Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England, into a prosperous liberal Congregationalist family. In her early childhood, she was educated by private tutors and absorbed the ideas of women’s rights and abolitionism. The family’s progressive views and the loss of her father’s sugar refinery led them to move to the US. They arrived in NYC when she was 11 years old and settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. When she was 17 years old, her father died, and the family struggled financially. To earn money, Blackwell and two of her sisters opened a private school for girls and later taught in numerous schools around the country. At the time, she made up her mind to become a physician, saving money for medical school. While teaching in a boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina, she lodged at a Reverend and former physician who supported her aspirations and allowed her to use his medical books.
At 25, Blackwell moved to Philadelphia, independently studying anatomy and applying to medical schools, getting rejected multiple times because of her gender. In 1847, she was finally accepted to Geneva Medical College. During the summer vacations, she trained at Blockley Almshouse hospital in Philadelphia, ignoring the hostile attitude from some of the resident physicians.
In January 1849, Blackwell graduated medical school, first in her class, becoming the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the US. At her degree conferral, the dean stood up and bowed to her. She took off to Europe, wishing to continue her studies, but she was denied by medical institutes once again. When she was confirmed to enroll in the La Maternité in Paris, it was under the condition that she would be treated as a student midwife. In 1849, Blackwell treated an infant with an infectious eye disease and contracted the disease herself. She lost her left eyesight and her dream of becoming a surgeon. After facing a hostile attitude in St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, she returned to the US.
On her arrival to NYC, Blackwell was unable to receive a post in any hospital, so she tried to establish her practice. With almost no patients, she channeled her efforts into writing and lecturing. She taught classes for young women on sexual physiology and reproduction, gave speeches, and published a volume about the physical and mental development of girls, titled The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls. In 1853, Blackwell founded a small dispensary, and four years later, with her sister, Emily (the third woman to earn a medical degree in the US) and Marie Zakrzewska, they expanded the dispensary and renamed it – the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. There, women obtained all roles –from physicians to board members and of the executive committee.
In 1861, At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Blackwell was a key figure in the organization of the Woman’s Central Association of Relief and the US Sanitary Commission and trained nurses for the Union hospitals. In 1868, she opened the Woman’s Medical College at her NYC infirmary, where she set a four-year training period that included extensive academic and clinical training. Blackwell served as Professor of Hygiene, and her sister Emily as Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women.
In the following year, she left to live in London, this time for good, establishing a successful private practice there. A year later, at the age of 49, she became ill and could not practice medicine, but remained active in developing of public health, co-founding the National Health Society and establishing the London School of Medicine for Women, where she served as a professor of gynecology. She retired at 86 because of the mental and physical difficulties she suffered from after falling off stairs. She passed away three years later due to a stroke.
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