, she moved back to England, where she spent the rest of her life as a professor at the London School of Medicine for Women.

My personal opinion is that she set a higher standard for all women. She seen what she wanted in life and went for it. She said "If society will not admit of women's free development, then society must be remodeled". (Blackwell, n.d.).

References

National Library of Medicine (n.d.) Retrieved November 27, 2011 from

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/blackwell/admission.html

History.com (n.d.) Retrieved November 27, 2011 from

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-woman-md

Thinkexist.com (n.d.) Retrieved November 27, 2011 from

http://thinkexist.com/quotes/elizabeth_blackwell/