Blackwell Breaks Barriers: First U.S. Female Doctor

Elizabeth Blackwell graduated first in her class from Geneva Medical College in upstate New York on January 23, 1849, becoming the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. She had been rejected by every major medical school in the country—at least 29 institutions turned her away before Geneva''s all-male student body voted to admit her, reportedly as a joke. Blackwell was born in Bristol, England, in 1821 and emigrated to the United States with her family as a child. The idea of pursuing medicine came from a dying friend who told her she might have been spared the worst indignities of her illness had her physician been a woman. Blackwell initially found the idea repugnant—she later wrote that she "hated everything connected with the body"—but the challenge itself drew her in. She studied privately with sympathetic physicians and saved money by teaching school. At Geneva, Blackwell endured social ostracism from the town''s women, who crossed the street to avoid her, and stiff resistance from some faculty. She was initially barred from classroom demonstrations involving the reproductive system. But her academic performance was undeniable. When she graduated at the top of her class, the dean placed her thesis on the topic of typhus in the college library, and even skeptical professors acknowledged her ability. After graduation, Blackwell trained in Paris and London, losing sight in one eye after contracting ophthalmia neonatorum from a patient. Returning to New York, she found that no hospital would hire her and no landlord would rent her office space. She responded by founding the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857, staffed entirely by women. The institution trained a generation of female physicians. Blackwell later co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874, opening the profession on both sides of the Atlantic to those who had been told the practice of medicine was beyond their nature.