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In the 1840's, everyone thought that women being doctors was a terrible idea. Elizabeth Blackwell wanted to become a doctor, but the problem was that she was a female. Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821, in Bristol, England and she  died
on May 31,1910. She was the first woman to become a medical doctor!
Born into a family of wealth, Elizabeth's family thought that girls deserved an education as much as boys and so she received a good start in school. Her father was a sugar merchant who fell upon hard times and then lost his business in a fire and was reduced to poverty. The family left England for "the land of opportunities." Elizabeth arrived in New York in 1832. There her father attempted to begin again in the job he knew best-the sugar business. But he was against slavery and said, "Black slaves deserve to be free. How can I carry on a business that is formed upon human misery?" When Elizabeth Blackwell was eleven, she and her family settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. Elizabeth Blackwell's father died when she was eighteen, so she had to teach school to support her family. In fact, she and her mother started a school for black children. Still Elizabeth Blackwell still did not give up on her dream to become a doctor. After she was rejected by twenty-nine medical schools, she was accepted in 1847 to Geneva Medical College, Western, New York. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated four years later and then she studied medicine in Europe. she moved to New York City to practice medicine. Unfortunately she met with opposition. No hospital would accept her, because she was a woman, so Elizabeth Blackwell opened her own clinic. In 1857, she founded the New York Infirmary for women and children, which was a clinic. It was the first of it's kind, a hospital for women run by women. She was a real leader! Elizabeth Blackwell returned to England for a year in August, 1858, and that was when she got her name on the Medical Register of United Kingdom but returned again in 1869 where she stayed for forty years. Elizabeth Blackwell continued to practice medicine. She started a medical college for women and until she died was an inspiration for other women to follow. |