Elizabeth Blackwell: Grrl in Medicine

Elizabeth Blackwell took her first look at an anatomy textbook and passed out.  She  tormented her kid sister by describing diseased, inflamed internal organs in gory detail at bedtime.  She also fought for her dreams, and became the first woman ever in the US to graduate from medical school.  

Elizabeth taught herself medicine, which wasn’t a bad way to go at the time.  She read books, badgered physicians with questions, and hung out around hospitals (Which were not nice places to be.  Forget scary food and lime green walls, we’re talking horror shows here).  When she applied to medical schools, most schools wouldn’t even reply to her request.  The ones that did write back told her that if she got married and had a few children she’d feel much better…medicine was much too hard for a woman to understand.  

When she applied to the Geneva Medical College in upstate New York , the school thought it was a practical joke and, playing along, told her she was in.  When she showed up at school for the first day of classes the students boycotted (Grrls have cooties, don’cha know?), the faculty fled the town (must’a been really strong cooties), and the locals refused to rent her a room or sell her supplies (and you thought you had problems with school?).

Well, they got everything sorted out since Elizabeth just sat there in the Dean’s office with her acceptance letter and refused to move till they did.  After a while the other students began to come around to her side, they even let her move closer to the demonstrations (she had been forced to stand at the back of the classroom so she would not distract the “real” students).  She graduated in 1849 at the top of her class, and you’d be listening for that sappy happy ending music now, wouldn’t you?  

Sorry, not gonna happen.    Elizabeth had to buy a house in order to practice medicine because no one would rent her the space (A woman doctor?  Are you nuts?).  She was even denied access to hospitals and pharmacies!  Her kid sister (the one with the nightmares about ruptured spleens, remember?) became a doctor a few years after Elizabeth , and they worked together, opening a practice in the slums of NYC and encouraging other women to become physicians.

Elizabeth had told her parents at the ripe old age of 16 that she was never going to get married, and she stuck to that her whole life.  She did decide however that she would like a child, and she adopted a daughter in 1854.  Elizabeth was never the sort of grrl who let society tell her what she could or could not do.

Over the years she worked to set up colleges of medicine just for women and she demanded that modern medicine focus on the health concerns of women and children by founding several hospitals devoted to the study of women’s health.

When you feel like the world isn’t fair, or that your dreams don’t count, take a deep breath and think about Elizabeth ’s motto “nothing can stop a woman who has made up her mind”.  Get out there and fight for it, grrl!

 

Tracy Madison  grrl-e-grrl.com contributor