I’ve known about Elizabeth Blackwell for a long time, but what I did not know was that she suffered a serious eye injury while practicing medicine and became disabled. That injury changed the trajectory of her life, and possibly the trajectory of medicine as she taught the world that women were capable human beings.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a post on Elizabeth Blackwell for a couple of reasons. The first being that I wasn’t sure a glass eye counted as a disability. The second because Elizabeth Blackwell hated sick people and thought they were weak.¹ She did not consider herself disabled because of her lack of sight, because to her disabled people were lazy and unrighteous. She looked down on disabled people too much to admit she was one. However, I feel the need to cover the complicated disabled women in history, not just the angelic ones, and not just the ones that claimed the label. People are complicated, and Elizabeth Blackwell was a study in contradictions.
Elizabeth Blackwell
(1821-1910)
When a group of 150 medical students at Geneva Medical School in 1847 voted for a female student to come study with them, they thought it was a joke. They have no idea they’d invited the first female medical doctor in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell. I don’t know how Elizabeth kept her temper and frustration in check during medical school because she was treated as a pariah.
A girl! You might as well try to teach a dog. Girls are too delicate to even know about their own bodies. No woman is capable of being a doctor, they’d faint if they knew the names of their body parts.
Elizabeth was constantly kept separate from her medical class, and was prohibited from attending the anatomy lectures because of her “delicate sensibilities.” Luckily Elizabeth was very persuasive and she was eventually allowed to attend. She graduated in 1849 at the top of her class. At the time the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal said that they regretted that Elizabeth had been:
led to aspire to honors and duties which, by the order of nature and the common consent of the world, devolve upon men
Other posts in this series: Badass Disabled Women in History: Wilma Mankiller
How Wilma Rudolph survived polio and became the fastest woman in the world
Disabled Women in History: Florence Nightingale and Fibromyalgia
Elizabeth Blackwell loses an eye and confronts being disabled
After graduation, Elizabeth traveled to England and France to further her training. Unfortunately, not long after she arrived in France she injured an eye. She was treating a baby with a bacterial infection of the eye (gonorrhea possibly) when her own eye was contaminated. She spent three weeks in darkness and pain before she regained the sight in one eye. Her other eye had to be replaced with a glass one.
This prevented her from ever being a surgeon as she wished. Hospitals refused to allow her to practice at their facilities because of her partial blindness and her gender. It must have been a devastating blow for someone who had worked so hard and came across so many barriers, but Elizabeth said:
I suffered according to a grand and beautiful law, that the highest must suffer for the sins of the lowest.¹
(So yeah, she had a Jesus complex. One of the reasons why I found her annoying)
Barred from practicing in hospitals because she was disabled (partial blindness) and was a woman
Elizabeth eventually returned to America where she was also barred from practicing in most hospitals. She first opened a clinic in NYC with her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell. Eventually, they along with Dr. Marie Zakrzewska opened the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. It was open May 12, 1857, and staffed entirely by women. Elizabeth didn’t like the patients, so she took over the administration and left the patients to the other doctors.
The hospital was created to be free and serve the poor, but due to lack of financial resources it often only accepted those who could pay four dollars per week¹. The doctors who worked there made their money elsewhere from private patients. Still, Elizabeth could never gain the approval of society that she craved.
Fun Fact: Elizabeth Blackwell and previous subject Florence Nightingale met in 1850 and greatly enjoyed each other’s company and professional skills. Later they would have a falling out because of their different dreams for medicine.
Returning to England and founding the National Healthy Society
In 1869 Elizabeth left her sister Emily in charge of the hospital and returned to England. Shortly after her return, she founded the National Health Society to educate people about the benefits of hygiene and healthy lifestyles. Elizabeth also set up a private practice in London where she campaigned to end the ban of women obtaining medical degrees in England. She also helped establish the London School of Medicine for Women and was appointed professor of gynecology.
In 2007 Elizabeth had a fall that left her physically and mentally disabled. Three years later in 1910, Elizabeth Blackwell died of a stroke at her house in East Sussex, England.
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female physician in the U.S. Thanks to her example, there were 7,399 licensed female physicians in the U.S. at the time of her death. Click To TweetElizabeth Blackwell’s legacy
Elizabeth Blackwell was not a believer in women’s rights, but she managed to further them anyway. She taught women the benefits of going to female doctors so they could experience more compassionate care. She taught younger women that they didn’t have to follow the prescribed path. They too could pursue careers and interests outside the home. At the time of her death, there were 7,399 women who had become licensed physicians and surgeons in the U.S. Elizabeth also raised medical education standards with the founding of her medical school. Her school featured courses emphasizing the importance of proper sanitation and hygiene to prevent disease. Lastly, she worked tirelessly to secure equality for women in medicine.
Elizabeth Blackwell raised medical education standards with the founding of her medical school. Her school featured courses emphasizing the importance of proper sanitation and hygiene to prevent disease. Click To Tweet
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Sources:
- Nimura, Janice P. The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women–and Women to Medicine. W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.
2. STONE, TANYA LEE. WHO SAYS WOMEN CAN’T BE DOCTORS?: the Story of Elizabeth Blackwell. FABER AND FABER, 2018.
3. Ignotofsky, Rachel. Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World. Ten Speed Press, 2018.